New Moon Party

So after a relaxing day that involved little more than good food, great company and baby cuddles, before the blur of after school stuff that needed doing, it was time to head to a party.  In all the hype of a the release of New Moon, I (well we really) was invited to a new moon party.  The thing is, it wasn’t one of those new moon parties, it was a new moon as in lunar.

It was at another school families house not far from where we live.  Whilst girl-child and their daughter are in the same class and do play together, they aren’t best friends and have never wanted to play together after school.  As a result we don’t really know the family and figured it was as good an opportunity to get to know them.

Despite walking there in the rain, at kid speed dancing through puddles, we were one of the first arrivals.  It gave us a chance to chat and get to know each other.  The party space was awesome, a paved area surrounded by a built up garden bed full of vegies.  In the centre of the paving was a fire pit and before we knew it there was a fire burning in the pit.  Alcohol was being consumed and food being devoured.

Once we arrived, the rain thankfully held off and we all enjoyed the night.  I didn’t know anyone there other than the hosts and I had a great night.  The other guests were quite an eclectic bunch, best described as hippy meets IT/business geek.  In fact it was almost amusing to sit around the fire listening to people discuss the relevance of a new moon, based upon the finding of some new moon app on their iPhone!

I am sure if I am lucky enough to get another new moon invite I will be there enjoying again.

Shichi go san

Today was just a day like any other day.  Filled with kids, school, work and every day life and nothing noteworthy, and certainly nothing to write about.  Instead of writing about nothing, I decided to go back through my photo archives for this time last year to see what we were up to.

Happy Almost School Girl

This time last year girl child was getting ready for her school orientation and super excited about wearing her brand new, far-too-large school uniform.

Hopefully this time next year I will have more photos of girl-child just as happy but in a very different setting.  This time next year we plan to be in Tokyo to celebrate Shichi Go San, a festival that is a traditional rite of passage and festival day in Japan for three and seven year-old girls and three and five year-old boys, held annually on November 15. As Shichi-Go-San is not a national holiday, it is generally observed on the nearest weekend.

We hope to stay with wonderful friends in central Tokyo.  Together we will celebrate Schichi Go San with a beautiful blonde 7 year old girl who will be wearing the traditional kimono worn by our friend’s daughter when she was 7.  Don’t worry, boy-child won’t be left out, he has been promised a trip to Disneyland and possibly to the Pokemon Centre too!  I can’t wait, only 50 or so weeks to go!

Growing Old

93 is old, it is really old and that is how old man-child’s grandma is.  Yesterday we drove to Ballarat to visit with her.  It has been almost 4 years since we last visited, for her 90th birthday celebrations.  I feel saddened that we haven’t made more of an effort to spend time with her over the years.  I can make all the excuses in the world but essentially we are lazy, preoccupied and easily distracted hence the lack of visiting, oh and it is an hour away and family.

In our chat yesterday she was saying that is well beyond time for her to go.  She spends most of her time in pain or on pain meds.  She is having another surgery on Friday and was suggesting that it would be her chance to go peacefully.  She wouldn’t say too much because she didn’t want to worry the kids but she did mention to them that she might never see them again.

It saddens me that as she nears the end of her life we know so little about her.  I wish I had the time to go back and learn more about this woman who survived living through the war supporting her children as her husband was prisoner in a camp nearby.  I would love to know more about the decision to uproot an entire family (husband included after he escaped from the prison camp) from its home in war-torn Europe to move to the other side of the world.  I do know that she resents being here in Australia, that up until the day they left their home she believed they were moving to Canada to be with her sister and family.  I know that she spent her adult life wishing she were somewhere else but not wanting to leave her family so her heart was torn in two.

With Great Grandma

For now I am happy that we were able to brighten her day a little and that the kids had a chance to visit with their great grandma.

