Birthdays

March 21st was a beautiful day in Melbourne which has turned on spectacular weather for the Commonwealth Games. After a welcome sleep-in, the birthday girls opened our presents.

Peter went to work eventually and the four of us started out on our day of fun. First stop was Federation Square which has been buzzing for the Games. We met my old friend, Sandra and her youngest son, Henry there for a birthday coffee.

Having forgotten our hats and it being a very sunny day, we visited the Games Superstore to buy some souvenir caps and came away with some umbrellas and stationery as well. Our next stop was St Kilda by tram.

The main road along the beach was part of a cycling race that day but we were allowed to cross between riders to get to our lunch destination, Donovan's right on the beach. Rosie and I went there for lunch about this time last year to celebrate her return to school full-time. She really enjoyed the experience and I thought the other two might too, not to mention myself.


Sophie was taken with the toilet decor.

Before dessert we reclined on the loungers in the outdoor area. The sea was a perfect sparkling blue. Sophie and Rosie tried out some of our new merchandise.

Dessert was as delectable as everything else and we left after another toilet appreciation visit. Note the basket of coconuts under the sink.

By now it was late afternoon and our next stop was an inflatable walk-in sculpture on the St Kilda foreshore, part of the Festival which has accompanied the Games. There have been numerous artistic endeavours all over the place but since I was also working through the Games period, we didn't get to many, focusing on the sports events we could get to instead. This plastic creation though was really beautiful with the luminous colours inside created just by sunlight shining through the
plastic.

The girls had a frolic on the beach while we waited for Peter to pick us up.

Because of our rather impromptu and late lunch nobody was very interested in dinner so we just got in pizza and tried out one of Sophie's new card games.

Jessye had a go with my new vibrating head massager which I think she chose.

On Wednesday the girls and I took in the 105 kg men's weightlifting. Peter couldn't quite summon up the interest for that one. It was pretty entertaining especially a father and son combo from the Cook Islands. The father's hobbies were going to the beach, relaxing and partying. He broke into a huge grin whenever he managed to get a weight aloft and made sure it stayed up long enough for him to shower his smile on the whole arena. They didn't get any medals but the 17 yr old son beat his dad and will be a force to be reckoned with later.

I had concerts on Friday and Saturday nights but Peter and the girls went to one more athletics session at the MCG on the Friday. Saturday was sold out so we missed our golden opportunity to sing the NZ national anthemn when our boy did good and won the 1500 m. I've certainly got to know the words to the Aussie one without even trying and am quite familiar with the Kenyan and Jamaican tunes.