Birthday party

We went to Andre's birthday party on Saturday. It was a very hot day and perfect to spend in the swimming pool. We got there at around 4pm and spent nearly 2 hours in the water! Lara didn't want to get out even though the water was still a little on the cool side, at least I felt cold. Jenny prepared lots of bbq food and I eventually got Lara out of the pool by luring her with some honey soy chicken wings. We were very full by the time we finished the chocolate birthday cake and headed home.

Lara and Jenny's boys posed and made faces while I took several photos. Here's one.

Surprises in the garden

This weekend was very very warm so we stayed indoor mostly. We managed to spend about an hour in the garden late afternoon before the sun set. FIL continued putting up the trampoline while MIL and I watered the garden. Simon went back to the fences around the vege patch, and did some general weeding.
While walking around in the garden, MIL found a few plants we didn't know we had- passionfruit, blueberry, apple, almond and raspberry. The garden is also full of strawberries. Unfortunately, Zebadee eats them before they have a chance to grow big. Nowadays, Zeb spent a lot of time having her nose on the strawberry patches looking for strawberries!

Apple.


Blueberry.

Dinner and swim

We visited Sarah and Mitch at their new house last weekend. They moved in just before we did, and they've done quite a lot renovations already. We helped christened their swiming pool. The water was a little on the cool side, both Milo and Lara were trembling and saying 'cooooooold" but they had lots of fun and didn't want to get out. Simon watched us with Jude on the side and Sarah only had time to take some pictures before rushing back to the kitchen.

We had a beautiful melt-in-your mouth roast pork (belly) and a lovely Skye Gyngell salad for dinner. Simon, not a salad person, found the salad very delicious. Desert was a heavenly lemon cheese cake with thin & crispy pastry, and surprisingly light. Lara finished her dinner without help and started licking her plate! She also finished the biggest piece of cheese cake. Here are some pictures of Lara and Milo.

Christmas tree is in!

Our Christmas tree is now sitting in the corner of the lounge and it's only the 15th of November!

This is our first real tree, not counting the small fibre optic one MIL gave us a couple of years ago. It was very exciting putting it up - took several attempts of re-arranging furniture to get there. The flickering lights are mesmerising to watch! The decorations are mainly blue because blue is Lara's favourite colour. Not all the decorations are in yet, hooks need to be purchased for more silver, white and blue balls.

This year is the first year we will be hosting Christmas lunch for the family, and we have 15 people coming! I don't think we even have enough forks, spoons or glasses for everyone. I have started making lists of things we need to buy and things we should borrow. I can't image feeding people food on paper plates, but deserts are fine to be served on paper plates I think. I hope there will be enough food so nobody gets too hungry on the day!

First thing first, we just had our new oven delivered and installed, that's a good start.

Different attitudes

In our last house, the neighbour on the left side complained to me over the fence about Zeb barking. She said Zeb barked everytime they hung their clothes outside(their clothes line was right near the side fence) or used their toilet near the side fence. Her son couldn't study becaue of Zeb so the son (not her) would complain to the council if Zeb kept barking. She suggested I buy an expensive collar to stop Zeb from barking. Zeb is friendly and not a barky dog by nature but I can't say Zeb never bark(dogs by nature would bark at strangers near the house!) so I said we would keep an eye on things. We found the dog on our right side barked a lot more than Zeb and didn't find the barking excessive at all. Luckily we didn't stay in that house for very long. I bumped into this ex-neighbour a couple of weeks ago and now she complained to me about her 'new' neighbour's birds!

In our new house, the backdoor neighbour told us over the back fence that Zeb sometimes barks when she's near the fence. She asked if she could give Zeb a bone. She thought Zeb barked becaue Zeb didn't know her and she wanted to give Zeb a bone to make friends with her.

How different are the two attitudes under very similar situations? I know which neighbour I want to make friends with and which attitude I would like to possess myself. Granted that the previous neighbour probably doesn't like dogs and this new neighbour does, but this make me think about our attitudes towards things in general. How do we handle situations we want to change? Do we complain and threaten or do we think of ways we can help improving things?

Surprise sashimi

I picked up some seafood after work from the local vegetable man last week. He went to the fish market earlier that day and brought salmon fillets, flathead fillets and some tiger prawns for me. I was told that the salmon was of sashimi quality so I decided to try part of it raw. I added sushi vinegar mix to cooked rice to have with our raw fish. The salmon was beautiful - buttery and melt in our mouths. The raw king fish was of a lesser quality. My (lack of) knife skill and the blunt knife didn't help either. It was a real surprise for Simon to come home to a sashimi meal! A light but satisfying meal with minimum cooking, just how I liked it as a week-day meal.