A Winning Day

I studied the form for hours a matter of seconds before declaring that ‘Shocking’ was going to win the Cup.  Being the huge gambler I am, I suggested 50 cents each way would be an appropriate bet.  Man-child doesn’t do baby bets like me so bet $5 for me so I won just over $100.  It was the only bet I had for the day, not a bad result for a few seconds research!

Here are a few more reasons why today was a great day of fun in the sun, or in the shade under the trees on the soft green grass as the case may be.

Someone to serve food

Relaxing in the Shade

Girls Hiding in the Trees

It was an awesome day.  There were 5 families enjoying the day in the park.  Not only was it much more fun being in the park but they changed the camera angles for the main race and you couldn’t really see our house!

Melbourne Madness

Racing fever has hit town and the neighbourhood is alive.  Now normally it is hectic around here, but for a change it is and not just my house that is crazy but the whole area.  You see we live just up the road from Flemington Racecourse.   In fact we are so close we can hear the race calls from our house.  As you can imagine with 100,000 people converging on your suburb, traffic is always going to be crazy so we stay local.

Traditionally we would wander down to a park and sit in the sunshine with dozens of other locals who don’t want to brave the insanity of traffic and transport.  A friend drags his tv and lounge suite out to the park, we bring over our old bbq (actually come to think of it, I think it is still there from last year!), a shade gazebo and a laptop to ensure that we can keep up to date with the race odds.  It is a great day, the kids all play cricket or frisbee, climb trees and ride bikes and we all sit around eating and drinking.  Generally we are in the park from late morning and go home as the sky darkens having overindulged all day long.  We have been doing this for the past 2 years with plans to do it again tomorrow.

That was until we saw the weather forecast.   City - Shower or two. Windy.  Min 17, Max 20

That doesn’t bode well for electronic equipment in the middle of a park.  Apparently the tv in the park has been cancelled so now what to do?  We could still go to the park without the tv but being able to watch the race is what set this picnic apart from other picnics in the area.  The location is so central that many people walking to the races walk by and have been known to join in on the festivities.  The other option is to just open our house again and have everyone come over here.  It will still be fun but not the same without a park for the kids to play in.

Regardless of all the planning, the weather can change again and it probably will.  Today it was supposed to be windy and also have thunderstorms.  Now there is a slight breeze and beautiful blue skies.  There were a few showers earlier in the day but they have been and gone and it is now the perfect day outside.   I am happy to just make it up as we go along, and make any decisions in relation to moving furniture out to the park tomorrow but I think others like to have some real plans about what to do for the day.  I wonder if we could just say if we aren’t in the park we will be here and cross our fingers and hope for the rain to hold off.

Who knows where we will end up.  If you do happen to watch the Melbourne Cup, the Race that Stops a Nation look our for us.  When they are showing overhead views of the track you will see where I live.  Perhaps if we do end up celebrating the day here at home, I might see if I can get the kids all in the backyard with balloons or something equally as colourful to see if you can see them!

Birthday Parties – Breaking My Own Rules

This week I have broken most of my self imposed rules, one of which relates specifically to birthday celebrations.  I ‘don’t do birthday parties‘ for the kids every year, instead the celebrator can take a friend and go to the movies and have a sleep over (hasn’t happened yet) or we have cake in the park with a few friends (generally 3 or 4) on the day and we always have a family and friends barbeque the following weekend.  Now that seems like it should be simple right?  Well when I found out that there were only 7 girls in girl-child’s class and she was inviting 4 of them to her ‘cake in the park shindig’ and then realised that another girl and her sister would just turn up and eat cake as she lives opposite the park there would only be 2 girls in her class that wouldn’t be invited.  That was when I relented and allowed her to invite the 7 girls.  Add on neighbours, walk-bys and siblings and all of a sudden the small gathering became a rather large gathering.  It wasn’t too much of a hassle, in fact it was fun, however I did break my rules.

