Birth daze

After my luxurious night away last week, the birthday joy just kept coming all weekend.

On late Saturday arvo we caught up with my doppleganger friend and her family for dinner and cake. She has two girls (of course, as she's my doppleganger) and all the girls get on really well. They had a ball together and allowed the grown ups to actually chat and eat and relax, which is always a novelty.

On Sunday (my actual birthday) I got a little sleep-in. Skip made my favourite bircher for brekkie. We took a blustery walk around the neighbourhood and then came home to get ready for our family lunch. We had 9 adults coming and a few kids. We heated our oven for the obligatory three hours (we really need a new oven) chucked in our roasts and after almost an hour it was still stone cold. After a bit of last minute panicking and the BBQ coming to the rescue we made food that was hot and cooked through!

It was lovely to catch up with everyone and get spoilt with lots of flowers and pressies. I got my favourite flower Sweet Peas from my mum, some gorgeous Gerberas from my inlaws and some lovely tulips from my little brother. Not to mention choccies and lots of other goodies (including a spanking new camera). As I said, spoilt.

Everyone left and by that stage the kids were seriously tired and emotional (especially the 4 year old), so after some tears we got them into bed. I collapsed on the lounge absolutely stuffed – seriously it's going to be salad and fish for the next month. Another birthday over for another year!

Escape from reality

Looking at the Harbour Bridge over my bump while lying in the sun on
a perfect Sydney day. 

Yesterday, Skip and I snuck off from real life for a while. An early birthday celebration for me.

I left the kids around 3pm with their Grandma, hit the shops in the city and found a new frock that fit my belly and didn't look too dowdy. I then checked into The Observatory Hotel and collapsed on the king-size bed with a trashy mag and a cup of tea and chilled out while I'd normally be chasing kids round the park and preparing their dinner. It was complete peace and quiet. Utter bliss.

Skip turned up from work and frocked up we went to Rockpool Bar & Grill for dinner. Passing on the Hendricks & tonic with a slice of cucumber that Skip sipped, I had a mocktail. It was damn good, I'm not just saying that, it was almost as good as the real thing.

We ate and laughed and talked and eavesdropped. And then we ate some more.

We strolled (or rolled from all the food) back to the hotel and collapsed into bed, knowing no little people would poke us in the forehead during the night and we could sleep in in the morning.

A long lie-in with the papers and coffee, a leisurely breakfast and before I knew it we were back home. Refereeing arguments, wiping snotty noses and fetching cups of milk and water. Five star luxury just a warm memory.

It wasn't all bad though, Skip had the day off work and the sun was shining so we took the girls for a picnic. Fish and chips on the water at Balmain. The winter's sun surprisingly warm, it was so relaxing to sit and be a family and have fun. Best of all, it's only Friday night so we still have two more days of weekend to go!

Happy weekend to you!

Island castaways

It's school holidays. I have to admit that I kinda forget about school holidays and wasn't really prepared. Lil-lil was a bit distressed that we weren't actually going on holidays. The first few days haven't been that exciting. I've had a long list of 'have to-dos' so the girls have been forced to entertain themselves a bit, which isn't always a bad thing. There have been 2-hour long games of 'hospitals' and hours jumping on the trampoline and more hours of drawing. Oh and yesterday they kept preparing me "feasts" of lemons and grass as I attempted (in vain) to write. I ended up surrounded in bowls of their "cooking".

Today, I thought, I had to do something with them, something school holiday-like. So we jumped on our local ferry and went to Cockatoo Island. With the sun streaming down to counteract the chilly winds, the girls ran amok. There were wide open spaces to skip in, strange things to climb on, lots of water to throw rocks in, trees to make 'homes' under. Then we jumped on the ferry and headed home for a warm Milo to thaw out.

It was a great afternoon out, hopefully the girls will be tuckered out for the evening and my guilt at their lack of holiday fun has been eased.

Here are some shots from our day:

Spooky tunnels to dance ghost-like through.

Open spaces to run in.

Rocks to throw into the harbour.

Big weird, mechanical things to look at.

What are you doing these school holidays?

Poo is funny no matter where you come from

My brother and his son are in Sydney at the moment, visiting from Vietnam. My gorgeous nephew is 7 and is half Vietnamese, he speaks both Vietnamese and English, but Vietnamese is his first language. It's what he speaks at school, to his friends, his mum and sister and in most of his everyday life.

Since he's been here, he's been pretty quiet. Besides being fairly quiet naturally, I guess it's quite overwhelming to be in a country that's so different to what you're used to. He's away from his mum and sister, the food is different, it smells and sounds different, it's cold, the whole place is just not quite like home.

Yesterday, I had a doctor's appointment and had dragged the girls along with me. By chance we ran into my mum, brother and nephew when we pulled up. The girls went to a cafe with them while I saw the doctor. When I came out, my nephew was sitting away, head buried in his DS. Understandably he's not that interested in his younger girl cousins' antics.

