Easter Egg Extravaganza

Easter Bunny has been and left some goodies all around.  He must have dropped them as he hopped though the garden when he was delivering all those yummy chocolate eggs.

Paula had been extremely clever by putting the surprises inside little containers.  A masterful stroke (to reduce the number of chocolates the children had to eat) was to have half containing little tiny pink chickens and the rest a single mini egg.

The children were delighted as they didn't know which egg container had which.  It also meant that they played with chickens (another distraction from eating chocolate and getting a bigger sugar rush).  

I found another one. 

More for me.

Why wait until the end to start eating?

BBQ at Cardinia

On Easter Saturday we (in-laws and us) all went for a drive in the countryside with the aim to have a picnic at Aura Vale Lake.  This destination was picked as it was a family favourite which hadn't been visited for a while.

Two cars containing 6 adults and 2 children plus assorted picnic essentials such as chairs, food (sausages, rolls, etc), hats, etc headed through the hills.  The children inside were especially excited as they'd been promised a change to go fishing (for the first time).

Upon arriving at Aura Vale Lake the party discovered that the destination looked very much different from the memories they had.  After 3/4 hour of wondering back and forth we came to the conclusion that the area we remembered had been sealed off and was being sub divided to  accommodate a new housing development.

So onto Plan B.  Which was?

We headed to Cardinia were we thought there might be some facilities for BBQing and the ability to get to the lake for fishing.  It turned out that the former was true but the latter was not. In particular the lake had been fenced off, due apparently to the potential 'terrorism threat'.

However, a consultation to the youngsters was that there was a nifty playground for them to enjoy. 

It seemed that we weren't the only ones who'd thought the day deserved to be a picinic day.  The place was very busy with lots of families.

We managed to secure a spot on the large BBQ's (another family were cooking on one side but hospitably offered the 1/2 to us). 

The men started the fire and cooked the food (sausages and rissoles) whilst the women sorted out the mundane utensals, etc.

Once we'd eaten we took the kids to the park and let them play for an hour.

As we'd promised to take them fishing (Sophie was not going to let us get away with not doing this) we drove to another section of the lakes.

Here we cast 4 fishing lines in.  Two were hot pink 'Barbie' rods which the girls kept wondering away from the water with.

As you can imagine we didn't catch a single fish.  The girls were bored quickly and the only ones which had a fantastic time were the ducks which we fed bread to.

We all enjoyed the day but I must admit it was difficult trying to fish with a 2 and 4 year old.

Dad - Please accept my apologies.  I was young but you must have had the patience of a saint to perserve all those years.  Thank you.