Carols by Candlelight.

The weekend started well on Friday evening when Brian's cousin, her partner and their son came over to babysit and let us have a night off. It was the best Christmas present they could have given us. We headed for Fremantle to the Little Creatures brewery for some food and delicious beer. How good it felt to be out walking through town on a Friday evening, specially as the World Sailing Championships have been on down in Freo for the last couple of weeks so there was a bit of a buzz. We decided that we haven't done enough as a couple recently (read "nothing at all") and determined to get a babysitter and go out at least once a month for our new years resolution.

For the rest of this weekend we've been keeping busy getting organised for our big camping trip. I say getting organised when I really mean doing random bits such as fitting the roof-rack to the car and figuring out how best to fix all the bikes to the bike rack. I don't feel very much more organised at all but I'm sure it will all come together on Thursday night in a panic as usual.

Then last night we went back to Freo for the second time this week for a wonderful carol concert. Probably the strangest carol concert I've ever seen, coming from the northern hemisphere where we expect to be indoors trying to keep warm. Friends from the school were coming too and had warned us to get there early so we could all find a spot. We queued with our picnic rugs, esky's(cool boxes), and bottles of wine, and then streamed into the gardens of Fremantle Arts Centre, picking up the programme/ word sheet as we went. After an hour or so wholly devoted to eating, drinking and chatting to friends in the warm evening, the sun started to go down and the carols began.

Pic of the stage (taken with my phone so no such features as zoom).

 With traditional carols such as "Silent Night" and "Deck the Halls" mixed with childrens favourites like Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer we all had a good sing along, even if we couldn't see the words as it got darker! I was also introduced to an Aussie favourite called "Six White Boomers" which was great fun and was astonished when Alfie sang his heart out in the chorus as he'd learnt it at school!

Children by (battery operated) candlelight!

The evening ended around 8pm and we were just packing up our belongings when "Boom" a firework went off. Clearly the sailing championships were also at an end, and we got full advantage of their tremendous fireworks display for the best part of another half hour.
What a beautiful end to a wonderful evening. And I think I'm starting to feel rather more Christmassy at last.

Christmas time is coming.

I can't believe another year is nearly done, and that this time last year we had barely made the decision to come to Australia. Then we travelled in thick snow to do our shopping and see our families, whereas this year it's been 30 degrees C and we're planning a camping trip for Christmas. The time has flown by (and what a busy year it's been) and we are settling in really quite well, making friends and starting to feel a bit more established. But I have to admit it feels strange to be so far away, and in such sunny climes at Christmas.

The past week or two has been filled with Christmas parties, nativity plays and Santa Claus. First was a couple of weeks ago when Alfie had to dress as an ancient Egyptian for a party at school celebrating the topic they have been looking at this term- ancient times. With a pillowcase, tasseled curtain tieback, a decorated paper plate and lots of kohl eyeliner, I think he made a reasonably convincing figure. He flatly refused a black wig, but did give in on the eye make-up after a bit of work!

Did ancient Egyptians do cheesy grins?

Then last week Brian had to go off to Singapore again, but was due back Wednesday afternoon just in time for Alfie's nativity play and carol service. On the Tuesday we had major storms all day, which threatened to go on on Wednesday too. To my amazement (as one for whom Christmas and bad weather are inseperable and normal) this resulted in the carols being cancelled because it was to have been an outdoor affair. They moved the nativity indoors and ploughed on with it as they felt it would be too disappointing for the children to cancel. In the end there was only one person who was really disappointed- poor Brian whose flight was so delayed after the previous day's disruptions that he was still on the runway in Singapore while his little boys class sang their hearts out on stage. He eventually came in the door around 11.15pm.

Waiting to go on stage..

Next day was Ruairi's turn. He was a shepherd in his 3yr old kindy nativity, and at least B was able to be at this one. We walked in the door and asked each other where he was. I was just starting to think he must have refused to wear the costume and been asked to sit out, when I spied him in full garb. The headdress obscuring his blonde head was amazingly disguising and I really had failed to recognise my own child on first glance! It was lovely to see them all do their bit and sing songs with shy delight- I had wondered if Ru would cope with the pressure!

Proud mummy with her little shepherd boy.

