My husband is currently on his way to Wellington, New Zealand. Let me say that again, he is flying in an airplane, leaving Australia, to visit another country! Progress! We now have a travel bubble with NZ, yahoo! ✈️

My daughter wrote to Scott Morrison (Australian Prime Minister), to advocate for proper vacation time from school. During the school holidays, the kids are expected to complete homework from each class before they return to school two weeks later. This clearly isn’t a “break” from school. There isn’t a proper rest when one must continue to work on school assignments. She decided to write to our PM to let him know that this practice was unfair. She was very pleased to receive a (form) letter back a couple of weeks later. I’m sure Scotty isn’t working on changing anything anytime soon but it was cool for her to communicate with a politician.

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My littlest has started Taekwondo two times per week. It seems crazy in hindsight that I’ve now signed myself up for five nights a week out of the house for activities, but she loves it. She has been dragged all over Oz and the UK with climbing activities for her siblings so it seems only fair that she have her own sport.

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Preparing for Miss C’s birthday party. She decided she wanted a cooking party so we found a commercial kitchen that hosts parties for young chefs. It always seems wasteful to put together party bags for the guests with plastic toys and sweets so we decided to make our own this year. We went with the cooking theme and purchased reusable glass jars and filled them with chocolate chip cookie mix. They are so cute and I love that the kids can go home and bake something plus they have a really great glass storage jar in the end.

During recess and lunch at school my son plays “down ball” with his friends. They are obsessed with the game and use every free minute to have fun with it. I love this and want to be supportive of their fun but also want him to have some lunch. At the start of the year, I realised he was coming home without having had a bite of food. Once we discussed the reasoning (games and fun are more exciting than sitting down for lunch) we came up with a plan. He suggested a sandwich would be best so that he could eat and play. A sandwich that wasn’t cut in half because he couldn’t walk away from the game to go and get the other portion. So since the start of the year I have been challenged with making one handed foods to be consumed during a ball game. We make quesadillas, pizza, sandwiches of all sorts, sushi hand rolls, falafel wraps, etc. Even snack time is interesting: a banana, apple, a whole carrot or cucumber. Haha! I think it’s wonderful that they are having so much fun and it’s hilarious to come up with one handed foods. If you can think of any suggestions to keep it interesting I’d be very grateful. Hmm, just thinking of hot pockets with an assortment of fillings….