Then we get to the friends and family barbeque that kind of grew larger than expected.  It started just as us, my parents, Lil Sis and Billy.  Being a school girl now, girl-child doesn’t often get to see one of her oldest and best friend who goes to another school many suburbs away so we have to wait until weekend to catch up so of course we invited her and her family over.  Surprising all of us was the other Grandma and Aunt who came to visit, something that happens very infrequently.  Then of course what is a barbeque without neighbours so add a few more families to the ‘guest list’ and before we knew it the house was overflowing and a real celebration was in swing.

All the kids ate and then jumped in to the hot tub to splash away the afternoon until it was cake time.

More Birthday Cake

So for someone who doesn’t do birthday parties I feel as if I have allowed girl-child to celebrate a little too much.  Now ordinarily going over the top wouldn’t be such a bad thing normally but boy-child has missed out entirely.  His birthday is in the week before the school year begins.  He wanted to invite a friend over for a wii day and maybe a sleep over but this ‘friend’ would only come over if another boy would be there too – another boy that I really don’t like.  Besides, what does it say if a kid will only come over if they can bring their own friend.

I had visions of boy-child being excluded and having a horrible day so we were able to convince him to postpone his celebration until school started back and he could invite new friends from his new class.  Of course as wonderful as that sounded, he didn’t really settle in well.  Before he had a chance to make any new friends he dislocated his elbow and broke his arm and became even more isolated.  By the time he recovered it was the middle of Winter, 6 months after his birthday and man-child’s birthday.  The following holidays the weather was better but he was back in hospital for more surgery so there wasn’t much point in having a party then either.

The poor boy did have a small family shindig but hasn’t celebrated his birthday with friends, he didn’t even complain when girl-child had a ‘real birthday party’.  I feel so guilty about him missing out that I know that I will continue to break my party rules and he too will have a real birthday party next year.

All the motherguilt aside, the birthday celebrations were fun, the weekend was great and exhausting.  Perhaps I need to review my set of rules, take a chill pill and just have fun.

1000+

I think my Reader is reflective of the state of my life at the moment.  It is currently reading 1000+ and chaotic.

I want to hit ‘Mark All As Read’, and then I panic that I am going to miss out on something really exciting so I am sitting here trying to multi task, skimming through my ‘must read’ folders, playing bingo with the kids and imagining that the cleaning fairies are working their magic in the mess I call a house whilst procrastinating about making dinner and wishing I were sound asleep somewhere in the sun.

Instead, I wonder what recipes Google can suggest using eggplant and rice?

Happy to be 6 or Weekly Winners #5 (a few days late)

I think that girl-child is happy to be 6!

Waking up as a 6 year old.

She was so excited to finally be 6, she couldn’t stop smiling.

Reading a Birthday Card

Instead of ripping through the presents she stopped to read a card.

ooooh, Shiny!

I bet I know what this is – I bet it is a new charm for my bracelet, yay.

Hooray!

Looking at the photos, girl-child had a great birthday playing with her friends all afternoon in the park, enjoying the sunshine.

When I tucked her in to bed tonight I asked her if she liked being 6.  I expected that she would gush about how much fun it is but instead she became quite introspective, paused for a second and then said she didn’t want to be 6.  She went on to explain that she couldn’t be everywhere when she is 6 and it isn’t fair that she has to share herself, she wants to be 0, 1,2,3,4,5 and 6 all at the same time.  Her reasoning was that if she could be all those different ages she could share herself with more people, that she could play with all her friends at the one time and everyone would have much more fun.

Happy birthday my beautiful Boo, I can’t believe that you are 6 already.  I love you, thanks for being so much fun.

Filling in the Gaps

I have had a few comments about my attire in the previous post so I guess rather than email the same story multiple times I can try and explain the history of the outfits and how they are important to me.

