Marcus turns 14

Our big son hit 14 two days ago. He shot up over summer and had a few back problems as a result, but that seems to have settled down now. His main problem is that he is too busy.

Monday after school is flute ensemble, Tuesday and Thursday he has maths at college then soccer practice after school, and on Wednesday he sees his maths tutor for an hour to kick around scary advanced trig and calculus. Friday we have dinner with my mum and dad. For now the weekend is pretty free but practice matches will start soon.

This year Marcus did not want to have a party (probably because of exhaustion) so Elf's genius idea was a surprise midnight feast. We had dinner with Imp and Ed and the girl cousins, and it was supposedly going to be just a fun sleepover. Everyone else was in on the surprise though.

Elf prepared nacho makings, chocolate and marshmallows for roasting. After the kids were in bed, Ed and I moved the trampoline and I dug a little fire pit and arranged logs to sit on around it, while he hung christmas lights in the golden elm. Then he and Imp went home and we went to bed.

At 11.55 the alarm went off quietly, and I took out a bucket of kindling and got the little fire going. Michael and I had sourced long green twigs for the marshmallows. Once it was all crackling away Elf went and woke the kids. Marcus was genuinely surprised and delighted. It all looked wonderful and I took NO photos. Here is the setup by the light of day, however.

It was a lovely calm night, a bit too overcast for many stars though. We whispered Happy Birthday To You (next door's kids were sleeping not very far away) and just as we finished Winston chimed in with an appropriately quiet howl.

I was soon grumpy and keen to go back to bed. Michael was the last butt to be shifted, as he was on his haunches just loving poking various things into the fire. Eventually we got everyone back to bed.

After the midnight shenanigans Sunday kicked off surprisingly early, and we opened presents. Our gift to Marcus was a very nice leather Sherrin footy. It's a dream to kick, and unlike last time we got a new footy, Marcus didn't sprain his thumb right away.

So, happy birthday to our first child, dear boy that he is.

Michael birthday

On Sunday we celebrated Michael's 12th birthday with three of his mates; Elanor, Rohan and Amber, as well as cousin Miah. The five of them and Marcus watched a couple of movies at the 7D cinema, where you are strapped into a crazy jerky tilty thing while watching a 3D movie. They also pump bubbles into the air, but the weirdest thing is a scarfy thing that flaps around your ankles at odd moments.

Elf and I kept an eye on them on a monitor outside - I think I can say most of them enjoyed most of it. Then we had booked an hour on the arcade games. They rode motorbikes, shot rifles and threw basketballs until they were all exhausted, which was somewhat less than an hour.

Michael makes Michael Face 117A while Miah simply smiles

Marcus takes down some ninjas or pirates and/or aliens

Then we relocated to Mures famous fish & chip emporium for fried delights and ice cream. One of the attractive aspects of Mures is their free soda water tap. Another is the plastic owls installed around the outside tables to scare away seagulls and any other oclophobes in the area. Fun fact: rap artist Eminem is afraid of owls.

Come back Eminem, its not real! HEY BUT CAN I HAVE YOUR SQUID RINGS?

Michael Face 83 with Shrug

Michael had a lovely time and we think all his friends did. We had an after-party back at our place where they all tried to get into the hammock at once, before Amber's mum Wendy gathered them all up and took them away.

Weakened

Hi. Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz. Snork - zzzzz. OK, I'm sure I can do better than that. It's the tail end of a biggish weekend. I will rattle off the details.

Saturday morning was Little Athletics, for the last time this season, and possibly ever. They have been having a mini-championship, with ribbons for 1st, 2nd, 3rd right down to 10th in every event - which is a departure from the usual emphasis on personal bests only. As it happened we saw Marcus top the podium his massive discus throw last week, but he also did a state final qualifying time in the 1100m walk and came third in the javelin. Michael came third in the triple jump - we are actually delighted with these thirds as they both conquered an event that has been tricky for them this season. After easily winning his first javelin competition, Marcus has since had a lot of trouble getting the bloody thing to stick in the ground, which is mandatory.

I played Proper Soccer again, and I am starting to get a feel for my team. They are extremely limited, and it seems our fortunes each week are going to depend on who we can pull in to guest star for us. Our centre-forward is sixty years old. Yes. To be fair he has scored in both Summer Cup games. We have now had 1-2 and 2-4 losses. I am making some pretty naff mistakes each week but learning from them - it's been a long time since I did this stuff.