Friday came and first of all Ru had to go to see the optician. Of course Alfie has worn glasses since the age of 2, but Ru never seemed to squint so nobody really worried. Then amongst the other goings on last week, he had his 4 year old jabs and health check (before he starts kindy in the new year), and he seemed to struggle with some of the picture tests. So off we went, only to come out an hour later with a referral to the paediatric opthalmologist and the news that his sight appears to be even worse than his brothers!! Poor old Ru, I always knew he was a bit clumsy (like mother, like son etc.) but he must have been struggling quite a bit. He won't get seen now and get the glasses till the new year,but at least we're onto it and I can give him a hand where needed.
Then Friday afternoon was Alfie's Christmas party. No dressing up this time, just lots of food and a visit from Father Christmas! All the children were given a gift. Alfie got an archaeology set from ancient Egypt (lucky Santa had been watching what they were doing!), and Ru a lovely Christmas book.

Such digging and brushing was done on Saturday morning. Eventually two figurines were revealed- a cat and a bird-god type thing. Alfie was thrilled to bits and went to bed with them under his pillow!
Ru's Christmas gathering was a playdate this morning. Also incorporating a Santa visit [from a different one of Santa's helpers you understand ;o) ] Ru got another book, a really special one about a big green tractor.

 We've already read it several times over and he's pointed out from the back cover that there are 3 more in the same series so I may have to hunt for those too!
Tomorrow is Alfie's last day of pre-primary- basically reception class if he was back home. In 7 weeks time he'll be starting out in uniform as a year 1 and I'll have a tear in my eye I'm sure. Ru will be going into kindy class for 2 and a half days each week, which will suit him very nicely I suspect and I may just find myself feeling more at a loose end than I'm used to. Mind you, by the end of a 7 week school holiday, I may just be delighted with the break!

"Failsafe" eating

For the past few weeks I have been looking at the food we eat, and making changes. We always ate what I would have thought of as a reasonably healthy diet, but after chatting to one of the other Mums at Alfie's school, I did a bit more research and started to wonder.
The first big shock was to find out that many of the additives which have been banned for years at home are perfectly legal and very commonly used here. So in looking through my larder imagine my horror when I discovered the "straight to wok" singapore noodles I had in stock were coloured with not only Sunset Yellow, but a dash of Tartrazine for good measure. Both illegal in the UK. That was enough for me, we had a mass clearout and I am now very careful as I do the weekly shopping, reading labels as I go while I get used to what's safe and what isn't.
Next was the serious web searching with reference to behaviour in kids etc. Alfie, although reasonably bright, has the concentration span of a gnat which can impact his school work and regularly gets him in trouble. The teacher says words to the effect of "I know he's able to do the work, he's just too busy chatting, or watching the fly that's buzzing around, anything, it's such a shame" Add to that the silly and often extremely defiant behaviour at home from both of them and I find I'm at the end of my tether quite often. I know they're only little, but they seem to be a lot more difficult to handle than some of the other kids I meet.
I found a website by a lady called Sue Denham, and a book by her too called "Fed Up". She talks about not only nasty additives, but also the fact that children can be affected by natural chemicals in foods (such as salicylates and amines) leading to big problems for some, and having no effect whatever on others. The website can tell it all far better than I can,
http://fedup.com.au/
but suffice it to say we've been having a bit of a go at following the ideas behind it.
 It seems very odd, because we've actually had to reduce the amount of fruit the boys would normally eat, but keep up with certain veggies ( the old fashioned ones like cabbage and swede) and other normal things. It would be hard to be very rigid with it I think, but I guess if you had a child with serious issues it would be worth a try.
Anyway, Alfie's teacher has called me over at pick-up a few times recently to say he's been much better at getting on with his work/ eating his lunch etc. Then last Monday after a particularly slack weekend when Brian was away and we went, amongst other places, to McDonalds, she called me over to say she didn't know what had gone wrong, but he'd had a dreadful day. He'd even been in the naughty corner. Only then did I tell her about the food thing, she'd had no idea, and we had to conclude there may be something in it.
So I'm baking my own fairy cakes and oaty biscuits called Anzacs that are popular here. It's actually great as it reminds me of my own childhood days, and I'd got rather lazy about such things. The boys of course love it too. Licking out the bowl, nibbling warm cakes or biscuits, and getting to add ingredients or give a stir. I'd forgotten how lovely that all is.
So here's to food of all kinds, but particularly stuff without the additives (or too much salicylate). And here also is to my being able to keep up the momentum of a somewhat restricted diet for long enough to really, really test out if it works.
Wish me luck!

