Eating out alone

We had a few chances this past month to go out for lunch by ourselves (without the kids). Simon was off work and looking for job (he just found one so will start work soon), and I work 3 days a week. Sam is in daycare four days a week this year so I can have a day 'off'. On my first 'day off', both Lara and Sam were sick, so we had to cancel our plan to watch a movie. We also realised it was too ambitious to watch a movie and go out to eat on the same day, because Lara needs to be picked up from school at 2:30pm. Yes 2:30. The off day is extremetly short anyway.

We managed to eat out a couple of times after that and it was great. We had a nice relaxing lunch at the local Thai place last week. This week we went to the Cooks Garden and had steak'n' chips (simon) and zucchini flower stuffed with prawns (me). You don't need to keep 'stop eating' to feed someone small or not keep to the conversations because the kids keep interrupting.

It is very nice to eat out in peace and quiet sometimes.

The picture shown above was taken at a vietnamese place in late Jan. I think Lara was with us at that meal (but no Sam). We love Sam to bits but a 18-month-old is a lot of work at meal times!

Visit the zoo

We finally managed to visit the zoo at the beginning of Feb thanks to free zoo passes from work. We hadn't been to the zoo for over 10 years. The cloest we got to the zoo was when I pre-bought tickets last year, but Lara and I had food-poisoning the day before we planned to go. The tickets expired before we had time to use them!



The day started out raining but it turned sunny and quite warm by mid-morning. The giraffs were much taller than we thought. The chimps and gorillas didn't seem too happy to see us, but put on a bit of a show for us. The tiger/lion roared near the window, you could feel the thick glass trembled. One of the elephants did a huge wee right in front of us, Lara and I were glad we were not near his feet. The seals were cute as usual, but Sam couldn't sit still for the seal show. Lara enjoyed feeding goats, chickens and pigs at the kindy farm too. I was not too impressed with the lunch set-up, maybe we should pack our lunch next time.



Sam didn't have his midday sleep therefore was a little cranky at times. Walking up and down pushing a pram and running after a 18-month-old was tiring too. I can't say that it was a nice and relaxing trip but we all enjoyed it very much thanks to the good companions we had. We did a lot of walking around that we wer all exhausted at the end of the day. This trip inspired us to go and vist the Dubbo Western Plains zoo in the near future. Maybe when Sam is a little older?

Suzuki summer school and first violin lesson in 2012

We neglected our violins somewhat and didn't practice every day in January. The teacher was away so there were no lessons. Furthermore, I bought our violins after the rental period was up so for a couple of weeks there were no tapes to guide the left fingers. The frustration of not getting the note right also cast a shadow over practice and made it less frequent. Fortunately Lara and I slowly learned to listen to the tunes and adjusted our fingers accordingly.



During the holiday, we manged to get to the Suzuki summer school for a couple of days. We attended 2 parent talks, a play-in session and the closing concert. It was nice to walk around in the beautiful Abbotsleigh ground, seeing kids with violins on their shoulders and immersing ourselves in music coming from many of the classrooms while lessons took place.

I'm glad Lara's teacher is back now. Lara just had her first violin lesson after 6 weeks of break. There were a lot of communications, changing of schedules before we finally arrived at the 8.30am Saturday lesson time. In the lesson, Lara learned to play 'small bow', a couple of bow work-outs (moving bow up & down and side to side in rapid consessions to build strength in arm and wrist) and the Allegro body movement song. This week, the main practice will be to get 'Mr 3' down as soon as possible after the open E in twinkles. I learned something new too - always start playing with a 'down bow'.

Looking forward to learning new songs this year!