Today we had Marcus's birthday party at Zone 3 (laser tag), with 11 kids in all - Marcus and Michael, 4 from the neighbourhood, 2 cousins and three others from school. Elf made a piñata cake - with a solid (almost bombproof) shell of chocolate over it. Should have got a photo, sorry. Marcus went at it with a meat tenderising mallet, but it took a lot of punishment.

It turned into a very steamy day, and upstairs in the Zone it was fan-yourself-with-paper-plate time. The horde were called in for their first skirmish. Everyone else put jumpers and so forth in the Valuables Tub - Michael handed over Kings and Queens of England and Scotland which goes everywhere with him presently. I joined in and enjoyed it more than last time, because Michael knew what to expect and I didn't feel I had to follow him around. In fact in the run of things (you just blast away whenever you see a body) I shot him nine or ten times, then I felt bad, so I walked up and invited him to shoot me, which he did with glee.

It seemed to take forever to wind the party up - after 90 minutes we were shooed out of the party room, but we had told dropping-off parents to give it 2 hours, so then there was an extended loitering period. When we finally got home Elf and I went to sleep on couches.

Marcus received a Wii on his birthday, but on behalf of the whole family. No sooner had we drifted off to LaLaLand, than the boys next door, hopped up on sugar from the party, were in our loungeroom with their own Wii gear and the party was up and running again. Time for me to put on the radio earplugs and go and find something, anything to clean elsewhere around the house.

So - as I said, zzzzzzzz. As soon as I finish this sentence I am going to go and resume that beautiful, beautiful snooze I was having on the couch.

Mum turns 70

Our adorable mother turned 70 on Friday. She doesn't seem anything like my imagined picture of a seventy-year-old, so I am now updating my imagined picture to match. Try to keep up, you other 70 year olds! [to be fair this pic was taken in 2007]

I have to thank Mum's brother Peter for alerting me to the fact that this birthday was a biggie. In fact when he called my first reaction was "Er... do you mean sixty?" Peter was stuck in Hong Kong on a business trip and couldn't be at the party we had yesterday, but we are looking forward to seeing him down here very soon. The last time he was in Tasmania, a black and white photo was taken of him holding me - I'm wearing a very fetching size 0 romper suit.

It's amazing to think that Mum was born during World War 2, while her dad was away in New Guinea fighting the Japanese. The world has changed so much in that time.

Here in Tasmania in 2011, we had a big lunch in Mum's honour yesterday. There was much too much food, but that is standard. We started with a walk - out the back gate and then up, up, up to the very top of the hill. Before Mum and Dad moved down south, Mum went on quite demanding walks every Monday with a group of ladies. Yesterday's was just a trundle compared to that, but still too much for the boys, who turned back threequarters of the way up, taking Elf and Winston with them.

Shortly after we got back, Sally and Matt and Arthur arrived and the serious eating began. I bought some massive king prawns and made a curry coconut dip to go with. Dad and I were struggling with the whole de-veining thing, and I had to get Mum to come to the rescue. She grew up in Sydney where a bucket of prawns was about as common as fish fingers today. I also made a blue cheese dip which was just right - not too bland, but also not belting you around the head with bitey-ness.

Then we had lemon and dill salmon with roasted vegies. I bought the fish already marinated, and cooked up the violently green marinade to serve as a sort of olive-green gravy. The boys did not like the salmon, which is a shame because they love it when it's not gussied up this way. The fillets were all different sizes and I didn't quite match up the rare and well-done ones with the right people - but complaints were muted and it was generally well-received.

One of Dad's duties was to bring some of Mum's favourite music. We started with Andrea Boccelli, an Italian tenor who unfortunately hangs out with some bad 80s-style session rock guitarists. I put up with this as I ran around because I know he is dear to Mum's heart. When it finished, Dad put on the greatest hits of Roger Miller. During Chug-A-Lug I asked Mum - do you actually like Roger Miller? Mum was non-committal.

