Fete Day Again

So our annual fete came and went again.  It's something I craft for pretty much all year, and so it is the culmination of an awful lot of effort, not just from me but from many many people in our school community.

Every year I get a bit more of a glimpse of exactly what is involved in putting on a day like this.  The hundreds and hundreds of hours spent in planning, figuring out how electricity can get across the grass area to the snow cone machine, where the spit roast will be located and whether balls from the 'knock it over' will run into it, how to comply with the new council regulation that all dish washing be done with hot water, when our washing station is only plumbed with cold, how many signs are needed, who will put them up, where will reuseable plastic glasses be sourced from.  All those thousands of small things even before we get to the sewing and knitting and cake baking and planting, the sorting and folding and hanging, the pricing and donating and procuring and face painting and hair styling and fortune telling and nail polishing and on and on.  Truly an amazing effort.  There are so many things I love about it, but one thing that particularly struck me was both the lack of martydom in the hard work put in by so many, and the total lack of power play that events like these sometimes attract. Instead there is simply a sense that people are chipping in and doing what they can with, dare I say it, a sense of joy about the whole thing.

For once we got the perfect fete weather, and it translated into a calm, relaxed kind of day.  I scored a poncho for Grace which she has been wanting so badly all year.  Definitely born in the wrong decade, that girl - she still wears her awesome kilt most weeks, which she can now team with her poncho for added 70's effect.  I bought a few other things, including all the summer vegies to plant, a couple of books and DVDs, some jigsaw puzzles and jam.  But mostly the day was about seeing how much the kids just love 'their' fete, the sense of ownership they have, and the pride they take in their school putting on this enormous effort.  A day like this just ticks all my boxes.

Perth Branch

My brother's family visited us this school holiday. It has been two years since we've seen his four boys, but it might have been two weeks. The kids slot back together in that uniquely cousiny way, taking it for granted that they'll get on, find common ground, have fun. I love that his boys seem to spend most waking hours kicking or throwing balls or trick jumping scooters, which encourages my girls to follow suit.  Hours and hours were spent shooting hoops, even Lily, atop her cousin Ben's shoulders, joined in and shot her first goal. Many many trips were also had up the ladder to the shed roof retrieving balls but that was most definitely half the fun. 

We spent a day at Sovereign Hill - tragically unable to get in a photo session as they were fully booked, dashing my hopes of a snap of my four girls and four nephews in 19th century miner's garb. We did get to dip candles, go bowling, and get names stamped on horseshoes and in 'Wanted' posters. It's the same old fun it ever was and the kids loved it.

Such an interesting and different energy, having four boys around. There are so many  similarities and so many differences. I just wish they lived closer.

Great White

 We've made the girls keep a daily journal since we left Melbourne. Their entries vary in detail and length but I hope they'll appreciate being made to keep them years from now when much of the day to day has faded from memory. Grace starts nearly every entry with 'today was fun' and ends it with 'and then we had showers and went to bed'. Nina meticulously records her meals. Ruby writes hers like a letter to a friend. 

For me, this blog is the closest I've come to keeping a journal of our adventure. It took me a while to realise that it has become a journal or sorts  as I generally don't blog the day to day of our lives and never intended this to be a quasi diary. But I think I'll be grateful.

Today we went to the New England Aquarium. We'd avoided going til now as neither Craig nor I are huge fans of aquariums. I really don't like the overpriced and tastelessly decorated Melbourne Aquarium and couldn't bear the Sponge Bob theme in Sydney. But this one was beautifully done, with excellent penguin exhibits and a 23 foot central tank containing a coral reef and loads of fish, rays, turtles and even a couple of Moray eels.   We went to an IMAX film about great white sharks, somewhat bizarrely narrated by Bill Nighy, which had a conservation theme and largely avoided over dramatisation of their capabilities as predators, concentrating instead on their vulnerability to over-fishing.

