Another week in January

I feel a lot less structured now I'm not doing a post a day, so this is just another random 'what we did over the last week or so' post.

It feels weird to be doing it this way.

On Saturday we went out with my family for Slabs' birthday. On the way in to town, Slabs wanted to go and check out the Tassie rugby league. There are four teams in the competition and they play on Saturday afternoons at the Hobart Showgrounds, one game after the other. The game we saw part of was the Southern Rabbitohs vs the Hobart Tigers.

We went out for dinner at a sushi restaurant. Juniordwarf ate a little bit of sushi, some of the beef tataki and some of Nanna’s pork dish. He wouldn’t go near the sashimi, even though we told him it was salmon, which he absolutely loves - at least the smoked variety. Raw salmon was clearly a step too far for him.

He told Slabs he wanted a tie when they went shopping earlier in the week, and he picked one out and was very excited to wear it on Saturday night.

On Sunday we met our friend's Dad, who was in town for the day, and went up Mt Wellington.

Monday was Slabs' birthday. We had our version of an antipasto spread for dinner. Juniordwarf  loved it because we got to have dinner on his car mat on the lounge room floor, which he’d do every day if we’d let him.

Tuesday was unbelievably hot, and I spent most of the evening waiting for the storm to hit. It finally did, and it didn't disappoint.

Can you see the koala in the clouds?

On Thursday I was home with Juniordwarf. It was hot and we just wanted to stay inside. Juniordwarf played his Reading Eggs game (and I've now set up the clunky old eMac so he has his own account and can go straight into it). I got the chance to catch up on some scrapbooking.

And that's about it for our week. Tonight we went to the Two Metre Tall Farm Bar with some friends and I managed not to take a photo for the entire evening. Yes, some things can change!

P365 - Day 364 - the Taste (and year in review 11/12) (30/12/2011)

Today we went to the Taste Festival in Hobart.

Juniordwarf enjoyed the cups & saucers ride

More cups and saucers

Entry to the Taste

Inside the main hall

Outside the Brasserie. Nice & shady.

Ice cream

Enjoying an ale

Two Metre Tall Ale in a plastic cup?  What a crime against Ale!

Wheelie Bin Orchestra performing "We Will Rock You"
These guys were great!

Juniordwarf enjoyed the Wheelie Bins

The Winery

Year in Review (11/12)

Since my Project 365 is rapidly coming to an end, I’m going post a link to my favourite post from each month this year over the last 12 days of the year.

November: eleven

My contribution to the 11eleven Project.

P365 - obligatory Xmas post (25/12/2011) (and year in review 6/12)

Just a few photos from our family Xmas.

Opening the presents Santa left

Checking the presents to take to the rest of the family

Juniordwarf played Santa and handed out the presents

More presents

Best present of the day

Part of the spread

Juniordwarf and Dad

Cheers!

Year in Review (6/12)

Since my Project 365 is rapidly coming to an end, I’m going post a link to my favourite post from each month this year over the last 12 days of the year.

June: Tread Lightly

P365 - Day 358 - getting ready for Santa (and year in review 5/12)

I know I’m a bit ‘bah humbug’ about Christmas, and this year it feels like it’s snuck up on me faster than usual and I’ve been so busy that I haven’t got organised and just haven’t felt very festive at all.

But this hasn’t stopped Juniordwarf, and his excitement has slowly but surely rubbed off on me.

He is so excited and it’s so much fun to see. He’s been talking about it non-stop and he has his heart set on getting a Harry Potter book from Santa.

(We’ve had several chats with him explaining that Santa can’t bring kids everything they want, and suggesting that he not get his hopes up for everything on his list so that he’s not disappointed if everything doesn’t turn up. We’re hoping that the “scary teeth” he wanted, and his big surprise present will make up for the disappointment.)

I even elicited his cooperation to tidy his room (a bit) before he went to bed in case Santa couldn’t get in there to leave his presents. (Yes, I did stoop to that. And I know I’m not the only one who did . . . now it’s just a matter of how to get him to do it on the other 364 days of the year.)

Tonight we hung up his Santa sack (or “Zak” as he calls it, getting confused with the dog that he never knew) for Santa to put his presents in. I asked him if he wanted to put a snack out for Santa, so he left out a couple of biscuits and a cup of water (well, we don’t want Santa to be drink-driving, do we?)

He was just thrilled to be doing all this, and we loved watching him. It’s the first time he’s really gotten into the whole Santa thing, and it really is good fun!

I can’t wait to see his face tomorrow morning.

Year in Review (5/12)

Since my Project 365 is rapidly coming to an end, I’m going post a link to my favourite post from each month this year over the last 12 days of the year.

May: I love Mum

My first hand made gifts from Juniordwarf. I was really touched. It still has pride of place on the fridge.

