Australia Day

Today we celebrated Australia Day at home. We mainly focused on the food side of things as we simply enjoyed the time together. We had Stephen home as well as both our boys for most of the day.
Here are a couple of histories about Australia Day especially for any non Aussies who may read this.
Of course we had the Australian Flag put up, I had no idea it was going to be tied to the top of the highest point of the house. Another  climb on the roof episode without telling Mum.....stop doing this boys!
Although I know there were many activities we could have done as in the following links we really did not focus on these;
Australia Day- Kid's Activities, puzzles and games
Australian Animals
More Activity Sheets
Many ideas from Activity Village
Some colouring pages
DLTK has lots of ideas too

 For our lunch today we had traditional Damper, Vegemite and of course 'Cocky's joy' known to others as Golden Syrup. While at lunch we had a little Australian ABC :
Some of the ones we came up with~
A- Apple Isle which is Tasmania, Akubra
B- Botany Bay, Blue Mountains
C- Convict, Captain Cook, crocodile
D- Dingo, Damper
E- Emu
F- First Fleet
G- Golden Syrup, Goanna
H- Hobart
I- Island
J- Jackaroo
K- Koala, Kangaroo
L- Lachlan
M- Macquarie and Manning Rivers, Magpie
N- Numbat, Nullarbor Plain
O- Outback, Ocean
P- Platypus
Q- Queensland
R- Redback Spider,
S- Steve Irwin, snakes
T- Tiger Snake, Tasmanian Devil, Taipan
U- Uluru
V- Vegemite
W- Wedge tailed Eagle
X- Xanthoclada
Y- Yellow Belly fish
Z- Zebra Finch

 Some of our children are not as keen on some of our other traditional deserts so Chocolate Fudge cake was made for them.

Lemon Meringue Pie:
This is an interesting twist that evolved from the Pavlova dessert of Australian origin,

 Of course the pavlova:  A brief history here

 Believe it or not we actually had a bit of left over for tomorrow

 After dinner as we were cleaning up the children's grandfather read some poetry from one of our poetry books.
Two of our favourites are:
The Man from Ironbark~ A.B. Patterson
and The Bush Christening ~ A. B. Patterson

I think I love A.B. Patterson's poems the best and they certainly are fun to read aloud to the children, as we have over the years!

All in all I think we had a relaxing and enjoyable day!

Blessings to you and your homes,