The weather was so cold we elected to take two trains rather than walk the relatively short distance (about a mile or less) to Regina Pizzeria in the North end. Fortunately Boston's public transport system is so efficient that both trains were ready and waiting for us. The T is, like all public transport systems, somewhat maligned, and it's true that the stations and trains are not things of beauty. But, when it comes to public transport, give me substance over style every time. The ticketing system appears to work seamlessly, all stations are staffed which avoids the need for heavy handed inspectors and security, we've rarely waited more than 5 minutes for a train, even when the weather has been terrible, and when there are delays they are quickly resolved. The stations and carriages are clean, if a little run down. Melbourne could learn a lot. 

We love the North end. I'm sure locals would say it isn't a patch on what it once was and has lost all it's authentic character, but as outsiders, it is charming. Small winding streets, old buildings, intriguing glimpses into tucked away courtyards and alleys. Lots of small shops, mostly with an Italian heritage and plenty of restaurants including Regina Pizzeria which had been recommended to us by a hot dog vendor in Salem. We had a couple of huge and excellent pizzas in a great old wooden booth and then got take out dessert at Bova's bakery. We sampled chocolate mousse cannoli, pecan slice, vanilla cupcake and assorted cookies. In my view, not as good as Modern pastries, and I wasn't a huge fan of those. Perhaps I'm missing something or sampling the wrong things.

Another brisk walk home from the station in freezing conditions. It's impossible to stop the kids, especially Grace and Nina, from going out of their way to walk in snow drifts, run their hands along walls piled high with snow, stomp in slushy muddy puddles. All warnings that they might slip over fall on deaf ears, even though inevitably someone does end up in a heap on the footpath. We should probably just give up. I'm forever warning of the dangers of too much snow play leading to wet gloves leading to freezing hands all day. Perhaps I should just let them spend a day with cold hands but frostbite seems a high price to pay to learn the lesson 'listen to your mother'. So I pack spare mittens and repeat myself a hundred times in a frustrated mantra. But only for three more days. Sob.

The ICA

We are packing these last days in tight. Despite it being minus 12 with snow forecast, we dragged the kids to the Institute of Contemporary Art.  It is not conveniently located on our T line, which meant we had to get off and walk in icy conditions to the rather bizarre 'silver line' - a bus line that runs partly through underground tunnels. Not being familiar with it made it harder work than it needed to be and I seriously considered giving up and just taking the kids to Dunkin Donuts instead. But we persisted and,  in Ruby's words, were pleasantly surprised. We were mostly there to see the building itself, which Craig was interested in, but there was also a very moving exhibition of photographs by LaToya Ruby Frazier about, in part, the destitution of her home town of Braddock, which saw its population fall from 28,000 to about 4500 within a few years in the 1980's and had its hospital, the primary remaining local employer, close in 2010 despite a hard fought campaign to keep it open. The hospital had received significant amounts of state funding as recently as 2009, but closed when the board decided it was under-utilised and insufficiently profitable. The same contractor who tore down the hospital was awarded the contract to build a new hospital in a nearby, wealthier area. 

After this sobering exhibition we looked  through the floor to ceiling glass windows, over the waterfront, to the industrial smokestacks billowing white, the bricks and bridges across the water, the boats and the buoys. The Institute provided sketch books and pencils for the girls. I like that they each saw and documented something different of the same view.

When we left it had started to snow. It kept up the whole way home, paving the footpaths and roads (and us), in icing sugar. It's still exciting for the girls who run ahead to write notes in the snow to each other. Hot chocolate was the only appropriate antidote to the cold once we got home.

New Hampshire Gorgeousness

We drove up on a wet bleak day from Boston. It rained all the way here and though I've read that drive to the White Mountains was one of the prettiest in New England, between the rain and the fog I really couldn't tell. With every drop that fell we imagined the snow melting away and wondered if there'd be enough left for skiing. We did stumble across a shop selling Amish quilts and drive over one of the famous covered bridges and there were a smattering of gorgeous barns set in snowy fields and iced rivers and ponds to give us a taste of rural New  Hampshire.

