A Sharples Christmas

Viva La Revoluçion

Enjoying my first chicken bone.

The second course in a 4 course, all day meal.  Heaven!

The full menu was -

Brunch Platter of

Mushroom & Thyme Dip

Capsicum & Pomegranate Dip

Olives

Little Stuffed Capsicum

Slow roasted mini romas willed with spinach pesto & bocconcini

Goat cheese wrapped in roasted caps & parma ham

Smoke salmon wrapped around herby cream cheese

Illawarra Sour Dough

Then a late lunch of Roast chook with all the trimmings (see pictures)

Late dinner of Spiced prawns wrapped in bacon with salad

and a dessert of chocolate custard tart with cream and a salad of 

Blueberries

Raspberries

Strawberries

Blackberries

Grapes and

Mango soaked in Vina Cotto

Took 10 hours to prepare and eat and it was wonderful!

Fooling around with one of Trilly's new toys.  She can fit inside it!

Sirius & Chi Chi in the ball pit.

Mugging it up for the new camera.

Constructing the contructable.

Sirius opening his first ever Christmas present ... he loved the box covered in paper, I'm sure he'll treasure it forever :-)

Christmas Joy!

First day of the holidays

Up early (thanks Sirius) after stupidly staying up late reading Sharpe's Fortress (awesome). Made some cookie dough and put it in the fridge to rest.  Jamie home from last night shift with bold plans to stay awake until the new mattress is delivered.  Did pretty well but drifted off at about 11am.  Trilly and I went to Stocklands to get her hair cut (she can now see where she is going) and a rolling pin to make our Christmas Tree cookies.  Also picked up another Bernard Cornwall novel for a steal and some yummy chicken kebabs for early lunch (I skipped breakfast).  

Got home and Trill sat down and watched "Wallace & Gromit - The Curse of the Were Rabbit" with a bag of carrots.  I made a mountain of different sized star shaped cookies so on Sunday I can arrange them into a Christmas Tree and decorate them with icing snow and sugar ball bearings.  We have been invited to a street party on Sunday evening and the bikkie tree is our "dessert to share"

Mattress arrived and is in place (after having to pry Jamie off the old one) and Jamie is currently testing it out!

Trill has already come to me with "but I've got no one to play with" sob story ...... only 44 days to the start of the new school year :-)

Student Report - December 2008

Some quotes from Trilly's school report -

"Trillian has exceeded the expectation s at Prep level, and has shown she has a love for learning and a great deal of persistence in all challenging excercises"

"Trillian speaks with great confidence and what she shares is very meaningful"

"Trillian's reading ability is excellent.  She is able to independently use the strategies which assist her to engage in, and read with understanding, an unfamiliar text of greater difficulty than the expected Prep standard"

"She is able to use her knowledge of sounds and the letter patterns from the THRASS program to make continually accurate and logical spelling attempts for unknown words"

There is more but it's too much to type.  Essentially she is a dead set legend!!!

Vegetable Slops

On the menu this week is the following -

1 x Carrot

1 x Parsnip

1 x Zicchini

1 x Large head of brocholli

1/2 a head of cauliflour

1/4 of a pumpkin

2 x sweet potato

3 big handfuls of spinach

Steamed and roughly mashed

Mixed with the following, pureed - 

1 x can of cannalini beans

1 x can of sweet corn kernels 

and 1 packet of little brown rice flour pasta.

Made enough for 15 days so it's a good thing he loves it!!

Only 7 school days left until Summer Holidays start

How has that happened.  According to Trilly as soon as she finished Prep she becomes a Grade 1er.  Doesn't have to wait to start Grade 1, she gets to be a Grade 1er all through the summer holidays.  Am getting a mixture of excitement and dread with the approach of the school holidays.  All the mothers that I mix with and I are planning to spend a lot of time together so the kids are not constantly reminding us of how bored they are without their friends around.  

I am compiling a list of things we can do during the holidays -

1/ Swimming Pool

2/ FunBugs (play centre)

3/ Plaster Fun House

4/ Geelong Waterpark (for when Jamie is on holidays) possible in conjunction with 8

5/ Cinema 

6/ Bowling or Laser Force

7/ Train down to Melbourne and either Museum or Luna Park

8/ Visit Mum, Dad and the girl cousins at Aireys Inlet

9/ Mini Golf

10/ A visit to Melbourne for a monday night dinner with the cousins

11/ A visit to John and Brig

Suggestions are welcome.

24 Morres St

I had to go measure the block today to make sure that the title matched what is actually fenced.  It's one of the original sub-divisions in Ballarat.  The agent and I measured it and it was exactly as on the title so that was good.

Also spoke to the council about applying for retrospective planning permits for the 2 interior walls that have been removed but not approved.  Sounds all fairly straight forward.  Just need to get accurate plans drawn up and then fill in the paperwork and pay a fee etc.  Not as expensive and I would have guest so that's nice too.

Bring on the weekend .. family, friends and chocolate :-)

Why jets-sharples

J- Jamie

E- Emma

T- Trillian

S- Sirius

So Proud 2

Just picked her up and it all went swimmingly.  She was the only one to have memorised her lines!!

So Proud

Last year before we moved to Ballarat we had to come up for an orientation as Trilly's new school.  We all (the parents of all the new preppies) piled into Pemberthy Hall and watched a presentation from the principal.  Then 2 representatives from each prep class steps up and told us a bit about the year they had spent in prep.  It was very cute and it was obvious that they had chosen the brightest 2 students from each class to participate.

Yesterday at pick up time Trill comes running over to me with a note from her teacher explaining that she had been chosen to represent Prep W at todays New Parent orientation.  She was SO proud!!  She stood up on the bench in the gazebo (where we sit and wait for the kids to finish school) and read out the sheet she had been given.

Once we got home I gave her a little bit of advice about public speaking .. stand up straight, look out at the crowd, speak clearly and loudly ... so she spent the evening periodically reading it, at one point being a bit distressed that the young man who was doing it with her was going to be better but that passed.

This morning she gets out of bed and shows me that she has memorised the whole page while in bed and stands up and looks straight at me and reads her speech without the paper.

It was very cool :-)

Can't wait to pick her up tonight to see how she went.