My Sacrifice as an Aunt

I deliberately took a day off work this year to go and cheer my nephew's on for their Tennis comp. Originally I was supposed to do the bridge climb with my nephew and brother, but because we couldn't decide on a date, I took the day off for Tennis instead. Considering how ecstatic my nephews were of the photos I took last year, I thought they would really love it this year with my DSLR.

Here are a few of the 700+ shots I took that day:








This is probably one of my favourite photo of the day. Technically, it was nothing special. However, this photo captures my nephew in the way we all see him. An younger version of Tiger Woods. Infact, we call him Tiger Ho! Hehe. Doesn't this look like its a modelling shot? Almost as if Tiger Wood was walking down the green.


Anyway, to cut a long story short, both of my nephews won a trophy that day. 1st and 2nd place. The oldest getting 1st place, the younger brother getting 2nd place. And the only reason he got 2nd place was because the ONLY game he lost, was against his older brother.


We also signed up the other kids for some private lessons with the tennis teacher.

And in order to take these photos, I got totally sunburnt. I'm talking lobster red. I rocked up to Cookiez's birthday absolutely GLOWING. And not in a nice way. I was a walking red disco light!! I'm not uploading any photos because I LOOK RED. LIKE R-E-D! Ouch!

Fairfield City Farm

I took a day off in December so I could spend some time with the kids. After some research, we decided to go to the Fairfield City Farm. The rest of the kids also took a day off from school so we could all head out together. We basically caught a train to Fairfield, and the hopped onto a bus that would take us to the door of the farm. In hindsight, we should've driven as the whole trip took us 1.5hours one way. The kids had a blast though!

Booyah!

The farm is extremely small. It takes about 2 minutes to walk from one end to the other end. However, the kids had an absolute blast at the farm! The highlight for them was feeding the animals in the nursery. I think them being attacked by the animals made it just that much more fun.

They got cornered and had to climb the fence...

Reminds me of a scene in "Black Sheep"

The farm also has many shows during the day. Once of which, is the cow milking. Because it was a week day and it was end of the year (meaning no school excursions), there was one other family there besides us. This meant all the kids got the milk the cows.



There was also the tractor ride, sheep shearing, stockman's whip and cattle dog sheep herding show, amongst a bunch of other things to keep hyperactive kids occupied!

My nephew volunteered before he realised what it was for

My only photo of the day

And my favourite part? Finding these tiny tiny cute little bunnies! I couldn't decide which was cuter!

Hitting the markets and then Thai

One of the reasons I always look forward to my sister coming back from Singapore is because we both share a love for gourmet food. We love walking through organic markets and looking at home made jams and pies. Even though the prices are sometimes double what you would pay at the Flemington Markets, we don't mind paying a bit extra for the decadence. So the first thing she wanted to do on her trip back to Sydney this time, was to hit the local market at the Orange Grove public school. We didn't end up buying much (Well, 3 full size pies, infused oils and vinegars amongst other things....) , but we had a fantastic time which found us at Toby's Estate at Broadway enjoying the best coffee we've ever had.

Beautiful fresh organic tomatoes

Toby's Latte

Toby's Cappuccino

Whenever family comes from overseas to visit, the one who suffers the most is my mum. She spends the entire cooking and cleaning nonstop. She ends up catering for 17 people at a time. So to give her a break, we decided to eat out at our favourite Thai restaurant Chedi.

Chicken and Cashew with Chilli Jam

My nephew's all time favourite - Massamum Beef

Chicken Pad Thai

Salt and pepper squid

Red Duck Curry

Pork Pad See Ew

Grilled BBQ Pork

Grilled BBQ Chicken

Thai duck salad

After dinner, we decided to put up the xmas tree where the kids got to hang their own xmas ornament. And by "their own", I had their photos printed onto ceramic ornaments. One for each kid. They absolutely loved it! And I think this is a tradition that I'm going to try and keep it going each year. My sister has requested that I get ornaments done for each of the adults. I guess that will become our family tree.

Pizza, pasta and ice cream

As thanks to my cousin for the lovely gold bangle she gave my niece for Christmas, we had decided to take her out to dinner as well as have a family outing. My sister left the lovely job of picking a place to us. My nephews are picky picky eaters, my parents are sometimes against certain cuisines. In the end, we just decided to find some place at Liechhardt. Park and then look for a place:

I've been to Gioia once before for coffee. It was after my last birthday party where it was just too early to call it a night. Ok, it wasn't too early, but we were going through that stage where anything before midnight meant we were getting old, so we would force ourselves to go have coffee and stay out past midnight. Talk about a quarter life crisis.....

Anywhooooo, as a group of 12 people without booking, they were great in accommodating us. Within minutes we're seated and given menus. We decided to grab some entrees, pizza and pasta to share amongst everyone:

Garlic Pizza

This was a bit too hard and chewy for my liking. Since we had wanted to share that between 12 people, it took ALOT of effort to try and cut them into smaller slices since it was so hard.

Salmon and avocado salad

This was quite nice and refreshing. The salmon was nice and creamy and not too salty and went perfectly with the avocado.


My nephew wanted to order the kids pasta all for himself. $5 for a bowl of penne bolognese isn't too bad.

BBQ Grilled Octopus

Some of the tentacles were very burnt, but was overall quite tender. Definitely needed a good squeeze of lemon juice for the extra flavour.

Pesto Penne

I don't like pesto. I've tried it numerous times and I don't like pesto. But this pesto was absolutely delicious! Has it always tasted this good and I just didn't like it before? Has my taste buds changed? Either way, I couldn't get enough of this! Even my mum, the one against all things creamy, loved the sauce. They must be doing something right!

Spaghetti Marinara

There was a lot of seafood in this dish. The seafood was very nice and tender, not too overcooked. Nothing fancy in the sauce, but simplicity sometimes tastes best.

Penne Siciliana

A very simple sauce of tomatoes and eggplant mixed with the pasta and then grilled with a layer of mozzarella on top. Too bad I didn't get much of this pasta, otherwise I would love to recreate it at home. Another excuse to go there and eat again! hehehe

Norton St Special

MmmMmm this was good! Lots of mushroom, olives and thinly sliced ham.

Hot and spicy

This wasn't as spicy as I would've liked it. But then I would've liked it REALLY REALLY spicy. The kids enjoyed it even though they wanted more meat on it.

Leichhardt special

This was my sister's favourite. She's been brainwashed by the large unnamed pizza corporations where a super supreme means everything you can find in a fridge thrown onto a pizza. This was topping overload for me, but hey, she liked it meaning more Norton St special for me!

After eating all of that, we were being greedy and decided to order ANOTHER serve of the pesto penne and a spaghetti bolognese since my oldest nephew likes to stick to the traditional dishes. (Meaning he doesn't like trying new things!)

You'd think we'd stop after that, but considering the disappointment last time at BBQ City, we decided to take the kids to the French Riviera anyway. Strange how everyone was moaning about how full they were, but still ordered massive amounts of ice cold goodness!

Rum & Raisin, hazelnut and chocolate

Coconut and walnut

Espresso

Chocolate and rum and raisin

Kiwi fruit and coconut

After the kids finished their ice cream, me and my brother scooped all the cream from our bowl and dumped it into their empty bowl. Then the kids decided to mash up the whipped cream, add water, add sugar, add the remains of our espresso cup and mixed it all around. Then there was a big round of us daring them to drink it, them daring us, us offering money and so forth. Somewhere along the line, my youngest nephew stuck his head into the circle and drank straight from the bowl! EWWWWWWWWWWW!!! Someone forgot to tell him it wasn't melted ice cream inside!!

Just another typical outing for our family! hehehe