What are the odds?

Yesterday, whilst picking up a bit of shopping after dropping Anika off at her piano lesson, I decided to buy a packet of fruit pastilles. I absolutely love the black ones. Lolly manufacturers please note, there is a huge market out here just waiting for you to make "black only" fruit pastilles. And please, I don't mean licorice flavoured (yuk), I mean the blackcurrant flavoured ones.


Usually in a packet you can expect around two or three black ones so when the first was green I wasn't worried. Then the next one was green, and the next one. Then the next one, and the next one and the next one....By the time I got a seventh green one I thought I'd check the labelling. A bit hard to do when you've unravelled enough to get seven out. The label didn't say anything about "green only" fruit pastilles so I unwrapped the next one - orange! Then green. I started taking notes:

I reckon that 10 out of 15 green ones is a bit unusual (unless workers at the factory also like the black/red/yellow/orange ones). And 1 out of 15 black ones is just unfair!

Lollies at this time of year remind me of Halloween. In Australia, thankfully, for a long time the only time we thought about Halloween was when watching "Meet Me in St. Louis". About 10 years ago suddenly Halloween was being pushed here. Catalogues came out with witchy costumes and everyone was encouraged to buy the lolly/chocolate specials to be prepared. It is probably a plot on behalf of the supermarkets to make money. Somehow I don't think it's ever really taken off in Australia. In that 10 years I think we've had about 3 children come to the door. Those 3 have received a chocolate and a gospel tract and have been happy enough with that. The Q family don't mind me buying chocolate in preparation because they get to eat it afterwards.

We'd much rather celebrate Reformation Day and the last of Anika's high school exams instead. With chocolate of course. 3 days to go!

The Secret of Eternal Youth (not the same as my daughter's blog)

Hubby received a new book in the post today*. It's a biography about Roy Smeck, a famous ukulele player (so I'm told). Hubby made the comment while reading the early part of the book that guitarists die young. Apparently Django Rheinhart died at 43, Eddie Lang at 31 and Charlie Christian at 21 (all guitarists). Hubby tells me they should have been uke players as well. Roy Smeck died at 94.

Today in Australia our oldest person turned 112. Wow!

Mike told me today that now he's a big boy of five he needs to do "long school like Matt". I'm sure Matt would be happy to trade places.

Yesterday when we went to church we noticed another group meeting for a seminar in a different room of the community centre where we meet. As I walked past I noticed signs promoting something called, "The Elixer of Life" and tables with bottles of some unknown substance. Without asking I'm thinking the bottles cost an arm and a leg, and I'm absolutely sure they won't make you live on this earth forever.

I'm not against anyone being concerned about their health, but far more important I think we should be concerned about eternal life:

"For in this way God has loved the world, in that he gave his only begotten son, so that anyone who believes in him might not perish but have life eternal." (Hubby's translation of John 3:16)

*"The Wizard of the Strings In His Life and Times Roy Smeck" Vincent Cortese, iUniverse, Inc, 2004

Invaders!

We're under attack! They're not coming one by one, they're coming in their tens and hundreds. Valiantly the Q family grab any weapon at hand and defend their home. We kill them - one here, one there, sometimes ten in one foul swoop. Undaunted the enemy regroups and attacks again, ever faithful to the queen they serve.


We feel the pressure and increase our defences. A protective moat is placed around our treasure:




But no!!! *audible gasps by the Q family as we realise that innocent civilians who have no interest in the treasure are falling into the moat and drowning* Such are the casualties of war.


One enemy soldier breaks through the defences and appears on a treasure sandwich made for Anika.


Will we win?? I suspect the battle continues until the annual pest control happens in January.
(innocent civilians being the ones that hang around fluoro lights)

A different perspective

Today we went up to the country town where we lived for 4 and a half years to meet up with others who had travelled in to celebrate the church's centenary. Lloyd was beginning to think that inanimate objects shrink with time. We left the town just before he turned 4 years old. Today he exclaimed over how the metre high wooden rail before the platform at the front used to be a "huge wall" and how the driveway at the side of the church building had shrunk in width. He's around 5 ft 10 in tall at the moment and everything seems so small. I remember going back to England with my Mum when I was 17 and she took me to the street where she lived as a child and she was surprised how small the street seemed now that she was older.


Maybe that's why Mike surprised us on the way up. We were following a car pulling a horse float and were a little bothered by how slow it was going up the ranges as we were a little late. In the picture I took from the front passenger seat you can just see the horse's pointy ears up the front (it was a bit clearer in real life):

Mike suddenly asked, "What is a cat doing in an ice-cream van?"

That's a mighty big cat.

School starts again tomorrow after the spring break, the last term for the year, hooray!

Spring Growth

Spring at our place never seems like spring until our Jacaranda tree blooms and just in the last couple of days it has really come out with its beautiful purple blooms. When I was at uni they were called the purple peril because it meant that end of year exams were looming. We'd walk over the purple carpet of fallen blooms on our way to the last couple of weeks of lectures.

It seems the Jacaranda isn't the only thing changing. Anika hasn't grown for a couple of years but in the last month or so has grown a centimetre.

This morning, just to add to the huge amount of evidence that males have "kitchen blindness", Hubby glopped some yoghurt onto his cereal and put the empty container into the sink for rinsing and recycling. We ate breakfast and later I was clearing up and saw that the "best before 13 Oct" yoghurt should have been thrown out as some unhealthy like organisms had made residence there:



Hubby had no idea of their existence as he glopped his yoghurt. I decided to turn the fridge up a few notches to accomodate the warmer weather and not accomodate the undesirables. Eek!

Things you see at the park

It's holidays here and this afternoon I thought a walk in the park might be good for unbending my back which was sore from helping Mike construct his birthday Lego. While feeding ducks we saw one of these:

It's a great cormorant which wasn't at all interested in the stale bread (not fish flavoured) but was standing just like the one in the picture. A little further around the pond a white egret was supervising the council machine which was removing the overgrown duck weed:

Around our home we also have some kookaburras which were laughing this afternoon to let us all know that our house is their territory. The ironic laugh is their first line of defence.

Once when Hubby was walking through the park on his way home from work he saw a car that was on fire. Around it people were casually doing what they normally do in the park e.g. walk the dog, jog, push small children on swings, BBQ the sausages. When he got home Hubby thought he should let someone know about it. He rang the local police and they asked, "What colour is the car?" Hubby's response, "Well, really black." He offered to ring the fire brigade but the police said no worries mate and a few minutes later we heard the fire engine.

As well as a few park trips it's been a season of birthdays. Lloyd had his 15th 8 days ago. I encouraged Mike to select a birthday cake from my book for his special day today. He decided he wanted a "knight cake" (his own invention). I had no idea how to construct such a cake so I suggested a "sword cake".

Here it is:I even had enough cake left over to make a shield. Hubby suggested putting Aslan on the shield. You are forgiven if you had to read this before recognising it as a lion. I only had a handful of lollies leftover from the movies yesterday with which to construct the face and ran out of spares for whiskers. Hubby just read this and said, "Oh, a lion, now I see what it was." Mike thought the ruby in the sword hilt was cool. When my Mum left the cake eating ceremony and promised to come tomorrow Mike said, "Yes, for my Christmas." Sorry Mike, 86 sleeps to go.