P365 - Day 351 - the unchristmas tree

I don’t go much into the ‘traditional’ aspects of the festive season. I don’t celebrate a religious Christmas, and I prefer to call the season Xmas.

I think Xmas is a good term, because you can use the ‘X’ to represent whatever you want it to*. 

For me, it’s the end of the year, summer is here and I have enforced leave from work. It’s a good time to spend with family and friends, exchange presents if we like, eat lots of food, and relax a bit.

I see it as very much a summer festival.

I’m not a fan of the winter-like appearance and feel of most traditional ‘Christmas’ decorations, which are entirely appropriate for a Northern Hemisphere winter celebration, but for me seem totally out of place in summer. They are for the winter solstice festivities, which we don’t widely celebrate in this country (I wish we did!).

I wrote a bit about how many elements of our traditional Christmas celebrations have come to us from pre-Christian Winter Solstice festivities, and from other cultures and traditions, back in June.  I find it interesting to find out how different societies have celebrated and commemorated the event through history.

I also find the Summer Solstice traditions interesting and would like to find ways to weave some of them into my summer celebrations. (Probably not the one involving naked dancing around a bonfire at midnight.)

The Summer Solstice occurs on the 22 December. Some people refer to it as Midsummer, while others suggest the Solstice actually marks the beginning of summer. (This is an interesting article, although it refers to the Northern summer solstice, which occurs in June. I assume the science is the same, but just reversed for the Southern Hemisphere.)

I’m leaning towards the ‘beginning of summer’ camp, because the weather we’ve been having so far hasn’t exactly felt summer-like, and our hottest days seem to happen in late January and February, rather than in December.

But I suppose it really doesn’t matter. It’s summer time. It’s time to celebrate.

In past years I’ve put up a rather sad looking baby Xmas tree and embellished it reluctantly with a few Xmas decorations. (Well, there was that one year I decorated it with logos cut out of beer cans . . .)

This year I decided to put my money where my mouth is and dispense with the Xmas tree altogether. Instead, I put up and decorated what I am calling a ‘summer tree’. It’s covered in lots of red and gold ribbons, stars and flowers, as I see these colours as representing the sun in summer. I added on some fake fruit (very classy), some birds – a cockatoo, a kookaburra (this is Australia after all) and a little bird in a nest, which is actually more springtime, but who cares – and to top it off, that most Australian of icons, an ugg boot.

The Summer Tree

The bird section

Yes, I have an ugg boot on my tree. 

Not a single bit of tinsel.

Actually looking at it now, it doesn’t quite look summery enough. It almost looks like it’s getting into autumn. Maybe I need some more colours.

Anyway it’s done now, so that’s it for this year. Juniordwarf is quite impressed with it, and he’s very excited about Christmas. Especially Santa.

While he’s still little, that’s one part of Christmas I’m happy to hang onto. It’s so exciting for him to make his list, sing songs about Santa and have his photo taken. And I love to see him being this excited. It’s such a thrill.

* I read that interpretation of the word somewhere a while ago, but can't remember who it was that said it. However, I believe that the reason it was originally spelled like that was that X is the first letter of the Greek word for Christ.

P365 - Day 340 - 19 days til xmas

A few years ago, in a rare fit of Xmas nostalgia, I bought a ‘beyond the page’ wooden Xmas tree from Kaisercraft. 

Kaiser had a few example trees on their website and in their workshop magazine, but they all looked a bit too, well, Christmassy. (Yes, it is a “Christmas” product, designed especially to count down the days until 25 December, so um . . .  if you don’t like Christmas stuff, why did you buy it?)

Not being a huge fan of the traditional seasonal decorations (cue blog post on why I shall call the 25 December festival whatever I want to, and how I find it weird to be doing wintery stuff in the middle of summer*, and how I rather despise fake snow), I wanted to make mine look a bit more ‘summery’. So I went for red and gold colours to look a bit like the sun. It didn’t really work – it still looks Xmassy. Never mind. At least it doesn’t have fake snow!

This year is the first time Juniordwarf has really been interested in the festive season, and he has designated himself as the official day changer on the tree.

I’ve also come up with some grand plans for the seasonal tree that we’ll be decorating soon. The plans don’t include snow or holly. I might be persuaded to use some tinsel. Maybe.

*You wouldn’t actually know it’s summer here right now. But according to the calendar it is.

P365 - Day 336 - up in the sky

This afternoon, just after lunch, we were treated to an aerobatic display by the Air Force Roulettes,  which are in town for the celebrations of the 200th Anniversary of the Anglesea Barracks. 

It was spectacular to watch and we got a great view, especially when they were passing over the top of us.

It was, as you might expect, very hard to take any decent pictures of the display on my phone camera due to the distance and the fact that I can’t actually see what I’m taking a picture of when I point the phone at planes flying overhead. So I just clicked away and hoped that the planes were in the shot, then cropped and edited them afterwards.