Our arrival at Black Mountain, somewhat confusingly in the White Mountains, lifted our spirits. The Inn we are staying in is everything you would imagine or hope for in a ski lodge, from the wood pile out the front and the sloped ceilings to the beds made from branches and the bear and moose theme throughout. The girls counted 71 representations of wildlife in our cottage including moose clasps for the shower curtain and the fine bear lamp you see above. These was a time when I would have found this type of decor somewhat tasteless. Oh how we change! I now find it utterly adorable and not even in an ironic way. Beware, I'll be sewing quilted potholders with appliquéd fauna soon.  Our breakfast choices included Belgian waffles and bacon, pancakes and bacon, French toast and bacon and the more traditional (to me) accompaniment to bacon, eggs. It prompted a discussion about whether the Belgians have waffles like that, or whether French toast is recognised in France. There are no Boston buns in Boston we've discovered. 

After yesterday's unending rain we had the most gorgeously perfect day to ski. We booked all the kids in for a lesson and I also had one. I've tried twice before to ski with no luck. I never got beyond the fact that I was freezing cold and my feet hurt and my thighs were shaking with the effort of trying to get up all the time.  This time I managed a slow (and magestic) snow plough down the very gentlest of slopes. Lil flat out refused to participate in her paid lesson but was very happy to have her sisters and far less qualified mother impart what we had learned. Anyway it was such a spectacularly good day on the mountain and so unseasonably warm and the surroundings were so ridiculously story-book pretty, that it was a treat to be there, skiing or not. 

Count Down

Two weeks we have of our extended holiday. Though that's longer than many holidays we take to the beach or wherever, after the luxury of a seemingly never ending stretch of time, two weeks feels like it is hurtling toward closure way too soon. It has been such a beautifully paced time, alternating between very active and very relaxing, and so easy and enjoyable, that I have no sense as I sometimes do after even short holidays that it will be a relief to get home. I think having a home base here from which to explore has made all the difference. Somewhere we can get everything washed and dried and cook favourite foods and sleep in. It's helped that our house here is so beautiful and warm.

With two weeks to go, all those things it seemed we had ages to do suddenly press upon us. We've spent the last few days trying to cram a few in. The big girls and I went to Boston (TD) Gardens to watch the US Figure Skating Championships. We had a lovely time watching the pairs short program, even though we know nothing about ice skating. We cheered as hard as anyone when the local favourites came through with the highest score at the end of the session. The next day was snowing but, in our spirit of not wasting any time, we went skating at Boston's famous frog pond. It must be the prettiest rink, set in the common with the golden dome of the State House as the back drop. Our skating prowess seems to have plateaued. We can all get around okay (Lil needs help) but can't seem to take it any further.  There were two little girls in the centre of the rink with their parents, their mother obviously a highly skilled figure skater. They were learning jumps and twists and what I think are axles and must have fallen over thirty times each while we were there, but each time picked themselves up and tried again and again and again. They were having so much fun, it was quite inspiring to watch. I couldn't see my kids having that degree of determination to master a difficult task, or such good humour in the face of repeated failure.

After the skating we walked through the common and stumbled upon a Winter Olympics promotional event where lots of 'stuff' was being given away. You know the kind of thing - trading cards and samples of sponsor power drinks. Normally I can't bear the accumulation of crap that inevitably results, but the kids were so enthralled by the prospect of free stuff that I let them get sticky notes and peanut butter samples and a soft toy strawberry with 'smuckers' embroidered on it. We discovered that Jif is a brand of peanut butter here, a rather off putting name , especially in association with figure skating for anyone who, like me, remembers those ads where the skate would go round and round, gouging out the ice, and the ad promised that Jif would clean 'without harsh scratching'.

A dinner in Chinatown rounded off a pretty perfect day.

Today we did a bit more of the famous Freedom Trail. Doing the whole thing in one fell swoop is a bit much for little legs, so we went to the North End, traditionally the Italian part of town, visited Paul Revere's house, the oldest house in Boston, walked up to the Old North Church (how I do love those old New England churches, their tall spores and simple, elegant lines) and onto Copp Hill Burying Ground, where the grave stones are higgledy piggledy, chipped and broken like a storybook graveyard. The most surprising place for me was the Holocaust Memorial at Haymarkrt, which I hadn't even realised was there until we were upon it and I found myself fighting sudden tears to the incomprehension of the kids.

