Markets and Museums

On a cold and wintery day, what do hardy Victorians do? We head outside to a market - then inside to the sanctuary of a nice warm museum :)

We headed to the Melbourne Showground Farmers Market but turned one driveway too early and ended up at the Flemington Craft Market (which included some produce!). After braving that for a couple of hours and purchasing Lily a lovely new hat (and some yummy treats), we headed off.

On a cold and miserable day many families decide to flock together - at Scienceworks. This is Melbourne's science museum and it's awesome. The boys were playing with some connecting/building/creative stuff and here's the results of their toil. The images aren't the best, but you get the idea :)

Queen's Birthday weekend

The Queen's Birthday long weekend meant NO KID'S SPORTS! However, Patrick and Angus had their musical theatre performance on the Saturday night, so there was no chance we could go away for the weekend. This year's performance was a tribute to musical theatre writers and lyricists over the past 100 years - from Fiddler on the Roof to Rent, Willy Wonka to Joseph and his Amazing Technicolour Dreamcoat and many more. Angus was dressed as a yellow Oompa Loompah at one stage!



Anyhow, the boys and the rest of the cast did a wonderful job as usual.

On Saturday we took a drive to Castlemaine with our good friend Kathryn. Kathryn was our tour guide aswe had not previously been to Castlemaine. It's a beautiful country town and somewhere we'll be visiting again - and it's not that far away :)

Knocked down by friendly fire

My own little bio-terrorists (read: children) have finally infected me with their cold germs. I'm blowing my nose more often than I can count and my head feels stuffy and clogged. The kids are pretty much over the worst of it, so they felt it was time to share with Dad!

I know they can't control their germs and how they spread them, but it makes me feel a little bit better to whinge about it :)

Work we've been up to

After the hailstorm earlier this year we suffered a little damage. Most of it has now been repaired, and here's a photo of the new fascia on the deck. It's the decking timber on the face of the deck. It used to be fibre cement sheeting but was replaced with nicer looking and harder wearing treated pine. Yay!


Oh, and that arbor on the right hand side of the picture was built by Brian (Karen's Dad) and myself last year. Impressive, isn't it ;)

Also, we've reclaimed the old vegie patch as we are going to build a hen house here. So rather than do without a vegie patch we've installed a colourbond raised bed next to the old patch. We'll add 2 more over the coming months. We've already planted snow peas, celery, red onion and carrots. The strawberries and rhubarb from the old patch have been transplanted too!


We've used PVC conduit and some bird netting to give the seedlings a fighting chance against the local wildlife - and it seems to be working :)

(By the way, you can click the photos for a larger view)

Where will it all end?

Lily has just been diagnosed with a viral throat infection and an ear infection.  The throat infection was courtesy of Owen and luckily the ear infection can be treated with anti-biotics.

Patrick and Angus are still lounging around upstairs like sick primary school students do and Owen happily went back to school today after being absent for an entire week!

And me, well I'm downstairs in my office beavering away like normal :)  And I even managed to knock an alleged bug on the head as reported by one of our Beta testers. Yay!  A win for me.

A new week dawns

While today is the Queens Birthday public holiday in NZ, it is just another Monday here in Oz.

Owen has returned to school after being sidelined for a week with viral pneumonia, but now Patrick and Angus are home with the lurgy!  Where will it end?

This week marks the end of performing arts rehearsals and culminates in the performance for both boys on Saturday night.  This will be their last hurrah as they are both discontinuing next term.  Break a leg, boys!

Friday night musings

4.5 out 6 of the family are crook. Patrick is not feeling 100% and I'm fine. We're sitting here watching St Kilda begin to disassemble Richmond while the rest of the family is in bed :)

Leftover lasagne hit the spot for dinner tonight - Karen makes a mean lasagne ;)

Patrick has soccer tomorrow and Angus has basketball, before we hopefully head to a 40th at Derrimut.

Go Saints!

Winter is here with a BANG!

Well, while Owen didn't have his almost ritual hospital stay in May we thought it was looming large at the beginning of June. However, we were fortunate to get on top of it early and a visit to the GP has seen him on 'home rest' all week and he has been recovering well. He's got cabin fever from not going to school all week, but his condition has improved vastly. If he can hack staying indoors (mainly) for the weekend he should be fine to got to school on Monday.

My bowls weekend away in Moama was a raving success. Both teams from my club (8 people in total) had a ball and are all keen to back up again next year. We may even have the chance of increasing from 2 to 3 teams! While we didn't set the world on fire on the green we did have some success. We also had a great time off the green.

May seemed like Prep Party Month! Every weekend it seemed that there was at least one party for Owen to go to - some times 2 parties in the same weekend! Oh well, we've come out the other side largely unscathed and the kids are looking forward to the end of Term 2 and a trip to Sydney!

I mowed the lawn over the previous two afternoons so hopefully that won't need doing again until some time in Spring :)

The internal and external building work that needed to be done after the hail storm earlier this year was completed this week. Now we are awaiting the repair to our evaporative cooler to complete the job. It's all been handled so far with a minimum of fuss. Excellent.

Apart from that there's not much more to report :)