The best day

Our "best day" started early yesterday with a performance of "Walk the Fence" at the Canberra Theatre Centre's intimate little Courtyard Studio. We sat on the "grass" of "Hill Park" and marvelled at the amazingly agile Rachel character with the anger management problem and the roller blading, stilt walking characters played by her co-star.

Ella was captivated by the performance and gave a running commentary on all the action. Luckily there weren't too many quiet moments in Walk the Fence so her commentary didn't have to be incorporated into the script.

We finished off the morning with a baby cino and a post performance debrief at Ella's favourite coffee shop (the one that never forgets to include the marshmallow with its baby cinos).

And then it was only a short wait to welcome Cath and Davey to Canberra, fresh from their week's break in Sydney, for a long, afternoon family feast and celebration full of excitement, movement, music, great seafood and some of the best wines in Jeremy's cellar.

It started quietly enough with Davey unearthing some of his mint condition Star Wars comics (still in their plastic covers) from his hoard of treasures stored in the garage. This greatly impressed the boys.

As did his boyish charm and antics with assorted pieces of tropical fruit.

Davey and Cath are looking very relaxed at the end of their second week in Australia. Cath definitely looks more Australian...you can tell by the subtle things, like wearing no shoes, the denim shorts looking more worn and lived in, and the sunburn on various exposed bits (luckily not too many), and even a passable G'day!

We were excited to hear she had enjoyed our favourite Eastern Sydney beaches last week and some favourite shopping haunts.

Davey increased his most popular uncle status by playing throw around and jumping games with the three kids ALL afternoon. This photo captures a brief moment in the "through the uncle tunnel" game.

The food was amazing: ocean trout cooked perfectly over the coals (despite Maxie's initial misgivings), Coffin Bay oysters, prawns in a Pernod sauce, all matched beautifully to Josh and Jody's salmon and Asian inspired appetizers and Jeremy's beautiful Australian wines.

But the Ottolenghi chocolate fudge cake was an absolute knock out dessert. The kids were in heaven..........

Rob had spent some time during the week writing a song for the kids, set to the wonderful old Hollies song Long Cool Woman in a Black Dress. With only about 10 minutes rehearsal Davey amazed everyone with his extraordinary performance of Rob's new family song about crusaders wearing black capes (Angie), Ollie Skywalker and Cinderella Ella.

The kids just think this is all entirely normal.

The only troublesome aspect of the celebration was Ollie's increasing awareness of the pain in his arm. C&J had it checked this morning. He has a green stick fracture and will need to be plastered up for a while, probably caused by a painful contact at school late last week.

Davey and Cath head for Melbourne for their last week in Australia. Such a short visit, but we have loved our time with them, getting to know Cath a little better and helping to introduce her to Australia.