Showing posts with label Google. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Google. Show all posts
Thursday, July 02, 2015
Saturday, January 12, 2013
Bryce's Birthday Party
Despite my good intentions, the planning for Bryce's birthday party got left to the last minute. With a team effort (and a day without school work!) we managed to pull it off quite nicely, I think!
On the day preceding the party, we went to several shops, purchasing the needed items for games and lunch, wrapped the pass the parcel, decorated the house, and made some of the food. Meanwhile, Mum dropped Jarrod off at technology to finish his project (which didn't quite make the last day of class the afternoon before), and picked up the de Boers' two Maltese dogs to look after since their owners were away. (Well, all except for Dieuwe, and he had to work all day, and was going to be out late that night so it would be good for the dogs to come here, see some people and get some exercise.)
The morning of the party, none of us were up as early as we should have been, so we had a fast-paced two or three hours, cleaning the house, finishing the games (i.e. spread two bags of chocolate bars through the sandpit), and preparing the food. Unfortunately this party lacked much of the baking which usually characterizes any party I organise!
The day before the party, we knew of only one family who planned to attend, however despite that, we ended up with a good turnout!
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| : : Lunch was somewhat late in coming, but hopefully it was worth the wait! : : |
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| : : Unwrapping lots of cool presents - thanks everyone! : : |
After reading this post on the Wissmanns' blog, I felt inspired to try my own hand at piping chocolate to put on a cake. (Historically, icing cakes hasn't exactly been my speciality.) And no, this isn't an ice cream cake; one new thing at a time, right? Maybe next time . . .! I printed a stencil (search Google images for a colouring picture lol) of the train, and also the text. We didn't have any wax paper so I substituted with baking paper, taping it to the bench, with my printed paper underneath. I melted chocolate buttons, and piped them through a plastic bag. Then the paper went into the freezer until I was ready to put the chocolate onto the cake. Overall, I was quite pleased. Next time though, I think I'll put the paper onto some kind of tray in the freezer; pipe the chocolate thicker - I had trouble with it cracking; and do the text cursive, so they're all joined together. It was a bit awkward having so many small, delicate pieces and I was glad I had two sets of the text!
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| : : Singing Happy Birthday : : |
Thursday, January 06, 2011
December 24th
Well, the 24th wasn't anything exciting for us, we drove down to Stratford (near New Plymouth).
As we hadn't been that way before, Dad asked Jarrod to print a map from Google...well, thinking the route wasn't very straight, Jarrod changed it...and we ended up on the 'Forgotten World Highway,' driving through ghost towns and the like...one place we stopped in had the public toilets in a water tank...yes I'm serious..actually they were pretty good considering.. oh, and we had to go over a couple of saddles, which, by the way, are VERY windy, it was fine with me except that the van was a little longer than Dad is used to driving, and one of the back wheels hung over the edge of the road, so Mum was seating in the back saying "slow down, slow down."
We wen't around one corner, and two cars were coming towards us quite fast, Mum completely freeked out, but Dad said, "those cars wanted to play bumper cars with us!"
And we went through a fairly long, one way tunnel.
Some of the road was even shingle (or corrugated as they say in Oz).
We arrived in Stratford between 3:30 - 4pm. First we found our campground, and unloaded most of our stuff into our backpacker hostel with 12 beds, got changed, and ate some of the ham rolls left over from lunch.
Then Dad rung Aunty Sonia to get directions to their place, and we headed over for the evening. A bit later, Uncle Mike came home from work, and Uncle Bill and Aunty Melissa, Olivia and Harry, came over too, and we all had dinner together before most of the others went down to the park.
By the time we got back to where we were staying it was quite late, so we had something to eat and went to bed (where I read my book! =)).
As we hadn't been that way before, Dad asked Jarrod to print a map from Google...well, thinking the route wasn't very straight, Jarrod changed it...and we ended up on the 'Forgotten World Highway,' driving through ghost towns and the like...one place we stopped in had the public toilets in a water tank...yes I'm serious..actually they were pretty good considering.. oh, and we had to go over a couple of saddles, which, by the way, are VERY windy, it was fine with me except that the van was a little longer than Dad is used to driving, and one of the back wheels hung over the edge of the road, so Mum was seating in the back saying "slow down, slow down."
We wen't around one corner, and two cars were coming towards us quite fast, Mum completely freeked out, but Dad said, "those cars wanted to play bumper cars with us!"
And we went through a fairly long, one way tunnel.
Some of the road was even shingle (or corrugated as they say in Oz).
We arrived in Stratford between 3:30 - 4pm. First we found our campground, and unloaded most of our stuff into our backpacker hostel with 12 beds, got changed, and ate some of the ham rolls left over from lunch.
Then Dad rung Aunty Sonia to get directions to their place, and we headed over for the evening. A bit later, Uncle Mike came home from work, and Uncle Bill and Aunty Melissa, Olivia and Harry, came over too, and we all had dinner together before most of the others went down to the park.
By the time we got back to where we were staying it was quite late, so we had something to eat and went to bed (where I read my book! =)).
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