We don't use those sorts of words in our house!

1. Andrew came home from work the other day, I was doing something in the kitchen and he asked me to put something in the trash! In the trash! Don't you mean the garbage bin or the rubbish?


2. We were sitting at the dining table and Andrew asked if we had any napkins. I said NO. And we don't have any serviettes either!

Product of the week - Baileys Mousse Dessert

I create Product of the week blog entries in big slabs, save them and then release them to you my audience once a week. So sometimes it can be a while between testing the product and writing in detail about the product. Why am I telling you this? Because I bought this product Baileys Mousse Dessert in October last year, ate it within 2 days of purchase and now I can't remember anything about it. Anything except that it was excellent and if I ever see it on sale again I will be buying it. If you find it, try it. You'll like it!

Temperature range: 0 - 4 degrees celsius

It was supposed to snow after midnight but we lucked out. It is pretty cold at the moment but we are snuggly warm with the heating on, hot chocolates in hand (Williams Sonoma of course) and hours upon hours of tennis to watch. We get lots of coverage of the Australian Open on ESPN2 so we have seen lots of the five set matches including Federer, Fish, Blake, Hewitt and my favourite match Kohlschreiber vs Roddick. And given some of the crazy scheduling of matches we have been able to watch them live during the day! So its been fairly quiet here apart from some nail biting tennis. We made a 12 egg pav for church luncheon today, followed up by some fresh custard that Lucy and Andrew made together. We also braved the rain and cold yesterday for an Indochine feast with an excellently behaved toddler. But apart from those adventures we've been camped upstairs in the TV room cheering. Amazing Race finale in 1 hour!!

color fun with jello

Lucy and I headed downtown to the Wilmington Childrens Museum with some of the moms from our group. We had a great time shopping in the grocery store, cooking in the diner, camping in tents and playing in the rubber pit. The 'color fun with jello' session was a disappointment as the toddlers didn't have enough co-ordination to inject dye into huge jello moulds! In any case Lucy had a ball and is now peacefully sleeping.

wet wet wet

We are in the middle of a tropical downpour which is unusual given the time of year (but it's a good thing because we are in a drought) It has been raining for about 5 hours straight now which makes driving difficult. I still have to consciously think that the windscreen wiper controls are on the right. However the really scary part about driving in the rain around here is the flooding. Wilmington is dead flat (apart from one small 'hill' downtown) and there are no gutters on the roads which means that water just pools where ever it can find a place to do so. And often this occurs on the road which makes it tricky to drive without aquaplaning across the lane. I try to drive in the left hand lane where possible to avoid puddles but unfortunately on the smaller roads there is no choice. Even Lucy said 'wow' when we hit a particularly big puddle on her side of the car this morning.

It's still fishy around here...

We decided to continue our fish theme this week. Today Lucy and I made an 'under the sea' mural with crayons and fish stickers, we ate tuna casserole for lunch and we are playing with a sea creatures jigsaw puzzle. It is such fun!

Product of the week - Monopoly

Whilst in Asheville (Western NC) we stopped into a famous old department store called the Mast General Store. It's full of hiking equipment, traditional clothing and 'old-timey mercantile'. We came across this National Parks version of Monopoly and decided we had to get it as the Great Smoky Mountains are in the position of Mayfair. There are 'mammals' and birds' cards, tents and ranger stations instead of houses and hotels, and the playing pieces include a camera, a canoe and a hiking boot. Don't get caught littering in the park or you'll receive a large fine!