7 posts tagged “kids”

Actually the title a bit of a misnomer as I am posting this on Friday and it is not technically a self-portrait but a portrait of me by my son (who is in Kindergarten).  He is in the picture too:

 

I particularly liked the lopsided boobs he drew on me!

We had a great day yesterday.  The kids were so excited to give me their gifts in the morning.  As well as their purchases from the Mother's Day stall at school, they had also spent time making me "treasure maps" which were pretty funny. 

I had read in a free parents magazine about a place called Belgenny Farm that was having a free open day for Mother's Day.  Our kids love farms so decided to hit the freeway and take them out to this one.  The farm which is now State Government owned and run is located in a historically significant area called Camden which used to be a small town south of Sydney but is now part of the wider suburban sprawl. 

There were lots of people there but it wasn't uncomfortably crowded.  We missed the working dogs demonstration but did get to see some sheep shearing and watch a blacksmith and wool spinners at work.  We also said "hello" to some horses:

 

and my son had a ride on a very calm donkey.

 

A highlight for the kids was handling the animals in the young animal nursery.  Felt sorry for some of the animals though, ie, one kid threw a tantrum about having to leave and tried to stomp on a couple of the chickens on his way out.  Fortunately my kids pretty gentle with animals.

 

 

 

On the way home, we thought we would stop off and have a look at the Mt Annan Botanical Gardens not realising there was a huge Mother's Day event there.  There was a covers band playing (the kids were thrilled to hear the band playing "What I like about you" when we first arrived), free massages for mums, an animal show and circus training.  My daughter got to be one of the "volunteers from the audience" for the animal show which meant acting like a tree for a ring tailed possum (didn't get a photo of this) and also had a go at stilt walking:

 

 

We also had a walk around the gardens and had a play in the very cool playground there which included a proper flying fox (similar to one in a much less scenic park near where we live - all the kids love it).  Would like to go there some other time for a picnic when it is not so crowded. 

After we got home, my daughter and I had cooking lesson number two in which she learnt how to make her favourite pumpkin soup.  She swore that the end product tasted even better than when I normally make it! 

All in all, a fantastic Mother's Day. 

This is from the card my 5yo son made me for Mother's Day.  He was too proud of this effort to be able to wait until Sunday to give it to me! 

I am feeling proud of him too.  On Friday he got an award from his kindergarten teacher for his great participation in class discussions.  My shy boy has come a long way! 

Frying onion, garlic and Asian greens.

 

 

We later used paper towel to squeeze out the excess liquid so it wouldn't make the quiche all watery.

 

 

 

Chief egg beater:

 

Preparing the pastry before 'baking blind'. I don't have any pastry weights so made do with dry black eyed beans from the pantry.  I also just use pre-made sheets of short crust pastry rather than making pastry from scratch:

 

Adding the ingredients (these included the eggs, milk, fried onions, garlic and greens as well as salami, fresh flat leaf parsley, cheese, pepper, sliced and blotted tomato - I usually just put in whatever I have around at the time so more like pot luck than quiche):

 

Bake in the oven and pull out the finished product:

 

My daughter was so proud!

 

From one dozen eggs, we made two large quiches like this one as well as a few small ones without pastry which we cooked in the non-stick muffin tray.  I am taking one large one and the small ones into work for morning tea on Wednesday.  The small, pastry-less ones will be for a colleague who is gluten intolerant.  I hope to take a photo for my daughter of my colleagues enjoying her cooking.

 

The kids and I have just returned from a few days visiting my mum/their granny in my old home town, Melbourne.  We took them on an outing to a Build a Bear shop on Thursday (a bit of a rip-off but Mum was paying ;) ) and on Friday to visit their Great Nana (aka 'Little Nana') in her nursing home.  On Saturday we decided to be tourists in our own town and took the kids on a tram ride into the city. 

 

 

I think my son quite enjoyed being on the tram but my daughter moaned most of the way about how slow it was and kept 'accidentally on purpose' elbowing, squashing and generally annoying her brother (note evil glint in eyes in above photo). 

We got off at Flinders Street Station at the end of the very long tram ride and spent 20 minutes or so watching a buskerin Federation Square.  The kids thought he was hilarious and my son tried to give him some M&M's at the end of the performance (as his sister was the one entrusted with the money to go into the busker's hat).

 

(You can see a tram like the one we caught in the background of this photo). 

There was a whole lot of Chinese stuff going on elsewhere in Federation Square (from the flags and other paraphenalia, I gathered it was mostly pro-Beijing Olympics related).  Kids tend to spend a lot of time in Chinatown in Sydney (daughter even marched in the Chinese New Year parade this year with her Kung Fu group) so not as impressed with the dragons as I thought they would be:

 

My son and I then went and visited the NGV's Ian Potter Centre (free bits only) while Mum and my daughter went and got themselves a "cup of chino".  There was some kind of gaming exhibition on at one of the other exhibition spaces.  We didn't go to it but did stop and say 'hello' to Super Mario:

We then walked up to my brother's apartment which is near this historic Melbourne building called the Forum:

 

Not sure what the Forum is used for these days.  Back when I lived in Melbourne, it had fallen into disrepair and was being used by some religious organisation (the Scientologists I think) as their Melbourne HQ.  think it is back to being used as a performance space again now and is typical of the revival of Melbourne itself in the past few decades.

Kids had a great time at Uncle M's.  Will post more on that and on the rest of the Melbourne trip later.

This is a bit old but I keep it saved on my phone as it makes me smile because it is so silly.

 

Now I know why the batteries on my phone are always flat!

 

Also some rather entertaining videos but don't know how to post those.