Sally made an amazing baked lemon cheesecake, and Mum blew out the candles in one go. I forgot to mention that I'd decided to make mocktails - as none of us are big drinkers and it would a) include the kids and b)make us less likely to doze off mid-afternoon. It was while I was mixing the second round of pineapple/apricot/cream frothies that I reflected it had been a bad day for my cholesterol-lowering campaign.

As is the way of these things, eventually the footy on the TV went on, people fell asleep (despite mocktails), and events noodled to a conclusion. I was dog-tired, went for a short lie down at the boys' bedtime, and crashed hard. Organising things is outside my comfort zone, and I think I had probably been over-revving my brain a little bit for the occasion.

Marcus among the marsupials

Today was Marcus's 9th birthday party (his actual birthday is tomorrow). Elf had the idea of taking everyone to Bonorong Wildlife Park, one step beyond last year's very succesful visit from the Reptile Rescue people. The only difficulty was getting a dozen kids out there, about 40 minutes drive from town. Imp and Ed came to the rescue with their immense 4WD, and a few parents organised to share drop offs/pick ups. It all worked out well.

Once the kids are past a certain age, I find working out what to do with them at a party is the hardest thing. The good thing about going somewhere like Bonorong (or the YMCA as we did a few weeks ago for Michael) is that you simply feed the kids and keep them under some semblance of control, and the rest just happens. For lunch we just barbecued sausages and onion and put them on bread, and set out some carrot sticks etc with dip, and avoided cutlery and plates entirely. Elf also sidestepped the giant cake transport problem by making about 40 beautiful chocolate cupcakes.

The ranger who took us on a tour was excellent. She introduced us to a blue tongue lizard, baby wombat, a koala (pretty much just a vertical wombat, apparently) and four lady devils. The devils were hilarious - they were attacking her with evil intent. All four of them were seizing her boots in their powerful jaws while she chatted calmly to us, prodding them away and shaking them off. They are approximately cat size, but they have the STRONGEST JAWS IN THE ANIMAL KINGDOM. After a while she sat up on the wall, so her feet were a bit out of their reach. One of them got a grip and hung on as she lifted her foot, until the devil fell to earth from about half a metre up. Then she pulled her feet right up on top of the wall, for the good of the devils who are not very good at falling.

This was not as funny as when she fed them (dead chicks if you must know) and the first one to grab it would set off at pace, always anti-clockwise around the pen, with the other three chasing like keystone cops.

The ranger said their eyesight is so bad and their brains are so dim that every time she goes in there to feed them, they assume she is a devil, and attack. Once they have established that she is really big and top of the pecking order, they back off. Presumably when she starts feeding them they vaguely remember that this is what happened yesterday, too.

The boys were not exactly rough with the kangaroos, but certainly casual.

Nom nom nom.

Can run faster than Usain Bolt. Allegedly.

On the drive out to Bonorong we had Avon and Reuben in the back with Marcus. At some point we were talking about Shakespeare - Avon and Marcus competing to be the biggest know-all about his works. Marcus has recently read and memorised one of the Horrible History series dealing with The Bard. Reuben said he had heard of Shakespeare, I think mostly through a cartoon called Gnomeo and Juliet.

Marcus: At the end of the real Romeo and Juliet, Juliet pretends to be dead. And Romeo is really sad so he kills himself. The she wakes up and sees that he's dead so she really kills herself too.
Reuben: That's really stupid.

Birthday part 1

I had my 42nd birthday last week. Ideally I like birthdays to just slide by without much fuss. I think it's because I don't like fuss generally, rather than any dislike of growing old. I actually find growing old quite interesting. Anyway, a small amount of fuss was made, and that was OK. My mum and dad drove down to spend a few days with us, and Elf cooked a nice curry dinner. On my actual birthday she had to organise a work event, so I cooked a nice salmon dinner for myself, Mum and Dad and the kids, and Sally and Matt came over too. I scored a couple of nice books as gifts, one on the history of Penguin book covers was particularly beaut [but I chose it so that is perhaps cheating].

Elf knew I wouldn't stand for a party, but she had a great idea instead. She sent stamped addressed envelopes and cheap 'n' cheerful blank birthday cards to all my friends she could find addresses for, and reminded them it was my birthday. The cards arrived en masse over a few days. It took me a while to twig that there was something afoot. The writing on the envelopes was suspiciously familiar, and the messages on some of the 30 cards betrayed bemusement and/or slight reluctance. They cracked me up.

