Jason is OLD

Jason has finally left his youth behind him and is THIRTY. To celebrate, he wanted TRIPE.



And ESCARGOT.


Apparently the TRIPE is the DISH OF THE YEAR (see Jason's fingers for proof).

This is breakfast - salmon omelette with potato, spinach and strange german sausage hash. We were at the Halls Gap Hideaway for the birthday weekend, and fancy breakfasts are obligatory.

On the way home from Halls Gap, we drove around Ballarat for HALF AN HOUR looking for a BOWLING ALLEY. Since we didn't find one, we went bowling in MELTON instead.


Despite Jason's pre-game bravado, I won the first one, and Jason the second. Yay me!!

Crochet ducky and fishy

I made a crochet ducky for Leong. He is called Chet. But Leong keeps forgetting he called him Chet, so he is also called Ducky.



The cat has also somehow been called Fishy because that is what its breath is. Here is Fishy admiring my crocheted blanket.

Fair shake of the sauce bottle - Ross & Jay become Ostrylns

Ross steels himself for the traditional Australian armpit greeting from Dan.

See, that wasn't so bad, was it.

Andy welcomes two new cobbers with a bottle of Oomoo.

Jason eats his first ever lamington. All he needs now is a vegemite sandwich and some pavlova and he won't be invisible!

Grace shows off her plate of cheezels, lamington, pavlova and rissoles.

Bonne fete ti-loup!

Un beau paquet de maman pour son petit garcon.

Sock Monkey IV - Vanuatu Vacation

While sock monkey was playing giant chess and just chilling out, I was working too bloody hard, but at least sock monkey was having a good time.

Jason le petit Australien

Jason became an Australian citizen on Thursday - he is finally allowed to wear shorts and thongs, and use the word 'strewth'. Here he is taking the oath (under God!! He thinks he got put in the wrong group). Can you spot him?:

Here he is getting his certificate from the mayor of Yarra.

Here is the mayor of Yarra pointing at my mother so that Jason will wait and pose for her. My mother took about half an hour to get her camera out, so she only held the ceremony up briefly.

Here is Jason finally getting his photo taken by my mother. You can see that the mayor has already lost interest.

Here is Jason getting some sort of medallion from Dick Wynne, Housing Minister and Member for Richmond. Mr Wynne is shaking Jason's imaginary hand. He did shake the real one later.

And here is Jason getting a real, genuine, made in China koala from the Carlton Rotary.

I waved my flag so enthusiastically when Jason came up that it broke! But here we are with some new ones.

Tarte a l'erable

One more to cross off the list...