Category: Family & Parenting

Family & Parenting, Food Glorious Food, Historical reenactmentLeave a comment

Queensland dispatches

mimbles

I’m posting from Brisbane, we’ve just spent two days at Abbey Medieval Festival. We’re happy, tired and broke. And the kids are trying to kill each other. Fun times. Somehow or other, despite Dave, Tom and I all having the horrible lurgi all week we managed to get all the post-Winterfest laundry done (all right, Adam did the laundry) and get ourselves packed up and ready to head off to Queensland on Friday morning. We were on the road at 6:30am, Adam did the driving, I was no use drugged up on Codral and snoozing most of the way. A … Continue reading Queensland dispatches

Family & Parenting, Food Glorious Food, Historical reenactment, Jewellery8 Comments

What we did at Winterfest

mimbles

After a frantic week of shoe making, cloak hemming and costume tweaking we were more or less ready for our first whole family participation in a Huscarls camp. This was a paid gig for the group and our job was to come along, look authentic, talk to the public and have fun. I think we managed to meet all those criteria fairly well. We arrived at about 8:00am after stopping off to pick up firewood at the servo. Helped with the last bits of setting up camp, fortified ourselves with bacon and egg rolls, mini Dutch pancakes, hot chocolates and … Continue reading What we did at Winterfest

Family & Parenting, Historical reenactment5 Comments

Winterfest

mimbles

This weekend we will be getting dressed up as vikings and hanging out at Winterfest with the Huscarls. I’m looking forward to having a play with my longbow and watching the very gorgeous falconry displays. Jousting, fighting displays and a working trebuchet also promise to be lots of fun. So, if you’re in Sydney and at a loose end this weekend come along, it’ll be awesome, I promise! Winterfest 2008 5th and 6th July, 2008Marsfield ParkCulloden Road, North Ryde(opp. Golf Range adjoined to Macquarie University)10.00am- 5.00pm Saturday & Sunday The draft timetable (which will in all probability have changed by … Continue reading Winterfest

Family & Parenting9 Comments

Ambitions

mimbles

Tom has ambitions. Plans. I’ll let him tell you about them. I am going to run a store. When it’s built I think lots of people will like to come and it will be a costume store. I think I would like to build it in Parramatta. It will be colourful and have some masks on the walls. It will have things like Marvel costumes and some won’t be Marvel but lots will be from different types of movies. There will be things like Batman, the Joker and Catwoman and also some of them will be The Shredder and Casey … Continue reading Ambitions

Family & Parenting, Food Glorious Food, Historical reenactment, Stuff About Me6 Comments

Adam and I had been trying to think of things to do with the kids…

mimbles

…and then I followed a link on Blue milk’s blog to Gever Tulley giving a brief talk on the topic of 5 dangerous things you should let your kids do. Now we’re positively full of ideas! http://static.videoegg.com/ted/flash/loader.swf I emailed the link to the video to Adam and he replied thusly: Perhaps we could do all at the same time, I have an old laptop. We couldgive them a pocket knife they could use it to disassemble the laptop whileit is on fire and ripping music, in the passenger seat of the MPV….. See? Fun for all the family 🙂 Seriously … Continue reading Adam and I had been trying to think of things to do with the kids…

Family & Parenting, Pets and Other Wildlife5 Comments

Introduction time

mimbles

Meet Clara. She brought one of her toys with her when she came to live with us. She’s pretty keen to have people play with her (note slightly blurred tip of the tail, there’s some high speed wagging happening here). This afternoon I bought her a new toy, she’s not so keen to share that one. Nope, really not letting go. But it’s still kind of fun to have playmates. I was up at 6:30 this morning for walkies and the kids were out in the yard after breakfast running around with her, then back there again this afternoon. I’m … Continue reading Introduction time

Family & Parenting4 Comments

This was much easier than making a dragon cake

mimbles

Dave’s 11th birthday party was a big success, the boys all had a great time playing Dungeons and Dragons. I was by no means sure that it would work out today as none of them had ever played before, but all went well under Adam’s expert GM-ing and by the time we were half-way through the session they were all asking when they could come back and play again. Actually, I enjoyed it too, it’s many years since I last played any RPGs, I hope this will be the start of regular games. My level 1 thief did quite nicely … Continue reading This was much easier than making a dragon cake

Family & Parenting, Stuff About Me3 Comments

That was the week that was

mimbles

It began with a weekend of not much, though I did manage to take David bowling on Sunday morning, we won’t talk about my score, I’m getting worse instead of better. Monday was supposed to be my first day to myself with nothing in particular to do in ages, instead I ended up with Caitlin at home with a lurgi. I spent the day sorting out my bead collection into some new storage containers, fun but of dubious importance in the hierarchy of stuff that needed to be done. Monday afternoon I went for a parent/teacher interview with Tom’s teacher … Continue reading That was the week that was

Family & Parenting3 Comments

Tom, on being asked to clean his room

mimbles

“WHY DO I HAVE TO DO EVERYTHING? I’M NOT YOUR LITTLE SLAVE YOU KNOW!!!!” Can’t imagine where he got that line from…. It’s a good thing it was Adam on the receiving end of this because I, in the next room, completely failed the do not laugh at your child’s outrageous rudeness test and guffawed audibly. That, and the fact that, had I been in the hot seat, the laughter would have been swiftly followed by terrible retribution as the screaming protests continued. My reserves of patience had been exhausted much earlier in the day and this particular performance even … Continue reading Tom, on being asked to clean his room

Family & Parenting, Jewellery, Stuff About Me3 Comments

There was something I was going to tell you….

mimbles

…now, what was it? Errr, let’s see. I gained 0.2kg this week. Our iinet connection was installed today against all odds, which, YAY! But in the process the phone socket in the kitchen for our Optus cable land-line was sacrificed so now the answering machine/base station is plugged in to the socket in the study downstairs and we’re using one of our secondary handsets instead. I sold two necklaces last week, so there’s another 2008 goal ticked off. David and I went bowling on Sunday morning, my scores were 96 and 69, the symmetry is nice at any rate. I … Continue reading There was something I was going to tell you….