Outfit #1

Relaxing on our Wedding Day

My wedding dress.  I made my wedding dress and the dresses of my bridesmaids and flowergirl.  Now that really shouldn’t have been too difficult, so I had to make the whole wedding planning time more difficult by living and studying on the other side of the city at the time for 5 months leading up to the wedding.  That meant that I had to get man-child to cut out all the fabric during the week so that I could come home over the weekend and make the dresses as I tried to study.  I have to say that man-child did a much better job of cutting than I would have.  He also did a fantastic job of doing all the wedding planning that I didn’t have time for!

Oh and YES, I AM WEARING DOCS under my wedding dress, beautiful dark green 8 ups.  I did have gorgeous strappy white satin shoes with comfortable 3 inch heels that I had planned on wearing.  I packed my Docs to wear later in the day fearing that I would end up with sore feet and not enjoy the reception.  Just before we left for the ceremony I changed my mind about the heels figuring that since the wedding was outdoors my heels would sink into the lawn so I ditched the heels and pulled on the Docs.  Of course I hadn’t packed any ‘wedding socks’ so I wore white socks with blue and purple giraffes on them!  I am happy to say that I ended the day more than slightly intoxicated, with sunburn but my feet were great.

Outfit #2

Ready to Partay!

Man-child as Angus Young from ACDC, girl-child wanting to get in on the dressing up action as Tinkerbell, me as an All American Goddess and girl-child’s friend.

Now to explain the significance of this dress I have to fill you in on a bit of background, so here goes.

We have lived in this house for 6 years now and have some wonderful neighbours, people that perhaps we would never have met.  Actually if I am to be honest, I can’t imagine that our paths would ever have crossed had we not moved here.  It was one of these wonderful friends who celebrated his birthday on Friday and with whom we partied on Saturday.

Now to celebrate his birthday in style we, the guests, were asked to dress as someone we admire.  Now when the invitation arrived that seemed like an easy thing to do, but then when I sat down and thought about it, it wasn’t that easy.  Sure I could come up with someone I admire, but they wouldn’t be people anyone would actually recognise or that I could feel glamourous being dressed up as.  Then I found out that a bff of the birthday boy ws planning to fly in for the party.  Now this bff is also a good friend of mine, a former neighbour and someone that I truly admire.  I don’t want to tell here story here, it isn’t mine to tell, but I can fill you in on little bits.

You see this former neighbour is originally from Chicago, fell in love with an Aussie and moved here.  Illness and injury in her family caused her to move home.  In her time here she was involved in performing and pageants and I helped to create costumes and gowns for her to wear performing.  The gown that I am wearing in the photo is one that I re-made for her.  She didn’t like the original make of the dress, she felt like a foofy bride so I pulled it apart and re-made the skirt entirely and modified the bodice.  She took the gown over to Thailand to have beaded before I finished it.  If I do say so myself, the finished dress is quite amazing.  So amazing in fact that she won 2 major pageants wearing the dress.  I decided that I should go to the party as her, as I admire the the person that she is and the journey that she has followed in order to find herself.

This is what the dress should look like on!

PS – I am not as tall as the owner of the dress so even with 3 inch heels it was a little too long.  I really wish that I could have worn Docs – my feet were killing me and I ended up in bare feet for part of the evening.  Luckily the dress hid the classiness of my bare feet.  I am also not as voluptuous either so I didn’t have much to hold up the bodice!

Throughout this journey I have discovered that I really enjoy dressing up, now I need to find an excuse to really dress up again.

Weekly Winners #3

Well this has certainly been one of the craziest weeks I have ever lived through.  Not since the days of living in the sleep deprived world of a new parent have I had so little sleep, but for so many different reasons.  First there is the general insanity of school holidays to keep a person awake, then there was the puke bug that set up temporary residence here.

Next there was this wonderful distraction.

Barely 14 Hours Old

Closely followed by remembering and celebrating this wonderful day.

Going to the 'Chapel of Love'

And then partying in style!

The Fanciest Dress

It has been an amazing, eventful and exhausting week full of events that deserve a post all of their own.  For now the few photos will have to do, sleep is calling.