"The Easter Bunny Show"

The Easter Bunny Show is also known as The Sydney Royal Easter Show. Don't be fooled, the only bunnies you will find are in the animal section and you will not find anything especially Easter ish in all 100+ miles of this "show." This misnomer was especially irritating to CH as he was really confused on when we would actually get to the Easter Show. Despite the misnomer, it was terrific! The Show is best described as the biggest and cleanest fair you can imagine. It is HUGE! Gigantic, you actually can not imagine how big it is! And it is so clean even the animals don't really smell as bad as they do at any other fair I have ever been to. We went this year and had a ball. We arrived early and beat most of the crowds. I hear driving out there can be awful but we left early and the weather was not the greatest so we had no trouble getting to Sydney Olympic Park, and no trouble parking. We stayed all day and even skipped our nap we had so much fun. Crazy, I know! 

My pictures show all of the kids stuff. There is so much to see and do no matter what your age or interest. I would have loved to have spent more time in the fresh food dome, they had all kinds of things to taste(wine and chocolate!), learn, and see. The cakes and the crafts and art looked impressive! You could spend three days at the show and not see everything!

Toward the end of the day, you could really feel Fall in the air. I have so many good memories of Fall and fairs and none of those memories contained Easter. Time for a new norm and a new nostalgia I suppose!

Sheep Shearing

Alpaca...aka palpaca

Fancy cow stall complete with curtains! 

Fonzy, Oz's tallest steer!

Hot Air Balloons, we spent $75 riding rides. I hear family day you can ride 2 for 1! 

CH is a "roller coaster" enthusiasts! We were shocked! He cried when he had to get off the rides. The usual daredevil CM cried and asked to get out of line multiple times! 

The flying elephants. He would not do a real smile for me...he would only do an embarrassed smile, as if he was ashamed of his fall from the spot as family daredevil.

This man ate 2 dagwood(corn) dogs, one hot dog, sweet nuts, and 1/2 corn on the cob, plus the snacks I brought from home.  At the end of the show he informed us his tummy hurt!

Riding Gordon, $15.

One of the highlights for us was the agility competition! We saw the  "minor leagues" and we all loved it!

Here Comes Peter Cottontail...

I LOVE LOVE LOVE Easter! As a Christian, it is the GREATEST holiday. Period. 

As a Mom it is also a super fun holiday. There are things to do together and little presents and surprises to give, and chances to see their little faces light up with excitement. Unlike Christmas there are no pressures or expectations on presents and at this age the amount of presents to give at Easter are the perfect amount for their attention span!

Painting eggs. I bought the kit from Bed, Bath and Table. The boys really liked this! For me, it was more fun than dying brown eggs. Although, the boys were pretty impressed with their dyed eggs.

We were lucky enough to get our hands on two imported PAAS kits. Aussies do not dye eggs.  Silly me, I tried to explain the concept of dying boiled eggs to Aussies. "So you boil eggs and you dye them and you hide them, and you also get plastic eggs and fill them with treats, like other small chocolate eggs..." With my weak explanation, I felt like I disgraced Easter.

Dying brown eggs is hard, I used our two kits to create a double strength dye, but our eggs were still sad! 

Hooray for chocolate bunny bottoms and self made baskets!

The Easter Bunny stopped in, ate our carrots, hid our double dye and choco eggs and left some cool stuff! Thankfully, the Easter candy selection is really limited so I was not too tempted to eat out of the kids baskets. It is mainly just hollow chocolate, even as a kid hollow chocolate bummed me out. No Reeses(this alone saved me 5 lbs), no jelly beans(although I heard these can be found in the dried fruit section of Franklins, ah yes the dried fruit section, of course), no Robins Eggs-oh Robins Eggs you little temptress(another 8 lbs saved), and...no Peeps. Thanks to a very sweet friend I did get to partake in the time honored tradition of eating so many peeps that I was high as a kite for a few glorious minutes and then as every over Peeper knows, the low was really low.  

He could care less about chocolate. He gave me a piece back today out of his snack and said "take it, I don't wan it, oh boy, I have raisins too!"

Just like Mama and Daddy he is cursed with a sweet tooth!

I wonder, if left unchecked, how much chocolate would he eat? During the egg hunt he let CH do the work to find all of the eggs and then while CH was distracted, CM "divided" them, putting ALL of the boiled eggs in CH's basket and ALL of the chocolate ones in his own basket. Diabolical. 

These are the only baskets I could find. They were at a "discount" store. I almost had to put our loot in pink bags. I was so happy to find these! Last year, I would have been mortified to bring these to the neighborhood egg hunt. Apparently, baskets are not so cool here.

We were invited to our first gathering at an Australian's House, we spent most of our time on their trampoline. I tried 'splainin Peeps to the Aussies and they looked at me like I was explaining how we Americans really enjoy eating dog poo at Easter.  

Egg Hunt Round 2. You gotta be fast if you want anything besides boiled eggs!

VICTORY! MORE CHOCOLATE!

"Look at my tummy, do I look fat? I have had 2 eggs, 1 bunny, one piece of Hannah's cake, one bunny merengue...can you tell?"