And afterwards . . .

We went to the Farm Bar  at Two Metre Tall. This was Andrew Marshall’s  debut for the Farm Bar season. After his nifty dancing last time, Juniordwarf was looking forward to seeing Andrew perform.

Given his new fascination with guitars, Juniordwarf was very interested in watching Andrew set up his equipment, and he was fascinated by the didgeridoo and the sounds it made.

It was a lovely relaxing way to spend what turned out to be a very nice summer evening. I think we can look forward to spending more time there over the next few months.

P365 - Day 330 - child & family centre

What a busy morning we had!

First up Juniordwarf went to his swimming lesson. 

Then he and I went to an Xmas party at his daycare centre, where he got his face painted and his nails done. 

He went on the jumping castle and went for a train ride.  He saw Santa, somehow ended up getting two bags of lollies, ate sausages and ice cream, and was very reluctant to leave.

But we had to leave, because I wanted to go to the Family Fun Day hosted by the Local Enabling Group for our Child and Family Centre. Today was the official ‘site celebration’ prior to the construction of the centre beginning.

Early last year interested members of our community were asked to nominate for what is called a Local Enabling Group (LEG) to oversee the development of a new Child and Family Centre in our town.

The Tasmanian Government has provided funding for a number of Child and Family Centres to be built across the state to support families with children aged 0-5. The aim is “improve the health and well being, education and care of Tasmania’s very young children by supporting parents and enhancing accessibility of services in the local community”.

Each community established a LEG, under the direction of a Social Inclusion Community Liaison Officer. The LEGs are made up of different community members: parents, representatives from organisations that provides services to children in the area, community members, local council officials – people who are interested in the project and who are prepared to contribute their time to participate.

You can find out more about the Child and Family Centres Project here. 

Last year Juniordwarf and I participated in the LEG through the initial stages of the project, the main focus on which was selecting the location for the centre to be built, as well as doing a lot of work on the objectives and aims for the centre that suited our community’s needs.

It was a great project to be involved in and a lot of people from our area were keen to participate. Having been involved in some, um, interesting groups through work, I wasn't sure whether it was all going to come together. But I had no need to be worried at all.  I was really impressed with how such a large number of people – I think we were the largest LEG in the state – worked together over the year, and focused on the primary purpose of the centre – supporting children and their families. For me, as a government employee, it was a fascinating experience to participate in a community engagement process as a community member rather than as a government official. 

The two biggest decisions we made last year were the site for the centre to be built on – which generated a lot of discussion, but after considering all the pros and cons of the other options, it was a very easy decision for me on which site to vote for – and the vision statement for the centre: “Happy healthy children thriving in our community”.

Unfortunately this year I had to go back to work on the days that the meetings were normally held, and I was only able to attend one meeting. I’d hoped I’d be able to juggle working from home at least once a month so I could still go, but it didn’t work out that way.

Even though I haven’t been involved this year, I’m still very excited about this project. I think it will be a great asset for our region, and I can’t wait to see how it develops over the next few years.

We missed the official part of the day with all the speeches, and when we arrived it had just started to rain, so some of the activities didn’t go ahead as planned.

This is what we saw when we arrived.

It was a bit wet, and people had run for cover. 

Slabs, Juniordwarf and I presented ourselves at the Kombicam photo booth and had some silly photos taken. 

It was good to catch up with some of our friends from Communities for Children, who have been a valuable source of information, support and friendship for me and Juniordwarf, especially during his first four years.

And I would like to thank Peter (I think that was his name) from Coffee Tasmania for replacing Juniordwarf’s hot chocolate at no charge after the inevitable happened when a small child is carrying a warm drink over uneven terrain.

Thank you also to the LEG members for organising the day. I’ve missed being involved with the group this year, but am eagerly waiting to see what happens next. 

P365 - Day 317 - fruits of our labour (Sunday Selections)

Since it’s Sunday and I took a lot of photos today, I thought I would join in Kim’s Sunday Selections at Frogpondsrock  this week. I never seem to be able to get my act into gear to hook out some old unseen photos for Kim, so new ones will have to do.

But first, some context . . .

We went back to the Garden Club’s Flower and Horticultural Show this morning.

We were all very excited that Juniordwarf's flower had won a certificate – he got first place for the model flower class and also best exhibit for the under 6s age group category.

There were some lovely floral exhibits, and a fantastic display of local produce, including our friends at Two Metre Tall, Kinvarra Estate, where we went earlier in the year, Stefano Lubiana Wines and Cracknell Tomatoes.

Lil Sis, Mr Tall and Nanna came to visit us and to see the flower show, and we all went out for lunch afterwards. 

This afternoon Juniordwarf and I went back to pick up his model and his certificates. We decided to go for a walk before we went home, and we ended up in the park at the end of the main street, where Juniordwarf had a great time exploring the fountain and smelling the roses.