Gracie’s Life Experiment

Another pretty soggy day again!!! Poor Mum and Howell have had such rubbish weather all holiday. Not only has it been wet, it’s also been cold too. Brrrrrrrrr. There was a short break in the rain in the afternoon so we decided to get out of the house for hubby’s last day off work. We went down to Gymea. First stop – the Hazelhurst Galleries. Bugger – they’re changing the display tomorrow so the gallery itself was closed. Decided we didn’t really just want to go to the gift shop and cafe so moved on. Went down to the Camelia Gardens. As we got there the weather became glorious. As usual, I totally forgot that it closes at 4, so we whizzed round in less than an hour. Actually the nicest part was the part at the bottom just outside of teh park. There’s a lovely waterfall going down into Gymea Bay with loads of ducks (and really cute fluffly ducklings at this time of year). The weather changed again and pissed it down as we got back to the car. We made a quick stop at Nina’s Chocolates and spent ages deciding what chocolates to get. They were all so beautiful, but expensive ($8.60/100g) so we had to really agonise over which ones to pick.

As it was a fabulous day (weatherwise) we decided to go out for another little explore with Evie and the doggy in tow. We went to Poulton Park which is near Hurstville Grove. It took us a little while to find the entrance (hubby didn’t bother to find out which road it was on and the GPS had no idea it even existed). There’s a really cool playground there. There’s a younger toddlers play equipment area and an older kiddies (and parents ) set of equipment too. They also have plastic slides rather than metal ones. I’m not sure however which I prefer. The metal ones get way too hot in the sun for little bottoms and the plastic ones seem to generate huge amounts of static (not a nice surprise when you catch your offspring at the end of the slide). Wandered off across the playing field and found a lovely mini bushwalk. It’s being regenerated and it very well laid out and maintained (proper wooden steps and paths). There’s a lovely creek/river running through and lots of little weirs/waterfalls. Mocha got absolutely soaked and muddy jumping in and out of the water.

My friend Melissa from way back (must be about 20 years ago when we first met) was visiting Oz with her family and she came to meet us for the afternoon. We headed up to Mr Chou’s for Yum Cha (it was a bit pants though as it was around 2pm and there wasn’t much variety left on the trolleys) then down to Ramsgate for some chilling at the beach. Evie enjoyed making sandcastles and I enjoyed catching up with Melissa. Was lovely to see her again, but also a bit sad as I know it’ll be a while before we meet again. Ah well, internet’s a wonderful thing for keeping in touch.

So it’s the last night of my twenties! Decided to have a quiet dinner with family and chose the local Italian restaurant. It has good reviews on the net and I looooove Italian food. The food was great. Especially the Caesar salad (it had chicken fillets, not just tiny microscopic cubes), a whole bunch of anchovies (hubby’s fav) and the veggies were crisp and fresh. The antipasto plate was good too and Evie enjoyed munching on all the cheese from it. Hubby had a pizza (which was massive and probably would have fed all 4 of us) and I had (surprise, surprise) lasagne (my fav). It’s a bit of a running joke in my family that I am Garfield. It’s my benchmarking stick to try out the lasagne. I quite enjoyed it, but would have preferred it baked and presented in the dish rather than a portion cut from a larger tray. I really like those gnarly bits that get stuck to the edge The pasta sheets were nice and thick and it had bits of bacon in as well as the bolognaise. I would have liked a little more bechamel though as it was just a very thin speckling on top. I’m no expert in Italian food so no idea if this is the authentic style or not – it was very tasty though. Was a bit meated out after all that. I usually hide veggies in the ones I make (it’s the only way to get hubby to eat them). The ambience was absolutely rubbish tonight though – you could hardly hear yourself think due to all the noise. Unfortunately there was a private party upstairs which consisted of about 20 8 years olds screaming and throwing food off the banister and running up and down the stairs. The poor staff had to mop the steps as some kid threw their drink down the steps (no doubt trying to recreate a waterfall). I felt really sorry for the couple who were sitting at the table next to the stairs as they ended up with someone’s used serviette landing plumb into their main course (yucky). It was very busy, but the food did come fairly quickly.