Dear Blog......

... Allow me to apologise. I have been incredibly innattentive recently. And not even because I've had nothing to write. Just a lack of impetus to sit down and get it on paper, so to speak. So, where were we??

Well, since last writing we've been "down South" to Busselton for a long weekend. There were 4 families from school who went down but stayed in different places and got together for a bite to eat or a swim each day. The boys had a ball because even when we were at our own cabin the site had lots of other boys staying too, and they joined the "gang" for a cycle or scooter round the park.

While there we visited :

    A lighthouse....

   A very cool maze....

 A Brewery...

  A reptile park where B got to hold a snake (not sure he realised that was part of the bargain when he suggested the reptile park but there you go!) ..

Brian and Mildred the python.

and most exciting of all, went whale watching.

Mother and calf side by side.

This was a real highlight as the whales are heading back to their feeding grounds in the antarctic after breeding in the warmer waters to the North. Lots of mothers with their calves and they really are an awesome sight. Best of all from the boys point of view was the very jolly captain giving them a chance to "drive" the boat (that was better that the whales for them I suspect!)

Alfie.

Ru.

In the two weeks since then Brian has spent a week in Singapore, we've been to a birthday party, had a day at the maritime museum and very excitingly attended Alfie's sports day at school. Brian even managed to slip out of work for a couple of hours so he could take part in the piggy back race ( he was at his desk at 6am so he could be there, don't know how he had the energy to run when it came to it!)

In full swing..

Piggy back time.

Certificates being awarded.

After such a busy couple of weeks we spent yesterday in the garden, pruning, mowing and generally tidying the place up. While we worked the boys did "experiments" with lemons from the tree (using half my kitchen equipment to squeeze and grate them, plus salt, sugar and sand for the mix).  It was a beautiful day and very satisfying to get the place looking tidier as it was very overgrown when we moved in, and we hadn't done much since. One of the things we have to think of here is the possibility that if the place is too overgrown it might be possible for snakes to be hiding in the long grass, and it's almost certain that spiders would be too. So for everyones peace of mind, and for the love of it, it was a good job done.

And now here we are on a Sunday afternoon and I'm just back from the airport with two very tired, somewhat miserable boys. Daddy has had to go off once again. This time to Norway for the week, and understandably he'll take the opportunity to nip home to Kerry while he's in Europe. That means we won't see him for a whole ten days. We have lots of plans to try to keep busy while he's gone, but it's never quite the same when he's away.
Ru said it best when saying goodbye at the airport . "But I'll miss you" he wailed. And so will I.

They do make me chuckle...

We managed to jinx the weather once again this weekend with talk of a quick one night camping trip. We woke this morning to find the glorious sunshine of the week replaced by dark clouds and thundery rumbles. So after packing the stuff into the car and back out again twice over, we finally made the decision that we'd be mad to go, and went off out for a day trip instead.
We went to an old town to the East of Perth called York. It's a one street town, but quite a pretty one. They have a motor museum which kept us occupied for the best part of an hour and had some amazing old cars and memorabilia, the boys loved it but would ideally have like to be able to get inside all the cars for a play.

We had lunch at a local hotel and were served by a girl from Tipperary who had cousins Brian knew in Kerry- scarily small world- then went for a walk by the river and found a pedestrian suspension bridge over the river Avon which is rickety and huge fun for the kids.

The boys in their turn gave me a laugh too. On the drive out they had some (nominally) chicken flavoured corn puffs to nibble- a bit like wotsits but not cheesy. These are new and Ru was the more adventurous to try them. When asked what they were like he answered "Yumm, they're pieces of chicken flavour yellow chocolatey stuff" Interesting concept I thought, if not necessarily an appealing one.

We had the Levellers playing on the stereo and Alfie asked about the words to one of the songs -"Beautiful Day". I told him part of the chorus "nothing is impossible in my own powerful mind" and proceeded to talk to him about how that was a great way to think of life - if you believe in something nothing's impossible and you can do anything you want. Perhaps my choice of words was poor and I should have used "achieve" instead of "do" in that last sentence though, because a nodding, serious looking Alfie came straight back at me with "You can do anything except break the speed limit Mummy, only the policemen can do that." 

I'll keep my philosophical thoughts to myself in future!!

Natures harvest.

