Another successful outsourced party.

Last weekend Simon and Ben had a combined birthday partly at the local laser skirmish place. The parents got to sit back for two hours while the kids ran around in the indoor play centre and shot at each others with laser guns. One of the expat mums, Jude, volunteered to bake a cake - it was an awesome minecraft cake.

The baker and her helper (Reg)

Beach Weekend.

A few weeks ago, we had two sunny days over the weekend -- Global warming must have started. It was time for the beach. On the Saturday we drove to West Bay, which is about 30 minutes west of Weymouth. Sarah wanted to go there because it was where they filmed a popular recent tv mini series about the murder of an 11 year old boy by someone "close to the family". The murderer wasn't revealed till the very last episode. We had also been warned that in real life a woman had died there last year when she was sun baking close to the cliffs and there was a cliff fall. Needless to say we gave the imposing cliffs a wide berth. West Bay, also known as Bridport Harbour, turned out to be very charming and it had an awesome park. After a play at the park, we got an ice cream and strolled around enjoying the sunshine.

The next day we headed off to Studland Beach in the opposite direction to the day before. Here we went to one of the quieter beaches called South Beach where there was a little cafe that provided free beach chairs, shovel and spades and cheap tea. We enjoyed 2 hours in the sunshine with the kids playing happily on the beach and left just as the clouds rolled in.

Sarah had spoken to the cafe owner about a good place for lunch and we got a recommendation for a great old pub up on a hill overlooking Corfe Castle. Unfortunately by now, with no sun it was too cold to sit in the beer garden. The kids had the usual fish and chips.

After lunch we went home and had to clean off all of the sand - just like being back in Australia.

The Lady Ella and the missing Knights.

The first day of the school term was St George's day and the kids had to dress up as knights and maidens. Thanks to crafty Chris, Ella had a fancy hat to wear for the day. Sarah and Ben made an intricate knights helmet out of cardboard and foil. Simon cut a few holes in cardboard box and managed to win a prize for it. Sadly no photos were taken of the boys.