Despite all this I was a bit of a sad sack for a lot of the week. Minor things kept going wrong (after the major thing, losing my glasses) and I had a continual feeling that if everything would just STOP ... ah, it would be so nice. But it didn't. Since New Years Day I have lost my wallet and glasses and my watch has stopped for good (ironically) - so in general I am not quite feeling myself.

Snakes In The Rain

Today, Marcus turned eight. The boys slept in. At 7.30 we heard some action - although Marcus was still asleep, Michael was quietly doing "explosions" with his hands under the doona. Pretty soon they were both up and about. Elf tracked down some great presents for Marcus; plastic spherical transformer things called Bakugan Battle Brawlers. He just loves them, and so does Michael.

Elf lined up the Reptile Rescue people to put on a snakes and lizards show for Marcus, Michael and a dozen invited friends. The reptile guys were quite hard to get hold of and pin down - Elf's persistence and perspicacity came to the fore there. But they were well worth the trouble, they were fantastic.

We invited everyone to meet us at Cascade Gardens, just up the road from home. The weather outlook was mixed, so we had our fingers crossed. The snake guys, Justin and Chris, arrived early, shook hands with Marcus and showed the boys the lizards in their tubs. They had an impressive large plastic bucket marked DANGER Venomous Snakes.


As the kids and parents arrived they got out the lizards and handed them around. They had blue-tongues (two adults, two two-day-old babies) and some lovely little mountain dragons.

Clockwise from above left: Lana, Marcus, Caleb, Adrian, Cameron, Michael.

After everyone had had good fun with the cuddleable reptiles, Justin and Chris brought out the non-cuddleables. First they each extracted a tiger snake, holding their tail and keeping the head away, curled around a special snake stick. The tigers looked very different from one another - one very dark, and the other quite green with a yellowish belly. Next they brought out a copperhead. He was much slimmer, kind of khaki. I was wandering around taking photos at this stage and didn't get a close look at the copperhead, but there is apparently a metallic orange-pinkishness about the headular area.

These and the tigers are highly venomous - a good bite would kill an untreated adult in about 5 hours. The little white-lipped or whip snake is less venomous, although Chris said new research suggests that they are capable of laying you low, as their venom varies a lot in toxicity.
Next Chris and Justin demonstrated (with a large rubber red-bellied black snake) how they catch a snake, how they release it, and then how to bandage a snakebite on the arm. The kids asked lots of questions and were very interested. Someone asked how to bandage a bite on the stomach or the back. Justin's advice was "Er... just do your best".

It was raining solidly by this stage, so we just handed around barbecues sausages in bread and left out the tricky stuff like plates and salad. The snake men took a break while people ate, and joined us afterwards for cake and sour worm lollies. Elf excelled herself, with a vivid green chocolate snake cake.

Elf laboured over a perfect potato salad that came home untouched, but having just eaten some at dinner I can say - spot on.

Once everyone had eaten, Justin and Chris broke out the lizards again. Parents and siblings arrived to collect the guests, and they too had a go cuddling lizards. Of all the things in the animal kingdom called "blue", the blue-tongue's tongue is the most rewarding. Eventually the snake men said their farewells. Just when we were wondering when we would get rid of everyone else, the rain kicked up a notch to Reasonably Heavy, and we finally moved off home to get dry and get coffee.

Michael turns six

Yesterday Michael turned six and we had (another) party at home for him. Last year was his first birthday that he actually seemed keen on - although even then he took some time to warm up. Yesterday he was on song right from the start.

He actually slept in. When we snuck in to check on him, he threw back the covers and said "Aha, I am six!" Due to our busy night on Friday we had not really organised anything, so we had to get presents opened and breakfast into everyone with a bit of haste. Elf (our presents-meister) had got him a book on Egyptian archaeology, and a book of very detailed classical paintings, where you have to find particular things in them. (Elf's mum Felicity pointed out that in general, no-one bothers with detail in paintings these days).

