Ice Cream & Talent

This afternoon we went to school to witness the talent contest. Sadly I wasn't near the front so the band are quite a distance away.

The band are Knight on piano, Raoul on tenor sax and our very own Harry on drums. Note that Harry's third drum lesson is tonight!

At the end the 200 kids in the audience were asked who was their favorite act out of the 11 finalists. And the band did it, clearly the most popular act of the afternoon. Their encore was their 2nd appearance in public.

Well done lads.

Checking blogpress

I took this on the 89th floor of the Eureka Tower in Melbourne. You can see where we live on the horizon. The lake in the foreground is Albert Park where the F1 race is held each year.








I took this a while ago but I'm testing a new blogging tool.

Harry's 11th Birthday

He's made it to the grand age of 11.

The celebrations started on Friday although strictly speaking he wasn't born until around 8:30am Saturday morning - the wonders of time zones. But it least it's an excuse to keep partying. Since Friday was a school day only a little celebrating happened including birthday cake at Friday evening tennis.

Saturday started with a hockey match and their 3rd straight win.

Then it was back home for the party. The tradition has been that I make the birthday cake and each year it gets harder to think of something different. Inspiration came from the Woman's Weekly Party Cake book following a visit to see a comedian do a whole act on the subject at the Melbourne comedy festival.

Pool party massacre got a good reception from the assembled crowd.

Then Harry and his mates headed to the ice rink for a couple of hours skating. And that is them all in the centre of the rink.

We had a couple of them stay over last night, they've gone now and now the house is quiet and Harry's happy that he had a great day. Today it's more tennis (probably the subject of an extra post) and Iron Man 2 to end the weekend.

Office for old times sake

Here's a quick picture of the office and some of the usual contents.

A non local band

While I'm checking the new tools. Just want to see if this works.



You should be able to see a video of a band I sometimes see in town just busking.

And this one I think is actually them on Bourke Street

Geocache

We thought it would be fun to try Geocaching so headed out on our bikes with GPS in hand and 3 local caches to find. A couple of kms later and Cache number 1 was located in one of the local parks in a great natural hiding place and Harry was the one that found it. We'd never geocached before so it was fun to find the cache and explore its contents. Surprisingly (to us) it had been accessed only a couple of days before.

Another km or so on the bike and we are somewhere near cache number 2. A micro cache. Doesn't seem likely that we'll find it in the undergrowth in the area.

But after about 10 minutes or so of looking Harry spots the tiny container and its contents. So back on the bike and we head from the parks to the beach. The GPS indicates that it isn't on the road near the beach but near the beach itself so we head down the cliff and backtrack along the beach path only to find  the GPS says its somewhere between the beach and the road, i.e. somewhere up the cliff. So we explore and finally find container number three hidden away.

So a great bike ride and successful treasure hunt.

P.S. Sorry its been ages since we updated but now Blogger have fixed their tools we can do this more often.

Melbourne Show

We took a trip to the Royal Melbourne Show yesterday. It's a great mix of agricultural stuff and fairground.

I think the 'fascinator' is the duck's own creation. As well as this little fella we got to witness the 'chook washing'. The chook has been washed and is getting a blow dry before being buffed by a silk hanky!

This next picture featuring our very own Harry is of Chris the person that came 3rd in Masterchef Australia in 2009.

He works for a beer club. From what we saw on TV he shouldn't give up the cooking. I still want to try his 'beeramasu', a twist on that Italian classic.

We are hopeful of appearing on Foxtel (Aussie Sky I think) on their hit series AusAxe (woodcutting as a sport). Here's my own clip from the finals of the contest. This is an exclusive preview as Foxtel won't be screening the finals for another few weeks.

And finally it's the cute animal video. This time we finish on something quite extrordinary - a pig diving into a pool. Enjoy!