Melissa McEwen’s blog

yesterday while for the rest of the country it was officially Melbourne Cup day, here is in Canberra its title was "Family and Community Day". And we had a public holiday, which was lovely.

To make the most of a midweek day off and the arrival of sunshine, it was over to Steve and Shell's for a bbq.

Between them Zachary and Sebastian captured the afternoon in photos.

So normally we aren't very big on Halloween, both here in Australia and here in our household. But this year the conjunction of the 31 October being on a Saturday night and having recently moved, led Jasmin to host a Halloween party. And let's face it, we quite like dressing up. Any opportunity really. So this was all rather fun.

Zombies are very popular in our house. Amongst the grown ups anyway. So it was really inevitable that someone would dress up that way. James did much research to make appropriate gory wounds and it all ended up involving liquid latex, tissue and bits of plastic. Oh, and lots of make up.

I decided to stick with the traditional, and made myself into a witch. More Bellatrix than Wicked Witch of the West given I went with the white base rather than the green...

Sebastian and Jude were torn between skeletons and pirates, so we ended up with a compromise and went for skeletal pirates. And Zachary just wanted to be a knight, although as he later told us he was Anakin Skywalker, I think he got his knights in shining armour confused with his Jedi knights!

The party was much fun with Rachel as a pink fairy, Andrew Dr Horrible, Steve a cowboy (leading to a number of cowboy VS pirate incidents), Shell as Sandii and other Andrew as Neo. Our hostess was a feisty pirate wench. We got eaten by mosquitos but nonethless there was much making of the merry, until it became clear that Zac was not going to submit to the watch-tv-til-you-fall-asleep trick, and we figured we had better drag him home about 11pm or face the consequences of the ridiculously overtired 3 year old all the next day. As it was, he woke at 6.30am, watched Monsters Inc through twice before his parents got up and was then beside himself with cranky tiredness til he went back to bed for a 4 and a half hour nap at 11.30am!

Inspired by James' current hockey playing, Sebastian and Jude have started Minkey - mini hockey - on Tuesday afternoons.

They do some drills and training, and then have a game or two.

They are both very enthusiastic about it, and, actually, not too bad and manage a fair bit of ball control. Jude just needs to concentrate a bit more.

On Tuesday they ended up playing each other. While Sebastian's team ended up winning, this was hardl a surprise given that his team average a head height taller than Jude's - and this was jsut a random selection. And Jude took it all in good part.

This week Zachary and I went along with James to watch the boys. Unsurprisingly, Zac was not satisfied with watching alone, and wanted to play himself. At first he was satisfied with hitting the ball around with me at one end of the field. After a while of that though, he decided he wanted to be on the field with the others, leading me to have to retrieve him several times.... But let it be said, Zac himself can hit a ball quite handily, so there is a possible hockey future in his not-so-distant future as well.

The humble spud was our feature ingredient for another much anticipated Iron Chef occasion - this time it was a Sunday lunchtime at Rachel's.

This meant that all the small boys had a fabulous time chasing chickens, who were wise enough to hide under the bushes for much of the afternoon.

As the weather ended up being rather pleasant, we got to eat outside in the garden. originally we had envisaged Iron Chef potato as a winter event, but time passed us by and we are into spring.

After commencing with some truffle and potato chips, we moved into the feast proper.

Potato balls with feta wrapped in potato strands and deep fried.

Squid and potato and bean salad.

Potato pizza.

Potato and zucchini rosti with smoked salmon.

Potato galette.

Shepards pie.

Proscuttio wrapped mashed potato.

And let me just say this - it was delicious. And surprisingly unstodgy. Very pleasant to eat and drink outside, although the sun was just a touch harsh when not behind a cloud, so for dessert we retired inside.

Dessert included an interesting array of dishes - potato doughnuts, lemon potato pudding with apricot sauce, wild lime marmalade tart with a potato pastry base and sweet potato espresso pudding (which was slightly cheating as it had no normal potato, as Zac would call it).

Food was fabulous as always, company was wonderful, sunshine present. There are few better ways to spend a Sunday afternoon.

Next Iron Chef up - honey!

Before I could torture the boys on Saturday by taking them to the supermarket, I let them pay a visit to the park to run around in that rare commodity of late, the sunshine.

Visiting the ducks is compulsory when Zac is around, so this time we took some bread as well to feed them. We even got to see some ducklings.

Then it was time for some general playground fun.

The flying fox

The fireman's pole

And the see-saw were all popular

But mostly the chance to run around in the sunshine was what we all wanted.

And very proud he is of it too!

While Sebastian did most of the work on the puzzle, Jude, Zac and even Me-Me leant a hand.....

A visit to the Australian War Memorial is always a popular outing with the big boys, and I think this visit was the first time that Zac really enjoyed it as well. As you can see from above, the planes in the aircraft hall quickly got his attention.

We all enjoyed the current display of World War I aircraft in ANZAC Hall. Not sure being a pilot would have been my first choice at that stage in history.

Sebastian was keen to staying for the Striking by Night show, but Jude finds it a little bit much, so he and James went to make a head start on Vietnam. Zac stayed with us, but as the sound and light went on, Piggy got a bit scared and so went and sat away from the action a little. I of course find it unbearably sad - the whole War Memorial in fact - the idea of so many people who died and continue to die in war. It is so hard to conceive how humans can continue to do this to each other, and just such a horrible tragic waste.

Anyway.... We went and saw the helicopters in the Vietnam area and Zachary literally hit the deck early in the helicopter sound-and-light show - as soon as an explosion went off, he knew where it was safest. It was then their chance to pilot a helicopter themselves in the Discovery zone - and in Zac and Sebastian's case to try out sleeping in submarine bunks as well.

It was then time for a nice walk back through the gardens to the car - except for one small problem - Zachary refused to be parted from the helicopter. He was very committed to piloting it - switches and buttons and the joystick and everything.

In the end he was very unceremoniously carried from the building, and you can see below his displeasure at having to leave. I think he'll be happy to go back again.