Product of the week - Strawberry Fanta

At Subway the other week (I promise we only went there once but there are so many stories to come out of it!) we had the regular choice of sodas (soft drinks) with the addition of strawberry fanta. It seemed an unusual choice so I got Andrew to taste it so I could blog about it. It is extremely red in colour and it tastes like strawberry Aeroplane Jelly crystals! It is very sickly sweet and not something you can drink a lot of at once. I imagine that Lucy would take one look at the drink and start running around in circles singing happy birthday! The other downside is corn cyrup but don't get me started on that old chestnut.

Happy birthday mothers day

With so many celebrations in such a short time frame Lucy was very confused and kept saying 'happy birthday' to me! After explaining it was Mothers Day she decided that it was appropriate to say 'happy birthday mothers day' to me. She still thinks it is her birthday and often breaks out in song singing happy birthday to herself.

I was given a lovely pancake breakfast in bed! All three of us crawled into bed together for breakfast and whilst there were a few pancake crumbs in the sheets everything worked out surprisingly well and there wasn't maple syrup dripping from the ceiling! We did lots of gardening, mostly weeding and mulching before heading off for dinner at Kornerstone pizza (a wood fired pizza restaurant)

While at Kornerstone there was a tornado warning for our area of New Hanover! The skies were black. I mean really really black. There were loads of lightning strikes and menacing thunder rumbles. Suddenly there was sideways rain. Two minutes later the rain had stopped, the clouds had cleared and there was blue sky and sunshine! It was totally weird but fascinating. Andrew took a photo of the clouds when we got home. Look at the amazing light show we had!

Den of snakes

I went to Toys R Us a couple of weeks ago to check out presents for Lucy. I was particularly interested in getting some plastic food for her kitchen. To my horror all the food assortments available were sponsored by various food conglomerates including McDonalds, Betty Crocker and Subway. There was no plain normal food items, just branded items. She has plain food items purchased from other stores but it was interesting to see that the choices at Toys R Us were indeed limited to food chains wanting to get their product out.

Product of the week - Australian wines

Going to a boutique wine shop opened my eyes to a different range of Australian wines. Maybe they're not bad wines but the focus in definitely on the marketing of the label. I was cringing to see names like Bitch, Boarding Pass, and Ball breaker. Often there was no specific wine district on the label just something vague like South Eastern Australia. The staff at the shop were enthusing about what a great marketing genius the guy behind these labels is but to me these labels were a turn off. What do you think?

Thankfully this same wine shop is able to supply us with the amber coloured 2003 Noble One botrytis so not all is lost!

An AWESOME weekend!!

Our 'big girl' is now 2 years old. We had an AWESOME birthday weekend spent at the beach, gardening, at church and having a pool party in the backyard. It was so fun and so easy! God kept the thunderstorms at bay until Monday afternoon (and now our backyard is totally flooded). We ate home-made strawberry ice cream, drank wine and soaked in the 30 degree heat (85F). As I mentioned earlier the theme of the party was butterflies. So there was a butterfly sign out the front, a butterfly wreath on the door, butterfly napkins(!) and plates, and of course a butterfly cake. The party favors (lolly bags) were butterfly handbags with butterfly stamps and paraphenalia for the girls and bug boxes for the boys. Lucy spent most of the party eating! She says hi to Gabriel, Julian, Caleb, Rachel, Ava, Samantha, Baxter, Abigail, Aidan, and Rory. Also happy birthday to Mr Dave!

2 more days until 2 years old

The countdown is now on, the upstairs room is filled with presents and party paraphenalia and muffins are baking in the kitchen. Lucy is practising singing 'Happy Birthday' and blowing out candles. The party favors (lolly bags) are assembled, the lawn has been mowed and we've made the strawberry ice cream. We're getting ready for a 2 year old's birthday!!

More Amlish

Here are some new words for you:

bangs = fringe

bathing suit = swimming costume

Here are some new pronounications:

oregano is pronounced oreg-a-no not ore-gano

baton is pronounced ba-ton not bat-on

basil is pronounced bay-sil not bas-il

herbs is pronounced erbs

Barossa was pronounced Ba-row-sa not Ba-ross-a (I corrected this at the wine shop!)



And in other news when we were at Subway Andrew said 'tomaytoes' not tomatoes. I was so embarrassed! He claimed it was so that the person could understand him more easily. I quickly countered with the fact that I said tomatoes and was perfectly understood. However I had to say oreg-a-no after saying oreg-ano twice did not work. Aaaahhhhhh! I thought flashing lights would turn on and someone would jump out and say 'You're on candid camera' but the reality was far more tame and no one else noticed my mortification.