I hadn't heard him utter a sound that whole morning. Until we got up to leave and Goosey cried out: "I need to do a poo!" My nephew cracked up in laughter. Poo is universally funny. No matter what culture you're from, if you're a kid you can always get a laugh with poo.

When life gets in the way of life

Well, I survived the solo weekend. Pretty well in fact. It was lovely to catch up with friends and family. It was lovely to lock the door and tune out the world early on both nights and just be with my girls.

Skip came home surprisingly chipper and unstinky from his boys weekend. We even managed to have a really lovely family lunch just the four of us.

The only bad thing was that the girls developed a feral cough that hacked through the night keeping them (and me) awake. Last night was a shocker. It was about 1am before I managed to get any sleep and then it was broken. I've also had more aches and pains than a 90-year-old, so have been hobbing round like a granny.

Just when you think you have things under control, life throws up all this 'stuff' to make everything seem busy and complicated. That's been the story of my life the past couple of weeks. Every things has seemed cruisy and then without warning gets complicated. Freelance work, school holidays (which I'd forgotten about), sick kids, extra doctor's appointments, helping out others unexepectedly. Which is all fine, it's just made life that little bit extra busy and any thoughts of putting my feet up a distant idea.

This morning has been a little crazy, I'm feeling like I'm getting sick and my workload is mounting – so I've decided to shelve the outside world, rug the sick kids up on the couch and a DVD and settle down and get some work done. Grocery shopping can wait, the other chores can wait.

On the upside I won a competition today and I have a couple of really special things to look forward to at the end of the week. So just gotta keep on chugging!

Feeling good about doing good

There is a thing happening on the interwebs at the moment about a certain blogger travelling to a third world country to promote a cause. There has been a newspaper article written and some blog posts and a Twitter stoush. I don't know the details well enough to accurately write about it, so I won't. Reading some comments and hearing things about charity has set off some thought processes in my head, though, and now I just have to write about it. I was also inspired by the always inspiring Eden.

We live in a funny society. We're being told that we need to cover ourselves in brand name clothing, logos blaring across our chests. We need to purchase certain cosmetics, cause after all, we're worth it. We live in a society where we are constantly told we need to make ourselves feel better in any way possible – running the whole gamut from rampant consumerism to eating well and meditating. We're constantly fed the idea: "Do what you can to find happiness." Except when it comes to one thing.... charity.

If you attempt to help someone either through a charity or doing a good deed, we're told not to talk about it or it's seen as boasting. It's not uncommon to hear: "They're just doing it make themselves feel good." "They're just a smug do-gooder."

So, it's OK to be smug and feel good about your 60 inch plasma and your new Louis Vuitton bag, but throw a couple of dollars to a charity or help your little old nextdoor neighbour with their shopping and you can't feel happy about it? It seems crazy to me. What's wrong with feeling good about doing something good? Maybe we could spread the idea that helping and doing good feels good and perhaps more people might give it a whirl.

Why do we have to feel guilty about feeling good about doing what we can to make someone else's life just a little bit better? Can't we make our short time on this planet a good time for all?

Then when people attempt to do something good, they're accused of not going the whole way. Their motives are questioned and it's not good enough. They could have done it better, they should have done it this way, what they're doing is useless. For goodness sake, no wonder there's so few people attempting to do good deeds, why bother when you're just going to get run down.

We're told when we travel: "Don't give money to beggars it just encourages them. Give to aid agencies who can handle it properly." Then we're told, "Only X% of aid money gets through to the people who needs it." So, no wonder we keep our money in our pockets (and save it for the cosmetics, because we're worth it after al).

Let's encourage the good people in the world to do good things, no matter how big or small, let's not be so mistrusting. We've all got instincts, let's use them to do what's right. Sure, keep questioning, but don't discourage. Now, get out of that chair and do something nice for someone, somewhere and make sure you feel good about it. Then repeat and repeat.

*Yes, I admit that my ideas are naive, but life isn't as complicated as we'd sometimes like to make out.

Girls' weekend

This morning we waved a slightly hungover Skip (he was out celebrating the end of financial year last night as nerdy financial types do) for the weekend. He's going on a bucks weekend, which leaves me and the girls home alone for 50 or so hours.

Today we've got Lil-lil's end of term ballet performance and then we'll probably hit the park as we always do on a Friday. The weekend will involve an open house (for the love of god), a girly afternoon tea party with good friends and probably some catching up with my brother and nephew who are visiting from Vietnam. My brother told me I'd gotten fat and then remembered I was pregnant, luckily he redeemed himself by bringing me some DVDs. Then Skip will probably return home on Sunday worse for wear and stink up my couch.

While I'm not looking forward to single parenting, a couple of nights at home with complete control of the remote (trashy TV and good movies) and some takeaway of my choosing will be nice. I think I'll abandon cooking for the whole weekend, except we might make a cake. I think cake will be necessary.

What do you like to do when your other half goes MIA?