Monday, September 06, 2010

Father's Day Update

What a gorgeous day Father's Day was this year! Apart from the massive wind storm that whipped through Sydney of course. But that aside, it as just glorious to be alive and out and about. At home James was presented with his presents - a trivia book and a signed book of Bret Easton Ellis' latest tome. Each Saturday we all sit around our late breakfast and do the quiz in the SMH, including a few 'children's questions' for Harriet so she can join in. Lately we've found that there's the odd question that she can answer on her own anyway, which has been very exciting for all involved.




Then it was off at a local cafe for breakfast, where we ate up a storm. Ted was exhausted from a few unsettled nights in a row though, so we headed home reasonably early to put the very tired Teddington to sleep. While he was down Harriet and James worked on making some rockets (I think?) out of lighting teabags. All I know is that I came out of the bedroom to find half a teabag floating towards the ceiling and the other half in flames on the kitchen bench. You know, just another day around here. Inspired by these sorts of fuel shenanigans, Harriet decided to make her own hot air balloon. To this end she tied a balloon to a basket. Voila! Let's face it, the hot air component of the hot air balloon method is vastly over-rated. She even made me take a video of her working on her experiment and discussing the hypothesis she was testing. It involved something about a gust of wind but I'm not too sure on the details (as, I suspect, was she). I uploaded it to Youtube but for some reason it's all pixelated, so will check out what's going on there.

But after the hot air balloon experiments, it was time for some serious running. Harry and James and I spent a good amount of time playing {insert jungle animal of choice here} Runabout. Harriet would designate one of us to be the explorer in the jungle or the animal. We would then all run after each other in a circle trying to either eat the explorer or avoid being eaten by the animal. It was actually heaps of fun! And given the size of our backyard the circular running did give us a lot of pivot practise.

And there I was, thinking that would be the highlight of my day for when we went through the end of day questions ("What was your favourite part of today?" "What bit didn't you like so much?"). Little did I know the rest of the day was going to pan out to be just as awesome as that running around game.

We headed out to the markets to buy our fruit and veg for the week, and Harriet brought along her hot air balloon to show Scott. Unfortunately Scott gave us only ten minutes notice that he was showing up to the markets while we were still at home. Two children don't move quite as quickly as one Staffordshire terrier. For one thing, just as we were about to leave, Harriet expressed an unfailing desire to bathe in her cooking mixture she'd been working on. Yes, you read correctly. It was made from grass, icing sugar and a gluten-free multi-grain baking mix. And who were we to disagree? So into the bath went Harriet and in demanded Teddy...until he actually got in there and starting bemoaning all the grass sticking to him (and who knows how he would have felt if he'd been made aware of the sugar too). And mind you, this is all happening in the ten minutes we've set aside to get ready to leave the house.

Half an hour later we make it out of the house, miss Scott, and browse the markets. Harriet manages to fulfill her record of spilling her Chai *every single week* (although this one was rather spectacular as it went flying right over the floor in front of the register just after paying for it). And then as a special treat Harriet was on the receiving end of a gluten free brownie. I think it's fair to say that she quite enjoyed it.










Ted absolutely LOVES the jumping castle at the markets. Every week we buy our fresh food from the organic seller located rather unfortunately just behind the castle. And every week he goes crazy jigging around in the wrap wanting to get out and on to the castle. And every week we place him on the castle and have to extend our arms like Inspector Gadget across the inflatable entrance to let him stand on the main castle area. It's rather... errmmm.... tiresome.

But then get this. When we went home James decided to make the Indian dinner he had aborted the night before. And when he was nearly finished, we received a phone call inviting us over to a group dinner at Vince and Tracey's house with Jay and Scott and all children involved. Awesome!

And so we ended our day surrounded by friends, eating fantastic food, listening to Ted turn up the volume on the stereo, and watching the children all play together (despite ages ranging from 13 to 1, all of them played together and so beautifully). What a gift this day was.

2 comments:

Jimbo said...

ps: there are two different people called Scott in that story. Just in case you're confused in any way ;)

Lou said...

Holy smoke, in that 3rd photo of Harry she looks about 10! You guys know how to pack in a full day don't you?!