A star is born.....

The highlight of this week was the Talent Quest competition at Tess' school. About a month ago Tess came home and announced that she and Olivia were going to enter the Talent Quest although when questioned she had no clear idea about what they were going to do. My imagination went into overdrive with elaborate costumes and potentially recruiting some more actors but fortunately Emma got me to refocus and the girls ended up acting out Little Miss Muffet (with Olivia in the lead role) and Mary, Mary Quite Contrary (with Tess in the lead role). The day before the performance we had a dress rehearsal which Emma and I found very frustrating as the girls kept getting their lines wrong and ended up in fits of giggles on the floor. After half an hour of this Emma and I decided to act it ourselves with them watching to give them the right idea - within 30 seconds we'd got our lines wrong and also ended up rolling around on the floor! When we got to the school hall for the big performance it was packed as the kindy classes are always a draw card because of their "cute" factor. There were 23 acts to get through with Tess and Olivia at number 17. There were some brilliant acts - kids playing the piano, singing, doing magic tricks and a whole raft of little girls dressed up in sparkly dresses and dancing to not always appropriate music! When it came to Tess and Olivia's turn they were both brilliant and were one of 3 acts to get through to the final - we were very proud!!

On Thursday we went to see The Whitlams with the Sydney Symphony Orchestra at the Opera House - it was a Christmas present from the Mennies who were there as well as the Jamiesons. I was only familiar with one of the songs but they were all excellent and I could listen to an orchestra for hours. During the interval we discussed what drives someone to decide they're going to play percussion for an orchestra - there was a man at the back who kept dashing between the glockenspiel, xylophone, timpanis and triangle but what made me laugh was that he had a back-up person who occasionally sprang into action when it was all getting too much!

Jules sailed on Saturday - the last race before the Sydney-Hobart - and they came first! It's a huge boost for their confidence going into the race. The kids and I had a quiet weekend full of Christmas prep including putting up the christmas tree and getting Kristie and Andy's bedroom ready. The other photo is of Tom pretending to be a wombat sleeping in a tree!