Around ten, visitors started arriving - we had six of Michael's schoolfriends with their big and little siblings and parents. We had a treasure hunt which somehow involved making animal noises - that seemed to go off OK. While Elf was hiding things around the garden for that, I supervised the destruction of a dinosaur piñata. I am not a big piñata fan to be honest, but this one went off reasonably well. Apart from that everyone just amused themselves. There was loads of very low-effort food, although Felicity made a beaut strawberry volcano cake to a design dictated by Michael. In a minor brain-fade I ordered 2 doz sausage rolls from the bakery, even though I KNEW they were the big ones. $48 worth of sausage rolls.

Michael scored some more nice loot; everyone seems to shop at the same two or three shops. Renee and Sophie made a great card - it featured two of Michael's favourite things: scorpions crawling up a volcano. Scout brought Michael a pot of carnivorous plants - they have already started taking their toll on our flies.

Elf marks 40th birthday with daquiri-fest

Elf turned 40 on Saturday. She told me ages ago that she wanted to have a cocktail party for her birthday, as mentioned back yonder. I said at the time, unchivalrously but honestly, that she would have to arrange that herself. I could not organise a function to save myself, and am not a naturally cocktailsy type of guy, I guess. She threw herself into it and I think it came out very well - she had a lot of fun.

Our main headache had been finding a place for 6 kids during the proceedings (Karri, Miah, our two, plus my visiting nephews). Elf finally turned to our family day care stalwart from early days, Allison Winchester, and she supervised everyone in the gracious grounds of Firthfield (Imp and Ed's rented sandstone gracious home).

The Cocktails Facilitator arrived half an hour prior to kick-off, and started taking over the kitchen. We had to surrender the freezer and half of the fridge to her frozen pre-mixed adult slushies. The family were all there from the get-go, including all 4 of our parents, Imp, Ed, and Elf's brother Fred and cousin Grace* who jetted in from Melbourne. My sister Sal and her husband Matt were there and met Elf's siblings for the first time.

Initially the CF lined up a set of Peach Bellinis, followed by a set of Strawberry Daquiris, etc. After a while she was taking requests. We had 38 guests, and I was too trying to talk to everyone to actually drink much. I must apologise to some regular readers who were there, it was very hard indeed to get in more than "hi" and "bye" with a lot of you. I am not adept at party strategy and the easy slip-n-slide from one conversation group to another is a skill I have yet to master.

We turfed everyone out at about 7.30 and started moving the family in groups down to the restaurant for dinner. It had been a pretty humid sticky day, and around the end of the party a cool change swept down the mountain and over us, accompanied by a bit of thunder. The colour of the light changed in a way I don't recall ever seeing - a very blue/white light, with all the warm tones completely drained out of the landscape. Freaky and beautiful. Just as it was my turn to go out to the car the heavens opened with big Singapore-style raindrops.

Dinner was at a Thai/Indian/But Mostly Thai place called Infusion. The food was excellent but I didn't enjoy the meal that much as we were split across two tables, and the kids were all at the other table. I was feeling stressed about whether they were eating, were they going to spill stuff, should I let the nephews have Coke when my kids aren't, etc etc. I was overtired and that didn't help.

Eventually it was over, everyone was carted home, beds were organised and I crashed into bed myself. Although Elf did all the organisation somehow I felt like I had run a marathon.

There are still 12 litres of adult slushie mix in the freezer if anyone wants them.

*Actually - Grace arrived mid-party. We were expecting her on an 8am flight. She rang about 7.30am just after Elf had left to pick her up. She was now due at 5.15pm. Elf doesn't have a mobile so we had all all sorts of larks trying to find a human at the airport who would pick up the phone and take a message to page her.

Marcus's 7th birthday spent on the greens

Marcus turned seven today. Elf masterminded the presents - a build-your-own-crystals kit, and a pair of very good little walkie-talkies. The WTs have been a hit all day.

We booked a party at Putters Adventure Golf for Marcus and 7 of his mates. They all had a great time, both inside chowing down, and outside putting. One of the dads and I led groups of four each up, down and around the 18 holes. Putters is built around a large slope, with dense little blobs of native bush and lots of water hazards. A few times I had to go back to the clubhouse for a spare ball or to help someone find the toilet, and I had to either walk through another group's game or take a compass and packed lunch and go scrub-bashing. Michael scamped about talking incessantly, which was handy for me to know where he was.

