RAAF museum and dinner

 

Last Saturday it was a real scorcher but I was so eager to get out of the house I finally convinced Pete to go out as a family. Do any of you mums find it hard convincing your hubby to go out on the weekend? Pete just wants to veg out at home as he's been working all week but I just want to use the small window of time we have on a Saturday to go out and do something. Plus I hate being at home all the time :-) I completely understand where he's coming from and he is somewhat getting where I'm coming from so I guess that's something ;-) 
We didn't head out until after 3 so it wasn't too hot and we headed off to the RAAF museum here in Point Cook. It was semi interesting but not really what I'm into. I love museums and art galleries but one plane looks like another plane to me. I enjoyed some of the info about the wars and found myself taking photos thinking, 'hmm these would be great resources for history. ' (I don't think I could ever stop thinking from a teacher's perspective). 
 

What I did enjoy (apart from just spending time as a family) was being able to see some of the planes and jets practicing for the air show that was scheduled for the next day. We were lucky with our timing as the airshow is on the sabbath and we'd have been fighting for a decent position with up to 30,000 people. So we, along with a few other people enjoyed the view and hearing the awesome engines of the jets and seeing them do their tricks. I think Will liked it too.

Since Pete and I still hadn't done anything for Valentine's day we thought we'd have dinner out. It was the first time we'd taken Will out for a meal (apart from a cafe for lunch etc). He loved the little booster seat thing and being able to sit up at the table. He didn't eat much of the fried rice I ordered for him but luckily I'd brought a squeezy pouch of food he likes. He can be REALLY noisy at meal times but only screamed a couple of times thank goodness.

Pete and I rewarded ourselves with some Cold Rock ice-cream to take home for later. I had never had it before but I think I'm a fan now. We had ferrero rocher and chocolate!

A Hoot of a Birthday

We celebrated Will's 1st B'day on Australia Day (26th Jan) with a lovely BBQ with friends and family. Pete and I did the invites (most of the credit has to go to Pete's awesome editing skills though. Gotta love the free Gimp editing program).


It was really relaxed and a perfect 24degree day. I was so glad we didn't do it on the 28th like we were going to originally as Will's cake would have melted and it would have been really unbearably warm for everyone.

I sent Pete and my dad ahead to the park to secure a good possie and a BBQ. They got the very last shaded table and BBQ - it was already packed by 9:30am. Phew! We spread out picnic blankets and chairs and enjoyed being under the shade of a tree. We had a great turn out with lots of lovely friends and I'm so thankful Will had at least one set of Grandparents to celebrate with. It would have felt a bit sad not to have them there.
We had one drama when the BBQ wasn't working and our lunch took FOREVER to cook. Pete ended up moving to another BBQ when someone had finished using theirs. I was stressing a bit about not being able to provide a lunch except for bread and tomato sauce...but it all worked out in the end thank goodness!
For the last few months I knew I wanted to have a loose theme for Will's party. He absolutely loves a kids program on the ABC here in Australia called "Giggle and Hoot." So I thought we could have that as a theme and I wanted to make him a cake shaped like Hoot (the owl in the show). I went online and got lots of great ideas and shamelessly copied a few of them and added my own variations to them :-)

Mum wanted to make a basic pinata - not the paper mache kind though. She had a great idea of just using a brown paper bag and crepe paper. I thought the end result was fantastic.

I baked LOTS of carrot cakes in the week leading up to Will's birthday to test which one was the most moist and delicious. The winner was the Docking family cake. A lovely friend shared their family recipe with me. I'll have to post it another time if you want to try it out...
I baked the cake and cut and assembled it and then when mum arrived the day before the party and made the icing and did a fantastic job on the piping. I'm not one with much finesse so I was glad to hand over that job to mum :-)
Check out the amazing cake. It was really yummy too!

The kids enjoyed the pinata. Will and I watched. Will got a bit upset though and started wimpering when the kids started whacking the pinata...he stopped after a few moments though

We filled the pinata with lots of cadbury choccies and no joke, when the pinata broke the spilled choccies were gone in seconds. ha ha

We let Will have his first ever chocolate. He loved eating a freddo frog!

Pete persevered for ages trying to light the candle but we told him to give up after a few minutes. It was just too windy and we were all eager to eat the yummy cake. We sang Happy Birthday and I cut the cake on Will's behalf. I was glad some people came back for seconds....

It was such a great day!