This recipe really is quick and easy…

We went out to a Greek restaurant for dinner for a friend’s birthday.  Early in the night we noticed Connor had a small Easter Egg that came out of his pocket (We always have a few floating around in the cupboard for months and months), and Monique asked him why he had it.

“Just in case”

Just in case?  Just in case what?  In case he needs to plug a sulfuric acid leak, MacGyver style? He’s a good little cub scout being prepared with an easter egg in is pocket just in case.  We all had a good laugh.

As it turned out, the birthday cake was a strawberry cheesecake, the former half he doesn’t like and the latter half he can’t have, so Connor was wise to have brought an Easter Egg ‘just in case’,

Ash got the opportunity to go to Japan with scouts.  A small band of scouts and venturers from various groups around the east of Melbourne have headed off to Matsudo in Japan.  They’ll spend a couple of days with a host family before doing 5 days of Camporee, then a couple more days with their family before coming home. As well as representing Australian Scouts at a number of official functions connected with Matsudo’s sister city arrangement with City of Whitehorse, they’ll have some time for sightseeing and learning about the Japanese culture.

Ash was a bit nervous but very excited, here are some photo’s from the airport.

Ash wanted to play soccer this year. So far we’re having a bit of trouble finding a club where she can play, as the first one couldn’t field an under 15s girls’ team and the second one may have too many players (for two teams), but she played a practice match with them today anyway. She looked pretty good out there, however may be just a bit _too_ nice to play soccer – she didn’t want to run into anyone. Her loving brother has offered to run into her and hit her on a regular basis to toughen her up a bit. Hmmm … feel the love!

So it just happened – I used up my first pen from how many notes I take in my law studies. A whole pen in just over two months? It’s frightening really. Anyway we thought we should note this momentous occasion.

One of the side effects of Mon studying law is that our week is more structured so that she can keep on top of things.  She has a timetable of when she’s studying, and I’ve copied the idea to make sure my time is better balanced.

This means there are times when she and I are in the study at the same time, which is quite nice :)

Although it was a bit sad the other day when I noticed that she is there surrounded by notes and articles and books, learning to be a lawyer, and I’m next to her…..reading comics!

Standing at the platform at Ringwood waiting for the train to take us to Sound Relief when the sky turned black as doom.  This pretty much set the tone for the weather, clearly God has a bit of a sense of humour raining over an inch of rain on a bushfire relief concert. This did not dampen the atmosphere at all, the reason we were there and the amazing lineup more than distracted from the damp, and the good old footy-style plastic poncho kept a lot of it off.

Dodgy phone camera photo

It was a long day for the kids (we left home about 10:30am, and the concert was due to finish 10:30pm) so we loaded up bags of food, books, and charged all the phones and ipods to keep them occupied.  Connor was hanging out for Midnight Oil, who were, of course, last, but he went the distance well.  It was also Connor’s first concert, so we weren’t sure about the volume, but the MCG is so big it wasn’t stressfully loud, and he had earplugs for when it got too much.

It was just too cool to be at such an amazing event as a family.  Singing along with such legendary bands, and our kids knowing the words and singing along, was such a special time – normally when I’m in seating at a gig I wish I had gone for the mosh, but I wouldn’t have missed that day with my family for anything.

Contrary to the Herald Scum report, the highlight of the night was absolutely not Kylie Minogue, who claimed that I Still Call Australia Home was the defacto second Australian anthem.  Which just goes to show she’s lived outside Australia so long she hasn’t heard I am You Are, We Are Australian…why would we need to sing I still Call Australia Home, since we live here it’s quite obviously home. The fact that it’s the Qantas theme song, and Qantas were a major sponsor was not lost on us.  But other than that one bit of cynical marketing, the rest of the event was just infused with the community spirit of support for the victims of bushfire, and the coming together of artists and fans in support.

What was the highlight? There were too many big moments to honestly limit it to one highlight, but the biggest for Mon especially :

Hunners! (Photo from JamesDPhotography, CC licensed (by-nc-nd))

Bands that we’ve grown to love late in their careers, too late to have ever seen them live, and they were there.  Hunters, Oils, surprise guests Liam Finn’s Uncle Nick and N-Dog, AKA Crowded House, Split Enz…Split Enz, man, unbelievable, they broke up 25 years ago! These bands were all still great live, showing why they are legends.  Plenty of other bands were great to see – during Augie March’s One Crowded hour, the sky turned dark again, it was so in keeping with the style and content of the song it could’ve been deliberate!

The Melbourne lineup was so superior to the Sydney one – while Sydney had some good bands too like Little Birdy, Hoodoos and You Am I, we had the legends. Sydney was a bit more like a telethon…Marcia Hines…who on earth is Taylor Swift? And while Melbourne’s climax came courtesy of the reformation of live legends Midnight Oil, Sydney rocked out to………Barry Gibb??  Did your grandma stay up that late? :D

We almost forgot to tell about our awesome trip to Sovereign Hill the other week with the Snells. The kids had no idea that we were going, just that we were having an Adventure – until of course we got to the V-line station, Ash saw the destination was Ballarat and said “are we going to Sovereign Hill?”.

It was well worth the trip especially when you catch the train up as we just kicked back the whole time and listened to music, chatted and did puzzles. I haven’t been to Sovereign Hill since I was a kid and Jase & Connor had never been so we all really enjoyed seeing all the different machines, mines, soldiers, and other characters – with Ash enjoying telling us which were the “good bits”.

Gold panning was fun (Mark was quite good at this), the mine tour was quite cool and the musket firing was very funny especially when we got the kids arrested afterwards (didn’t get away quick enough though). Recommendations are to see the battery running, the sweet making and leave plenty of time to pan for gold (as we sucked). We also got Wanted posters for the kids.

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Today we all caught the train in to St Kilda to go to the adventure playground there. The City of Port Philip has a couple of adventure playgrounds designed as ‘big backyards’ for children in high density public housing.

Based on a similar concept in Denmark, the children were originally given the materials and tools and asked to build their own play space.  While no longer able to build the structures, the local children help out where they can creating murals, designing programs and having input into any future directions.

This thing is dead set like being sucked into a 1970’s episode of Sesame Street.  It’s organic, it’s visual, it’s all about being a kid.  The centerpiece is a castle, made of wood, with hidey spaces, maze like room to get lost, high climbs and inconvenient crawlspaces. There are climbing areas that are just a bit dangerous, a flying fox on a wire about ten metres long, and high enough of the ground to be fun, a half pipe that you go down on bits of hessian…

If you have kids and believe challenging and engaging them is more important than playstation and cotton wool, this place is for you! Photos after the jump…

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It was really hot yesterday and we couldn’t go out anywhere, so Connor played a game of Monopoly with himself…

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