The kids loved it but Elf and I were first bemused and finally pretty furious with the slack service. When we first arrived I asked a girl if I could pay for the booking. She squeaked a bit and went looking for someone who knew what to do. A friendly tall youth came out of the kitchen eating a sandwich. He held the (quite tasty looking) sandwich in one hand as he looked through a book for a record of our deposit. After first suggesting we'd come on the wrong day, he found it, took my money and gave change. The receipt and notes missed my hand and flipped onto the counter because he was doing it all with one hand. It went downhill from there. I won't bore you with the details.

Back home the walkie-talkies came out again and the fun continued. The boys next door came over for a game of cricket. Marcus is bowling extremely fast on the 6-metre-long pitch, such that I find I have to start my bat swing just as he lets the ball go. While batting he has cleared the back fence several times this weekend, which under our current backyard rules gets him 12 runs. The backyard rules are now under review.

My speech

"Then, in 1977 I got my first pair of soccer boots. They were a moulded sole Adidas low cut boot with green stripes. My teacher that year was Mrs Gudauskas..."

Its 20 years since my 20th birthday!

Now that's a weird thought. I am turning 40 tomorrow, so as I type I am still in my mid-to-late 30s. Its the lunchtime of my life.

I had my party yesterday (Sunday) to take advantage of the pre-easter availability of interstate friends. Alex and Suparna from Melbourne stayed with us for a couple of days, en route to Alex's brother's wedding next weekend. They are very excited as Suparna is expecting a baby in five months time. They have been in IVF for a couple of years, so its a very big deal.

Friend of the Blog, Michael Lean also blew into town for the party. I was conscious that I couldn't compete with his deluxe salmon n' Grange Hermitage penthouse-style 40th wingding, so I concentrated on just not running out of beer. Michael L. gave me (among other things) a teabag squeezer. I have just about scalded my fingerprints off doing this manually, so its about time I had a utensil.

A big surprise was when John and Carmen McGlasson (also blog veterans, also from Melbourne) walked in. Over dinner the night before I had been cursing their names for not responding to the invite. Of course I didn't expect them to come, they have three sub-driving age girls who have a social round that makes Paris Hilton look like a hermit. Yet there they were in my house!

Halfway through the night it struck me how fantastic it was to be able to take something into the kitchen and show Michael and John in person, rather than scanning/photographing it and writing something about it on the blog.

Also in attendance [which makes me feel I should write what they were all wearing, so let say they were all wearing salmon-pink chiffon] were Matt and Mem, Nick and Anna, Elf's sister Imp who is still a houseguest, Mum and Dad, Lindy and Sam, Rob and Mel, and their respective anklebiters Edie and Callie, Lily and Katherine, Ellen and Tristan and Olivia. The kids all seemed to have a great time, with minimal need for correctional barking.

I asked that people bring no gifts [or wolves]. Nevertheless I scored a beautiful bunch of books, many bottles of wine and also a rotary cheese grater that I am planning to convert for use as a super-8 camera. I will make a sensitive nuanced documentary about... lets say the Devonport singles scene of the 1970s... then I will visit my parents-in-law, show them the film on a DVD and then reveal that I made the film with their cheese grater. Talk about a wow factor.

We had a bit of wasp problem all day yesterday. It was humid and about 28° and the charred kebabs seemed to turn them on. While I was trying to open Alex's present I had to interrupt myself 2 or 3 times to shoo out wasps. One settled on my foot. I checked with Alex that the (still wrapped) present wasn't breakable, then brought it down on my foot - killed the wasp, and bruised my middle toe grievously. The present was a branding iron. I had been holding it by its handle, and hadn't really grasped the weight of the other end. Its the letter 'C', by the way.

Most of the guests had departed, full of light beer and trifle, when we wound down the afternoon with a kick of the footy. I went for a walk around Salamanca and the docks with Alex and Suparna, which was very nice. I haven't been for a nice stroll with grown-ups for a very long time. Pizza for dinner. Then off to bed, still 39.

Elf turns 38

My delightful yet camera-shy wife had a birthday on Wednesday. She does not trust my natural taste in gifts, so she specified what she would be receiving. From me a 30 metre garden hose (in beautiful rose-spattered wrapping paper), and from the boys the new Alexander McCall Smith book. Mum and Dad were going to get Elf a travel rug. She graciously declined and requested a bale of barley straw.