We finished our day with a visit to Modern Pastry on Hanover St. I gather who does the best pastries in the North End is an issue of hot dispute, with 'Mikes' bring considered 'for tourists'. We sampled cannoli, cream puffs, mousse cake and muffins. Good, but not, to my mind, worth crossing town for. The North End itself was absolutely charming, even on a charmless wet Boston day. Ruby and Nina in particular loved it. For Lily it wasn't charming enough to avert a loud carry on at the Old North Church, prompting a gentle reminder from the docent that we were in a church and a very quick exit by Lily (orchestrated by me). 

I feel that we have packed a fair bit in, and I've made peace with the fact that we won't do everything. I thought I be at the Gardner Museum multiple times, but it looks like that one quick visit will be it. Still, as lovely as it is to see lots of things, it's also important to make time to lie on your Daddy while he watches the New England Patriots in the playoffs, don't you think? (Pats ran away from the Colts 43 - 22.)

Thing

I love Washington. The last time I was here was a summer more than 2 decades ago. We stayed with the wealthy mother of a colleague of my father in a quiet mansion with a live in maid, gracious gardens, art on the walls. She took us to dinner at her friend's, a sprightly old woman who liked young company and paid for a student at Georgetown University to  be her live in companion. What an excellent gig for a student, especially if the person you were keeping company was lively and interesting. I remember, fresh from months of touring European museums, being astounded to recognise paintings by painters I knew on her walls. Here a Paul Klee, there a Joan Miro. She served us strawberry soup, salmon and baby potatoes. I thought she was the height of sophistication. 

Washington in winter is a different beast, especially a winter such as this (which I just saw on the TV news is being proclaimed by 3 senators as proof that climate change is a 'hoax'). Today was bitter.  We went to see the money being printed and I decided that my lost career was to be an engraver at the Bureau of Engraving and Printing. Only a ten year apprenticeship, is there still time?  We walked up the frosty mall to the Lincoln Memorial. It is, to my mind, the very best memorial. It brings a lump to my throat and I'm not even American. Lincoln's famous speeches, etched on the walls, demonstrate perfect legal writing. Each word parsed, nothing extraneous. Accurate, explicit, without flourish.  Of course they exceed legal writing and become art but at their core they are laying out a case.

We trudged past the State Department and onto the White House. I can't help but think of 'The West Wing' and the years I spent with Donna and Josh and CJ. Foreign Nationals can't go inside and even Americans have to write to their member of congress to arrange a tour, so the closest we got was a recreation of the Oval Office in a nearby gift shop where you can take classy photos of yourself and your family as POTUS.  We did, of course.

Yesterday we went to the National Air and Space Museum. The whole Smithsonian complex is extravagantly wonderful and filled with so many things to awe and delight that one can become blasé. So - there is the Spirit and St Louis and SkyLab and the Apollo Lunar Module, what's next? We weren't quite like that but I did feel that much of what we saw was lost on the girls. Their highlight was probably the paper airplane flying competition in the 'principles of flight' interactive section, which Nina won. I'm working on the theory that exposure to amazing things - art, buildings, objects of wonder - somehow is good for the soul, even if your primary recollection is that you had sore legs and were uncomfortably warm inside in your thermal underwear. 

It's hard not to 'out museum' the kids when there are are so many museums within walking distance and all free. Surely we can fit in another? The Hirshhorn had an exhibition entitled Art and Destructon since 1950.  The opening piece was a grand piano that had been attacked with an axe, the axe still in it.  That's the sort of thing kids love. The second photo down is of Nina and Lily watching a video installation called 'Guitar Drag'. An electric guitar was dragged behind a pick up truck and the footage and accompanying audio were on a repetitive loop. The sound was as you would imagine but the installation had the kids transfixed. Perhaps it was just a chance to rest in a cosy carpeted space but we had to drag them away.  Things deteriorated rapidly after that:  'can you not look at me like that?' 'Im not looking at you' 'yes you are', shove, 'Mama X just pushed me for no reason' 'I did not' ' yes you did' etc. We left before something else got destroyed unintentionally.