Easter

Sunday:

We went to the Royal Easter Show yesterday. Tiring, but fun. We looked at some farm animals first: sheep, chickens, cows, alpacas, and horses. We skipped the pig pavilion! What a smell. Then we watched the lunch-time entertainment of working dogs rounding up cattle, precision car driving, and arial motorbike tricks. We had picked the coolest forecast day to go, but it was still very hot sitting in the sun so we went into the art and craft pavilion and then the food pavilion where we taste tested nougat, rocky road, jerky and chilli sauces. The kids got a show bag of lollies each, I bought one of chips but shared it around. I’d decided I wasn’t ‘on a diet’ for Saturday and Sunday but still took my Duromine so I wouldn’t go overboard. It worked well, I had bits of this and that but wasn’t interested in stuffing myself. We went to see the wood chopping, one of our favourites, and saw three events but it was stinking hot in the concrete stands with no shade. It’s like that every year - they really need to put a roof on! I started to feel really ill from the heat so we left and sat in the shade watching dog judging and then went home.

Today is Easter! We are not religious so for us it’s about family and chocolate. The Easter bunny had visited during the night so we had a hunt around the house, plus Tim and I gave each other and the kids bigger eggs. I had some chocolate after breakfast and more after lunch, but felt a bit sick from too much. I’m used to eating healthier these days. I still like chocolate and some other treats (not too sweet) but in much smaller quantities. My Easter stash should last me a long time this year!

Very hot autumn day, 32C in the afternoon, so we played board games inside then went for a swim in the pool and then family came over for dinner. Martha organised some Easter craft (painting eggs) and a hunt, she doesn’t believe in sugar for children so the kids found plastic eggs with blueberries, protein balls, or something that looked like rabbit droppings (?) inside and wooden painted egg decorations. My kids had enough chocolate already to not care, and would always be polite in any case, but weren’t impressed. We played board games after dinner.

Ping’s parents are here from China, they visit for months at a time but speak very little English (hello and thank you is about the extent) but this year her dad has an electronic translator. It’s the size of a mobile phone, you speak into it and it says it in the other language. Pretty cool. But some funny mistranslations that made no sense. Ping speaks both languages perfectly and was usually on hand to clear things up. Little Emma was having a tantrum about nothing when her grandad said something in Chinese that was translated into something in English I didn’t hear clearly but turned the normal tantrum into a full scale epic meltdown. Ping told Emma that the translator made a mistake but I’m not so sure...