I baked a flourless chocolate cake that I found on the www. It was a corker and it has inspired me to break my cast-iron "no recipes" rule of blogging.

Jill Dupleix's 'Incredibly Wonderful Chocolate Cake'

INGREDIENTS
250g dark, bitter cooking chocolate
150g castor sugar
150g butter
100g ground almonds
5 free-range eggs, separated
icing sugar

METHOD
- Heat oven to 180C. Melt chocolate, sugar and butter in a bowl over a pot of simmering water.
- Remove from heat, stir thoroughly to combine, mix in ground almonds, then beat in the egg yolks, one at a time.
- Beat egg whites until stiff and peaked, and stir a couple of spoonfuls into the chocolate mixture to lighten it, before gently folding in the rest.
- Turn into a buttered and floured 20cm round tin and bake for 40 to 50 minutes. [Elf's cake tin tip is: after buttering and flouring the tin, pop it in the freezer until the cake mix is ready.]
- Leave to cool before removing from tin.
- Dust with icing sugar to serve.

The Sun shines on the Planet Party

Well, the party season is over for another year. We had Marcus's Planet Party here on Sunday. It took a lot of preparation and planning, but it was all worth it, as it went off very well.

Marcus had a great time, as did all the other kids. Even the parents seemed to find it reasonably pain-free, which is not something you can always say about kids' parties. There were no tantrums, wrestling was kept within acceptable limits, and every child (over two) won a prize. Lana, one of my favourite other-people's-kids, asked me during the grape-and-spoon race "Excuse me, but will we all get a prize for doing our best?"

Marcus garnered a lot of great presents, and people even embraced the theme with the gifts - quite a few flying-type space-rockety things. Anna dressed her girls up in special space-costumes she made during the week. My Mum made planet-theme hats for herself and Dad from papier maché. Mum's just didn't come out right, so she left it home and wore a special "Milky Way" scarf instead, that came in very handy later as a blindfold for games. Dad proudly wore his silver wingéd helmet (as made famous by the Roman god Mercury).

The weather held up. We had planned a lot of indoor things as we were expecting rain, but the kids kept gravitating (side-splitting space pun) out to the back yard. We also had things for them to do out there, so that was fine. Eventually we had to herd them back in, for cake and singing and then again later for my blindfolded pin-the-sticky-star-on-the-globe game.

The aim of this game was to get the sticker as close as possible to Tasmania. Marcus cheated quite transparently and got his sticker right smack bang on the Central Highlands. His next legitimate guess wasn't bad, it was about 1000km south of Albany, WA. Blake was the winner by a few hundred km, with his sticker in the McDonnell Ranges. Ebony landed in Argentina and Lily landed in Botswana.

The guests drifted off around twelve, and we collapsed in a heap. It was only a brief lull, before leaving the kids with Mum and Dad for a couple of hours and going off to look at light fittings.

Marcus turns 5

Today is Marcus's fifth birthday! Some sort of milestone for him and us.

We had a pretty challenging first year when he came along in 2002. He wasn't a happy eater, and we had lots of reflux and spent many hours coaxing him off to sleep on the couch, or walking endless circles. Up the hall, around and through the lounge room, out the door and up the hallway again. Bouncing and singing. I would do ten laps and then try to set him down in the cot. Ten more laps, and try again. I would say now that we made life hard for ourselves in some ways. We were still cuddling him off to sleep when he was almost too big to fit on our laps.

He has grown up and passed some of the kids who have always been bigger than him. I think now he's probably going to be in the 185-190cm bracket. He is having a terrific time at prep, although suddenly being at school five days a week is taxing him a bit. One wierd side-effect is that there are all these clothes he never gets to wear. Two days a week is not enough to exercise his non-school wardrobe.

Neither Elf nor I had bought a computer game in our lives, but for Marcus's birthday we bought him Cars: Radiator Springs Adventures as he loved the movie, and will do anything to get on a computer. We have a ration of about half an hour per week of computer time, but as he learns to do more and more things I can see there will be a need to expand this. I have been sitting with him while he plays for about 18 months, but increasingly I am wandering off and coming back when he calls for help.

Michael likes the computer, but he has a very imperious attitude - essentially he gives the orders and I do the mousework.