Jamos and Steve visit

It was a beautiful sunny day on Monday and the kids had their school Athletics carnival.  Tess came 2nd in her heats for both the 100m and 200m and was in the final of the long jump but unfortunately didn't progress any further than that.

This week in drama class Tess had to dress up as a character and remain in character for the length of the lesson.  Tess chose to dress up as a cowgirl and assumed this bizarre mid-west american accent which had me in stitches.  Because she managed to keep up the accent for the whole hour she won the competition and got a huge bag of lollies for her efforts.  As she was dropped off by a friend's mum she said "thanks for the ride, where I come from we use horses".  

The Jamos arrived from Melbourne on Thursday evening and for an early Christmas present Lisa and I took Julia to get her colours done on Friday morning.  Lisa did the same for me for my 40th birthday and it is the best thing I've ever had done.  Essentially you spend 2 hours being draped in different coloured fabric swatches whilst noting the effect it has on your skin.  At the end of the 2 hours you're able to say what colour category you fall into (there are 12 - the 4 seasons with a true, soft and dark category for each - I'm Soft Autumn) and you're given a swatch of colours that you can take shopping to ensure that you don't ever buy something in a colour that does nothing for you.  I use my colour swatch religiously and have found that I'm much braver now with colour (black is not a colour I'm allowed to wear) and everything in my wardrobe co-ordinates with everything else which makes it easy to put outfits together.  We were all very surprised to discover that Julia is also a Soft Autumn - not something either Lisa or I would have picked but so obvious when the colours are held up against her.  

In the evening we headed to Havana Beach - a relatively new, funky Cuban cafe in Manly which does great mojitos and very reasonably priced food.  

On Saturday morning Steve flew in from the UK and went to watch Tom play rugby where he scored another try.  There seems to be a link between him having an audience and the quality of his game!  Tess' team won their final netball game so they are the undefeated champions of the U10 D grade and go through to the semis and hopefully the grand finals.  

In the evening we went round to the Mennies for dinner which was quite a tame evening because Michael was running the City to Surf the following morning and needed a good nights sleep.  Whilst he was out running we headed down to Clontarf for a picnic breakfast.  It was an incredible morning and we ate, drank coffee and read the papers whilst the kids played on the beach.  Once we'd had enough of Clontarf we headed to Manly beach for a spot of surfing where all the kids went swimming without wetsuits because it was so warm.  Unbelievable for this time of year.  It was an amazing weekend surrounded by our closest friends and because we crammed so much in it felt like a long weekend - an added bonus!