The Sydney Jewish Museum

I have struggled to put this post together because it is very heavy on my heart. I seem to do better writing about silly, funny, and absurd things that don't matter much than really tough serious and emotional things. A few weeks ago while on the Hop On Hop Off tour with my parents we "hopped off" at The Sydney Jewish Museum. This museum is a must do. The unique part of this museum is that all of the tour guides are survivors of the Holocaust. I found this to be an extremely moving experience. I could not pull myself away from our guide. She gave factual information and then she told her personal story.  I had a hard time holding back my emotions listening to her.  I have visited the Holocaust Museum in DC and although the Sydney Museum is tiny in comparison, the opportunity to stand in front of a survivor and have them tell you about what you are seeing in the displays and what they actually saw and experienced is immeasurable, it is priceless. I went without my children and will not take them for many years. When they are mature enough I feel like this is a message they must hear.

http://www.sydneyjewishmuseum.com.au/Home/default.aspx

Keepin' it local

We kicked off the upcoming 5 day Easter weekend with a little date night. We walked to Hawthorne where we started with amazing entree of ricotta stuffed zucchini flowers paired with the best little German riesling, picked for us by the uber nice and friendly sommelier. He had us at hello when he said, "oh your accents aren't that bad, I thought you had been here awhile." Thanks 'mate' yours is not so bad either! To be sure this is a huge compliment in his opinion.  The food was great, the wine was great, the wine list has wines from places other than Australia! The service was great and it is a 3 minute walk from my house, this could be bad and oh so good. Then we caught the bus for a 5 minute $2 ride down Military Road to Sushi Studio. Yum! Yum! Yum! When can I go back? I can not believe all of this fun can be accessed via public transport or your own two feet and it is all in my backyard!

A perfect "Fall" night let us enjoy wine and dine al fresco!

My seasons are upside down

One thing I never considered a challenge is proving to be a bit challenging. It is always the things you do not put on your "to obsess over list" that sneak their way into your psyche. Southern Hemisphere living means living in "upside down" seasons. It is Fall here, I love Fall, I love everything about Fall. The weather has a bit of crisp in the morning but the days are sunny and sometimes downright balmy, the nights are cool and Fall smells good, really good. I also love the rituals and routines that swing into gear in Fall...College Football, Halloween, and EASTER? What? Easter? screech...the music stops...people stare...Easter? I am all mixed up! This can't be! I should be snuggling into the couch to watch my Seminoles or The Great Pumpkin Charlie Brown. I had to buy a bunny tea towel and hang it in the kitchen so I could remind myself daily this is April, not September. I bought the kids all kinds of sweets for their baskets, we painted eggs, we will dye eggs tonight, we went to a Good Friday service this am. It just isn't sinking in that this is Fall and this is April and soon it will be June and the dead of winter.

             There is no better way to spend a Fall/Spring "Fring" day than at Balmoral Beach

                                                    

One man's dim sum is another man's yum cha

 We happened to be sightseeing in Chinatown/Darling Harbor on a Sunday so we seized the opportunity to indulge in yum cha (dim sum in the States). To me this is one of the greatest ways for a group to dine out together. There is constant activity, you get to try new things, the kids are entertained by the passing of carts and the flurry of bamboo baskets. It promotes conversation as you discuss, what you are eating(if anyone actually knows) what you liked, loved, hated and you do not have to decide your entire culinary fate in one step and you get to see everything before you order it. Think how many meals gone wrong this would have saved you and how many you would have done differently had you know what the actual meal looked like vs. what was on the menu. You can move through cravings and whims like a two year old. I want that and that and that and poof instant gratification. We went to a decent restaurant, Emperor's Garden. I am sure there are way better but this is where we ended up and we had a great time! I attached a link to a  list of SMH top ten, this way next time I am in the yum cha state of mind I will be in the know! One thing is confounding to me, if it is a "Chinese word/phrase" then why is it different in US English vs. Aussie English?

I smuggled nuggets in, there was no need as he was happily shoveling down green beans. On second thought, between two children we managed to annihilate 16 nuggets, 1/2 family serve of green beans, 1/2 bowl of rice. This is after banana rama mania, where just a half hour earlier they devoured 8 small bananas. Be afraid, be very afraid when you invite us to dinner!

                                                                              

CH attempts to "hug it out"

                                   

Someone has to protect the delicious little Emperor's Puffs at Emperor's Garden Cake and Pastry Shop! At just $1 for 4 tasty hot and now custard buns this could get ugly! 

You don't have to go home but you can't stay here!

When I was in college some of the "witty" bouncers used to say this clever line when ridding themselves of the responsibility of a bunch of young drunks who thought 2 am was still early. You can apply this phrase to most of the "hotels" here in Oz. Most are not "proper" hotels and you can not no matter how drunk you are stay there. Here is a little background:

The word "Pub" is used in Australia to indicate a bar, also known as "the local". They are often called "Hotel", the reason for this dates back to the days that licenses only allowed pubs to provide alcohol to traveling public, the presence of a few rooms ( who might never be used) then gave some impression that the rules being followed.

To confuse things we also have proper hotels that also call themselves hotels. How can you tell the difference? Well, if you are "gettin pissed"(Aussie slang over served/drunk) and then escorted upstairs via elevator and you wake up with in nice comfy sheets with a $350 room charge to your bar bill, you were at a proper hotel, if you are "gettin pissed"and thrown in a cab in hopes you will make it home or you wake up in the drunk tank at the pokey(that's jail, not an Aussie poker machine room) you were probably at a pub.

LK demonstrates one effective method for "gettin pissed"