Children's Day

As many of you may know the church we attend is made up mostly of People from the Pacific Islands and of those mostly from Samoa.

Traditionally the second Sunday in October is known as 'White Sunday' it is basically the children's day to celebrate and be the centre of attention. Each Sunday School class does a small song or skit from what they have been learning for the whole year. Afterwards is a massive lunch with lots of kids friendly food and then dessert and lolly necklaces.

This year we even had a jumping castle for all of the kids which was very popular. During the week a long list of food was provided so parents knew what food to bring here is briefly what was involved to feed everyone. 8 x pots of Chop Suey and Fried Rice, 147 pieces of KFC, 8 x XL bowls of Potato salad, 20 pizzas of various flavours, over 30litres of ice cream, 150 ice cream cones, 5 large fruit platters, punch and a large chocolate cake. Other food that was not on the list also magically appeared like donuts and mussels. All of the food was packed into individual lunch boxes and labelled for each class. For Max's class all we had to do was pick up the 12 lunch boxes for the kids his age. A count was also done of the parents and special parent packs were also done. It was such a good lunch. After lunch the kids had a small break before cake and ice cream. Then class by class was presented and Jo and I gave Max his lolly necklaces. He thought this was the coolest thing ever, he has seen Jo and I get these at Mother's and Father's day.

For the item of the Playgroup kids which Max is a aprt of they stood on the stage and said Jesus Loves Me. There was also a video with each of the kids name and birth date and some pictures and some video of them. Max joined in with some of the big group songs for the whole Sunday School. He loved being in the limelight and was so excited he kept jumping up and down which is a real sign he is having a good time.

The pictures below are a glimpse of his day. Enjoy!

Max Da Playa

We knew the time would come when a young lady caught Max's eye we just didn't think that it would only be when he just two. But twice this week I have had encounters with Max and his "friend".

I went to Baby Jail (Day Care) on Monday to pick Max up and saw him sitting on a retaining wall near the garden with a girl who had his most beloved blue teddy. I asked him to introduce me and he just smiled and giggled. It was almost like "Dad you're embarrassing me" I told her that she was very lucky to be cuddling his teddy because he is normal pretty protective of him. She smiled and said "Max's teddy". As we were leaving he went over and asked for his teddy by saying "Max Teddy pease". She gave up the bear pretty easily. On the way out I asked Max what his new friend's name was he said Jenny. It turns out that is not actually her name but for anonymity we will keep at that.

Today I go pick Max up and they had lost his shoes but as we left he had to go say goodbye to Jenny. So after saying goodbye to her we continued to walk down the path with the playground beside it. Jenny ran up and said "Bye Max" and tilted her head to her shoulder very cutely. Max slipped his hand gently out of mine and went to say goodbye again.

They then spent the next couple of minutes whispering to each other and giggling gently on either side of the fence. I said to Max "C'mon mate we need to go" he would take one step and then go back to saying goodbye to Jenny. I let them talk to each other for another minute and told Max we have to go. He turned to me and said "Say bye to Jenny". I told Max we have to go. Jenny then smiled at me and reached down and picked up a leaf and handed it to Max. I said Max we really need to go. He then moved in to give her a peck but his head would not fit through the bars. He then started to walk towards me but kept looking at her.

He then ran up to me quite happily and kept saying bye Jenny all the way to the car and I could hear her calling out "Bye Max" it was very cute.

It was so very cute and I wish I had video because I know no one would probably believe what I have just described. All we can say is that obviously the fruit does not fall far from the tree and he has his fathers way of attracting the ladies attention. I fear that he will loose that ability soon for a very long time just like his dear Dad.

How to Torment a Two Year Old In Three Easy Lessons

As you can see from the pictures in the other post we had a pretty bad dust storm. This was followed by 2 more days of dusty badness a couple of days after. In the paper on Saturday the local B.P servo had a voucher for a free car wash in one of a couple of car washes around town. We had one less than 10 minutes away. So we thought that Saturday and Sunday were a bad choice because of the impending second storm.

Monday is Max's day care day so that was out too. The voucher ran out on Wednesday and had to be redeemed before then. We thought every man and his aardvark would be using it on Wednesday so it had to be Tuesday. So we get Max mentally prepared and head off for a family outing. It was to be just Max and I for father - son binding purposes over a blokey thing like a car wash. Max got a bit upset and wanted Mum to come which was cool. We get there and guess what the machine was broken and getting serviced! We went in and asked how long would it take to fix seeing we had a 2yr old we had promised a car wash to. It would be at least another 2hrs. We decided that would really try his patience so we went over and showed him the man fixing the machine and he was upset and wanted to see the bushes (brushes) in action. The good people of B.P however told us we could redeem a voucher then and we had a month to use the voucher.

After Max's afternoon nap he and I headed off for the father - son bonding session. It was now just after school time and there was a line of 10 cars in front of me! I did the maths pretty quickly and realised that at 5 minutes a car that was almost an hour and he would tear me limb from limb if we tried to do that plus I had to be in Ipswich for a meeting shortly after that as well.

We gave up on Wednesday because we knew that everyone would try and redeem the voucher on the last day.

On Thursday we pulled in and had only 3 cars in front of us. We decided we had sultanas and water and toys on board and we could wait it out. Max is pretty understanding for a 2yr old if you talk him through something but 3 visits to the car wash and not getting the car washed was doing our heads in as well. We read some books and sang some songs and tried to tell him what to expect so he would not freak out. I have heard that it can be a bit too much at that age.

It was finally our turn and we talked Max through each of the processes and he saw the water go across the front window and his window and then he saw bubbles which are one of his favourite things in the whole wide world. When the car shook from the brushes he got a little apprehensive but was so happy he saw bubbles he settled down. We went through all of the processes including the dryer and then as we drove out he wanted more.

On the first two trips we had our camera to capture his reaction but on the third trip we forgot the camera so you will just have to paint a picture with your mind.

So if you need to kill some time with a 2yr old and don't want to get out of the car go to a carwash!