What are you going to buy?

Me: what are you going to do with you money?
B: I'm going shopping to buy some food for my baby.

It's so weird having a girl. Different style of play. In addition to the trains n cars.

This week's challenge - simple dragon cake

 

Last week Uncle Ken came to visit and for some reason the topic of Jake's birthday cake and how he desperately wanted a dragon came up. Uncle Ken drew an outline for the dragon and Jake diligently coloured it in during the week. Based on past late nights making cake the day before a party, I baked the cake last weekend and froze it.

 

I tried to get Jake to want a much easier looking cake but to no avail, he had to have Uncle Ken's design.

 

Pulled the cakes out Friday and freehanded a pattern, cut out all the spikes which completely disappeared when icing it. I'd forgotten how to make that nice butter icing since last I made cake and the ordinary stuff DOES NOT WORK WELL on cut edges. It was all a bit of a disaster. Especially as I'd run out of butter. Connah did a late run to the shops to get butter. After he got back I realised that I needed more icing. It was a sorry cake this morning but I went out and bought smarties and spearmint lollies and hey presto, victory snatched from the jaws of disaster (and more icing applied to the green dodgy icing to stick the smarties on). And of course the kids were only actually interested in eating the lollies off the top of it so I could have just given them a bucket of lollies.

 

Actually Jake was well pleased with the end result so that makes it all worthwhile. Come to think of it, so am I (well pleased with my efforts).

No 11 new walk

We got a babysitter on Saturday night and I tried to book some posh restaurant with a 10 course menu to celebrate our 10 year anniversary but fortunately they were booked out. Instead I pulled out Connah's bushwalks around Sydney walk and found that you can walk from Maroubra to La Parouse. The first bit of the walk sounded a bit dodgy as it went past a riffle range and the bloke writing the book noted that he'd seen bullet lying around so I thought the other end might be safer.

 

Parked out at La Parouse and found ourselves a new beach but I can't count that as I've already got one. We then went for a wander and found that the track has recently had a whole section of boardwalk laid right around some headlands and coves. It was amazing. One of those Am I Really Still In Sydney type of walks. After seeing some new sights, we headed for a Thai restaurant. Turns out there are about 8 restaurants down the end there down the hill, who knew. It was fantastic as the sun set over Botany Bay. Usually we only see the sun set over water if we are on holidays overseas or in WA so it felt like we were a thousand miles away. What a great and relaxing evening out. I'm so glad that posh restaurant was booked.

This is our backyard

Home of many happy memories, one very big Mulburry tree and some recently mowed grass.

No 10 with Tobes

 

We've been doing the divide and conquer a bit lately. Jake got an invite to go to a friend's house for the afternoon and so I took Toby to the movies while Bianca was meant to go to sleep. It was a HOT HOT day and likely to be rather busy lunchtime on Sat at the cinema that had Tobe's preferred movie on at Broadway and also lots of traffic and we all know I prefer to pretend I live in a small country town not Sydney so don't deal well with traffic (but do deal well with knowing the local librarian, bakery owner, meet people walking down the street, get to sit in an uncrowded train carriage and get to park right outside my movie theatre).

 

Just before I left I remembered that I'd never been to Beverley Hills cinema and looked up the session times and bingo, the film was on, starting in about 15 mins but it's only a short drive. Sure enough managed to park just outside the entrance, buy our ticket (and the world's biggest bucket of popcorn and softdrink for $7.50) and get in before the shorts for other movies even began rolling.

 

As we walk in Tobes says " hi Tai" (a friend from daycare) and so Tobes got to sit next to Tai for his first ever movie and my first time at Beverley hills cinema. Based on their popcorn prices and ease of parking, we'll be back too! And Wreck it Ralph was a surprisingly enjoyable film for an adult (and I had Tai's Mum to talk to too). Small world.

School is paying off

Jake has also taken to getting up with Bianca some mornings for the 5.15 shift. "I've got it mummy/ daddy, you go back to sleep" thankyou I will. Lovely little boy. Now he can read night time stories and cook pancakes, looks like our work is almost done here.

Poppy time

Poppy cane to do a course in Sydney and stay the night.