pizzini

I've mentioned before that one of the perks of living in Mansfield is its proximity to the scenically beautiful food and wine haven of the King Valley. We first fell in love with the Pizzini winery about 15 years ago when you could go to the very basic tasting room and buy their wines a little cheaper than you could get them in Mansfield. At that time you couldn't buy Pizzini wines other than in the local area, but now they are very popular all over Australia. The winery itself has changed a lot these days - it is now a very professional operation. It has a lovey big tasting room and cooking school with beautiful grounds for special celebrations.

Recently, my friend Kirsty and I have been to two fantastic days at Pizzini.  The first was during the last school holidays when we attended the Pasta Making cooking class.  We learned a lot about pasta and sauce making from Katrina Pizzini, who learned all that she knows about Italian cooking from Nonna Pizzini. As well as learning a lot, it was just such a fun day spent cooking and then sharing lunch (accompanied by Pizzini wines) with a great bunch of women. When we left I remarked to Kirsty that it was one of the best days I've ever spent in my whole life - that is honestly how special it was.

We're already planning to go back next year with our husbands to the "Ladies and Lads" cooking course.

Then we had reason to go back to Pizzini just a couple of weeks ago to their "Gnocchi Festival" which was part of the whole King Valley's "Italian Spirit" wine festival. It was another fantastic experience. A stunningly beautiful sunny day as well as the garden setting added to the delicious food and wine made it all perfect.  But for two women with five young children, what really made the day a success was all the activities for children - kite making, a huge sandpit full of toys, mask making, circus skills and lots of different sporting equipment.  We were able to sit and chat over our wine and food while the kids were entertained and safe and we could see them. Bliss.... We'll definitely be back for that again next year, with or without husbands.

Road trip!!

Last term my little family was lucky enough to be able to go on a 10 week road trip up the east coast of Australia together.  It's difficult to express just how wonderful it was.  As I've said to friends, where we went was almost an irrelevant factor - what was really special about it was to be able to spend all that time - hours, days, weeks on end, just hanging out together.  My husband had long service leave owing and so we were forced to take an extended holiday - how fantastic!  We were a little concerned about taking our 6 and 8 year old sons out of school for so long, but their teachers assured us that it would all be fine and that we'd be crazy not to take the opportunity.  

We knew that we wanted to go somewhere warm and sunny and it needed to be affordable for a whole term while still paying the regular mortgage. With three young boys, it needed to be somewhere that could be managed with them in tow, without causing us too much stress - the idea was to come back feeling relaxed after all!  We also thought it would be a great opportunity to connect with extended family, especially grandparents, for a more extended period of time, than school holidays usually allows.

Thus, the decision was made - it was to be an old-fashioned beach-hopping road trip from Timbertop to Cairns and back again. We traveled light - each of us had a small bag of clothes, there was a bag of books and toys to share and a few sleeping bags and mattresses.  On the back and top were our bikes - we each had one, except for little Teddy who had a seat on the back of mine. There were no ipads, ipods, DVD players or DS's for entertainment - the only form of communication was the phone. Basically we wanted the kids to talk to us and to each other and to look out the window at the scenery - you know the kind of hellish roadtrips we used to do as kids?? Well, here we were as parents, 30 years later, thinking that it would be a good idea to do that again!!

Our aim was to get to warm and sunny climes as quickly as possible. We stayed in cabins in caravan parks all the way up the coast. These were fantastic with so many activities for kids, usually beach frontage and not much packing up or cleaning for us each morning.  The first place we found what we were looking for was Kiama on south coast NSW. This was when we really started to relax and to believe that long service leave was really happening!

I won't bore you with all the details, but just mention a few highlights after Kiama....

There was Nambucca Heads on the north coast of NSW...

The Gold and Sunshine Coasts...

Yeppoon on the Central Queensland coast...

The Whitsundays...

Rainbow Beach just north of the Sunshine Coast...

Agnes Water, Central Queensland coast...

Burrum Heads, south central Queensland coast...

Lake Eacham and the Kuranda Historic Train on the Atherton Tableland, Far North Queensland...

As you can see, it was a very child-centred holiday.  Towards the end of the trip, my husband said to our kids, "Well boys, I hope you've had a good long service leave!"  Of course we all loved it - we were so lucky to have had such a wonderful opportunity.

bedtime

Our three boys share a room which they mostly love, although the eldest sometimes makes noise about wanting his own room. I'm planning to put that off for as long as possible. We have a 3 bedroom house so having all of them in together means that we have a room that can be used as a playroom and for visitors. It also means that mess can be largely contained in the playroom instead of spreading to the bedroom (at least in theory). Despite these good intentions, the bedroom is usually somewhat untidy anyway, but just before we went on our trip I took these photos after I had given the room a bit of a spruce up - vacuum & mop, clean sheets, cleaned dirty marks off the walls etc. Always feels so good when that's been done but unfortunately doesn't happen often enough.

This bedroom is furnished almost entirely with Ikea furniture - it's a very handy (and cheap) place for children's furniture, particularly when you never know where you could end up living. All three boys have used the little toddler bed - it's great for the transition from cot to bed.

I remember that everyone seemed to go to bed so peacefully that night - perhaps I should do a clean out more often! Don't you just love those nights when everything goes smoothly?  They don't happen all the time but are much appreciated when they do!