Kicking some goals

At the recent assembly where Bethany received her award, the principal used the phrase "kicked some goals" to refer to a child who had done well in his NAPLAN tests. He then used it again in conversation with us about how Toby and Jossie went in theirs. It must be his favourite phrase at the moment. Toby did, indeed, do very well but we were particularly proud to hear that Jossie came first in her year in the writing section, second in reading and third in spelling. Yay, she loves words!

Toby has also, of course, been kicking literal goals throughout the soccer season. We went to his soccer presentation on Sunday morning and were thrilled when he was awarded the Most Improved award.

That's his coach, who is all of fifteen.

We had to miss church to go to the presentation but it was definitely worth it - especially as the coach also gave out lollie bags.

Kristy gave me some duck eggs so, on Saturday afternoon, I made a sponge cake. I had to change the recipe a bit to make it gluten free and I think that using all corn flour made it taste a bit floury but the kids loved it and I thought it a perfectly decent vehicle for jam, strawberries and cream.

My Kitchen Aid beat so much air into it that both cakes rose well above the edge of the tins resulting in the interesting sort of hat shape.

After the cake, and a lot of work in the garden, we went for a walk around the lake. We have never done this before, though I have long been keen on the idea, largely because it seems the perfect thing to do with a dog but Lake Albert is on the complete other side of town and Milo gets car sick. We made preparations for easy clean up and drove with the windows down and he made it!

We took the kids' scooters and made stops to play on the exercise equipment.

We got about half way around (it's a 5.4 kilometer walk) when we realised that we weren't going to get back to the car before dark and that Bethany had had enough. Andrew and Toby sped off on the scooters while Jossie and Bethany played at the water's edge and waited until Andrew and Toby brought the car around.

One day I'll take Milo all the way around. He made it all the way home, too, without being sick :)

After church we went back to the Lake (two visits in as many days!) to have an impromptu picnic with the Scotts. The weather was delightful and Andrew took lots of lovely photos.

Chris tried very hard to get a good one of us. It is so hard to all look nice at once!