We've spent a bit of time since moving into our new house doing some gardening. It's soo lovely to have a proper garden again but much of the "border" area is overgrown with bracken so as a quick fix I've planted up some tubs with herbs, tomatoes and pea plants to get us underway. A small area near the house that was fairly easily weeded out has been the recipient of some courgette plants, known here as zucchini, and some strawberries are going in there too when I get organised.

Lettuce and tomatoes.

Sugar snap peas.

The boys always love to get involved in digging and planting, especially when there's the promise of some food at the other end of it.

Whoever originally planted out this garden must have been a person after my own heart as there are fruit trees galore here, which I find very exciting. As well as the very normal (for these climes) lemon and orange trees, of which we have several, there are also a couple of more unusual ones. At the far end of the garden is a large Mulberry tree which is currently laden with fruit and which I'm ashamed to say I only discovered last week as it's a bit overgrown down there.

Lemon tree by the pool (which you couldn't miss!)

Mulberry tree (which I nearly missed).

 There are also two large bushes of a fruit that we couldn't even start to identify. It looked as if it should be edible, but in the absence of an ID, we didn't dare try. So today went to the garden centre laden with a branch of fruit and leaves and immediately met a man who proclaimed "Oh lovely loquats, lucky you."  "What?" said we. "Could you write that down please?" - so he did. And now we have yet another great source of fruit from the garden.

Apparently it's also known as a Japanese plum -I'm going to need to google search some recipes though if we're to use all this bounty well.

Oranges from the trees

Big bowl of mulberries.

But for now we're managing to enjoy it in a very simple way. Fresh fruit pancakes with vanilla yoghurt for breakfast is surely one of the best starts I can think of to a day.

Yum.

Camping(!) and a birthday boy.

In the past couple of weeks we've bought camping gear, put up the tent, and then failed spectacularly to actually go camping!! Last weekend was the planned trip, so the weekend before we bought a stove, camp kitchen, inflatable bed, chairs, sleeping bags. We had already borrowed a tent from Brian's cousin, but hadn't put it up and had no idea how easy or difficult that may be, so it was decided a trial run was in order just to be sure. In fact, despite the fact that it is by far the biggest tent I've ever used, it also turned out to be the easiest. These canny Aussies are into their camping you see, so they use a bit of common sense and make it foolproof.  The poles are colour coded in each length, and then the tent itself has colour coded tabs. You'd need to be an extra from "Dumb and Dumber" to mess it up.

Anywayyy, having done all our research the weather seemed to turn a little. The rain came in and the nights got cool, and we all managed to come down with a dreadful cold/ cough/ chest infection thing. In the end it was decided that we'd leave the trip for another time ( read "wimped out").  The friends who we were going with went anyway and had a ball- weather lovely.  Typical!

Having ducked out of the camping, we managed to go completely mad and went and bought a car instead. We wanted a 7 seater to make life easier when parents or friends come visiting, plus extra boot space (for all the camping equipment!) when there were only the four of us. So after a small amount of research and 3 test drives, we chose a 2008 Holden Captiva Diesel. Sad to say I wanted it basically because I liked it best to look at and it's nice and high off the ground. Brian's reasons were to do with fuel economy and boot space and those are of course the reasons money was actually parted with! So far anyway the boot space has had little advantage as the boys are insisting on using those seats every day for novelty value!

Wednesday brought Ru's fourth birthday. It goes without saying I can hardly believe it. He got a new bike which he absolutely loves, but has already had to watch Alfie use more than himself as it's a little on the large side. His next favourite pressie was a Lightning Mc Queen laptop from his Grandma and also an Ikea pop up tunnel which has provided hours of fun for a child who is as often as not pretending to be a cat or a mouse anyway.

We went to Jandakot airport for a treat and met  a couple of friends there. This is not the international airport. It's the "local" airport with helicopters, training flights, royal flying doctor service etc using it- and it's really busy. What a great spot for a boys day trip though. There's a cafe with picnic area directly overlooking the two runways, the refuelling area and the helipad, so we sat and drank coffee and cut his cake with entertainment on tap.

And today is Saturday. The Rugby World Cup has overtaken our afternoon. I sit typing and watching the Ireland-Wales match. Currently it's 10-10 but the Irish are struggling and it's a bit disheartening. Having said that, we're in the garden, the sun is shining and I have a beer beside me.

Not such a bad way of life really.