Down On The Farm!

A bit of a Batkin family update for you all. In the upcoming weeks Jo will be going back to work from home two days a week. Jo will work on Monday and Friday. Mr Max will go to a small daycare within walking distance. We have decided to do this for a couple of reasons including keeping Jo's skills up and her brain engaged and allow Max to interact with other kids and will improve his social skills.

To allow this all to happen Jo had to duck into her work at the Valley in Brisbane and update the files on her work laptop and catch up with what she will be working on. Max and I dropped Jo off and then proceeded down Brunswick St to New Farm. Cam Watt with whom I once worked was a former resident and always reffered to it as "The Farm". Jo had packed Max and I some morning tea but we went to the New Farm Village Bakery to grab some extra treats. It is a great little bakery and does not look like it has changed much in about 30yrs. The cabinets and trays look like they have been used for that long. The food looks the same as when I was a kid. They have old school match sticks, cup cakes, hedgehog slice, gingerbread men, lamingtons and vanilla slices etc.

We went with the hedgehog slice (chocolate) they have caramel hedgehog and chocolate and Max scored a gingerbread. These were exactly how a gingerbread man should be freshly baked and not in a pre sealed plastic bag, chewy, tangy and sweet with ginger. They also had only 2 smarties for buttons and the eyes were currants.

Being a Thursday we were able to get a great park right in front of the playground of New Farm park which is a large park with beautiful jacaranda's and rose gardens down by the river. The playground was huge with a massive fort at the back which had several levels and slides and 4 or 5 kinds of bridges. Max and I had great fun climbing all over it and going down the slide. The problem with the slide was that there was no way to the ground near by excpet for the slide itself. So Max would slide with me behind so he could climb up the bridges which suspended and had gaps in it so he could ride the slide again. He really enjoyed me riding on the slide behind him and catching up and hitting him. He thought was so funny and would giggle and say moah (more) over and over again. Here are some pics:


We stopped twice for morning tea to get some fluids in him. He really like the gingerbread man and ate most of it all himself. He also wolfed down the grapes and nectarine as well.

After nearly two hours of playground fun we packed up and went and picked Jo up. Max managed to stay awake with the helps of some of his favourite music so he could sleep at home which he did for ages.

New Years Celebrations

We spent about a week out at the farm with my family, and it was wonderful to celebrate New Years with them and catch up with everyone in the same place for once. With everyone so busy the time together didn't last long and so we celebrated New Years a few days early so that we could all be together.

Instead of the traditional BBQ, my Dad likes to prepare a hangi where you wrap the meat and vegetables in alfoil and bury them in the ground with heated rocks and coals. Although it takes a bit more preparation the food comes out wonderfully tender and delicious and it's easy to cook a lot of food at once. Throughout the day we could feel the storm building, with high temperatures and humidity and the wind starting to pick up. We could tell it was about to hit just when we needed to take the food out of the pit, and so Dad called in his best mate Charlie to help him get everything out before the storm. Here's what it looked like ...

Thanks to the extra help we just managed to get all the food out before the rain started, and then we had a great communal dinner with Charlie and his family there as well to share all of the delicious food from the hangi that they had helped to rescue.