HAVE YOUR CAKE...

In the morning, we celebrated a first birthday party for our friends' little lady.

 And afterwards, I took Justice to his friend Morgan's 10th birthday party...  LOTS of yummy treats!

INVITED

We were invited to a dinner event that one of our customers, Sustainable Catering, was holding.  Unfortunately Will had to work, but Justice and I got dolled up and headed into Brisbane on a school night to see them in action.

We arrived to a delicious display of lovely breads...

and a roasted feast table:

suckling pig, goose, angus beef, turkey and root vegetables.

These were all served "under the apple tree" 

I thought that the caramel apple tree was SPECTACULAR -
I can see (Tara) someone doing one of these at a birthday party - such an impression! 

As well as the feast table, there were several stations, one did winter mushroom broth,
one did a sand crab and popcorn shoot petite salad,
and the third was sweet potato ravioli with burnt sage butter sauce. 

Presentation was everything -

the portions and the plating were exceptional

- and everything was about how well they could do it - they even made the ravioli in front of us!

There were heaps of servers (some dressed like this monk chick) and so many canapes! 
They heralded each course of canapes... literally! 
SO COOL...

The church is stunning, and proved an impressive space for such an event! 

There was live music, and I missed the chance to catch a photo of my little man busting some moves on the dance floor!

The set up was deliberately atmospheric

The desserts (apple pie, warm donuts and these!) were lovely. 

And at the end we got a little take home gift, which was popcorn shoots, the sandcrab recipe and presentation boats and mini chopsticks... 

 I had a great time, definitely worth the late night. 

If only I could fix the red eye...

ROBOTS...

Robots are cool.  Legos are cool.  Lego robots are VERY cool!  I like the face on this robot Justice built... its some Star Wars thing.  STAR WARS LEGO ROBOT... its a bit overboard on the favourite things!

These school holidays...

Well, last school holidays began literally right after my car accident - as in the next day - so I think it might be no surprise that I just didn't seem to get in any sort of super fun.  Not a bit.  It was disappointing, particularly as one of the plans Justice and I had made was to get into Brisbane a few different mornings and walk around the city, checking out some of the many churches and taking pictures of them and the older cool buildings...  I think that we are going to have to do that next summer break.  Its such a great idea, and over the summer I have no school commitments, so that should make it easy to stick to.

Well, I think the lazy school holiday left me feeling guilty, because these school holidays (2 weeks long) I definitely over compensated!  Justice had two full days of soccer camp (June 25&26), which he loved.  He won recognition for PERSERVERANCE - and it came in the form of his choice of new training gear.  He picked Holland.  I don't think he was thinking of his Oma (my mother) at the time, but he liked when I pointed out that he had picked her team.

On the 27th, Justice did another Queensland Gifted and Talented Association Kid's Challenge Day.  He chose to do the Survivor Challenge.  It was teams of nine to eleven year-olds (and my eight-year-old!) doing hands on maths and puzzle challenges.  One of the coolest things!  They had to leave the room, look at a lego house, and then recreate it by memory, remembering design, colour and dimensions.  they had to build a structure that would protect an egg when dropped.  They had to ... well, I wasn't there, but those were the ones that I understood from the debrief in the car afterwards!

The following week he did five days of sports camp.  Will and I went and watched him do rock-climbing on Friday morning.  He was quick and agile and fearless up there!  We have done this same sports camp three other times, and each time we enrolled with a friend also on his team.  This time we just signed up and he was with all kids he didn't know.  I'm not sure if it's age, or interest or the group he had - but he was so excited about the whole thing this time, and genuinely seemed to have the best time!