This year is a milestone birthday year for Dad, who hit the big 7-0 in the middle of the month. Wow! That’s exactly double my age (or at least it will be come October)! How do you celebrate when someone turns 70? Well, if Dad’s birthday-fest week was anything to go by, you have two parties, and you go out to dinner. Not too shabby!

The first party was at a park just down the road from Jason and Susan’s house. Thank goodness Jason and Susan went down early to stakeout a table, as according to Jason, they were all occupied well before 8 AM! We managed to cram about 30 of Dad’s family and friends into our little shelter, and we all feasted on Red Rooster chicken, rolls, and two cakes from The Cheesecake Shop (Black Forrest, and Carrot).

For dinner, we hit up one of Dad’s favourite places to dine – the football club at the bottom of their street! I have to say, it’s actually pretty remarkable value, especially for kids; for $10, Oscar got a huge bowl of fettuccine bolognese, a pop-top juice, crayons and colouring-in book to fill the time while he waited, and a serving of ice-cream for dessert!

Finally came party number two – a surprise party for Mom and Dad’s church group, held on our recently completed back deck. We had convinced Dad that we were having a St Paddy’s Day party, and had requested for him to get us some extra avocados from the markets (so we could make guacamole, in keeping with the green theme). When he came to drop them over, we invited him up to see our “green” deck, where of course all the guests were waiting silently for him to make his entrance. After singing “Happy Birthday”, everyone waited to hear Dad’s response, and he simply said; “I think I’ve been had!”.

(A huge thanks to all the helpers that we had for the party, most especially the Durhams who brought around two coffee machines and some home roasted beans, then proceeded to make coffee for everyone all morning.)

All in all, I’m pretty sure that Dad was quite pleased with all the celebrations that we had for him!

Happy Birthday Dad!

For my birthday this year, Kristy arranged some type of Facebook mail to some group of mutual facebook friends, which I can only assume was worded something like the following:

As you would know, it’s Gerrod’s birthday on the 25th. No-one would question that he is eternally wise, and I’m sure that at some point-or-other in your life, you too have been lucky enough to be inspired by his wisdom. As such, on the 25th of October, I encourage you to post a status message beginning with the words, “A wise man once said…” and completing it with a selection of Gerrod’s prophecy.

Of course, this was all unbeknownst to me, and so I was rather surprised when I found a large number of messages waiting for me in my inbox on the morning of the 25th. The first one was from Helen -

“OK,” I thought, “that’s pretty random; perhaps she has mistakenly tagged me in something? No, it clearly says, ‘Happy Birthday Gerrod’ afterwards, so I think it’s aimed at me.”. Next came another Lewis message, this time from Julian:

“Sage advice!” I thought. “Kilik is unbeatable! But that’s also pretty random. What’s going on here?”. It was only when I read message number three – three Lewis messages in a row no less – that things started falling into place. Shelley wrote:

Now credit where credit’s due – that game was taught to me by dear friend Stacey; I just choose to pass it on as I think it’s a corker. However, at that point I turned to Kristy and said, “Did you arrange some type of ‘A wise man once said’ quote thingy on Facebook? Otherwise…. well, I have no idea what’s going on.”. Kristy’s giggling was her undoing.

And so – a massive thanks to all the people who participated in the shenanigans – it really, really made me laugh. I had no idea I was so quotable! Here’s a few that really got me laughing, together with some explanations where required:

A wise man once said “In Australia we call this a butter-cutter” (Kirstin) – This one is too hard to explain, but I think the video is somewhere on YouTube. Suffice to say, I don’t think I’d make the best cooking show host – though I’m disappointed that “butter-cutter” has not become the official name for a “knife” in Australia.

A wise man once said – ‘you’ll love <insert any name> they’re the greatest. Just a really nice person’ (Ben) – Ben reckons I say this about practically everyone that I tell him about. It’s funny ’cause it’s true. Is it my fault that I know such nice people?

A wise man once said “how ya going” ….. Then sent my husband home to say it over & over again! (Suzie) – Actually both Suzie and Ingrid have probably held this complaint about me at some point, but Nick and Aubain have the greatest fake Aussie accents ever!

A wise man once said “I just don’t like Death Cab for Cutie” (Dean) – Explanation not necessary! Similarly;

A wise man once said “Have you heard <insert-band-name>? They are freakin’ awesome dude!” (Nath) – whenever I find a new band that I like, I tend to get a little obsessed with them, obtaining as much of their music as possible, trying to convert everyone I know to fans, and then contemplating which band logo would look best as a tattoo. Yes, that really happens, but so far only one band has literally made its mark…

A wise man once said “you’ll find the eggs aisle 6″ (Jaimee) – Like a disturbingly large number of my friends, Jaimee and I met while working at Coles. This quote especially cracked me up (pun intended); mainly because eggs were in aisle 9.

A wise man once said: “You can never have too many t-shirts… I really need to colour-code them.” (Lea) – yes, it’s true. I think I have an addiction! And I proudly show off my lifehacker organised t-shirt drawer to anyone!

And finally, one to end on, and probably the wisest thing that I have ever said:

A wise man once said “if someone offers me a menu with pork knuckle on it, then you’d better believe I’m going to be ordering the pork knuckle”. (Joe) – what can I say? I like pork knuckle!

Again – a massive thanks to everyone who quoted me – it was such an awesome laugh!

My birthday fell on the 25th of October this year, which also had the misfortune of being a Thursday instead of a more palatable Friday. Perhaps next year I’ll be more lucky; but as far as birthdayfests go, this has still been a good one.

Oscar wanted to ensure that I wasted as few precious birthday hours sleeping as possible, and consequently broke out a special wake-up edition of Happy Birthday at around 5:45 AM. After presents in bed and then some breakfast, it was off to Mom and Dad’s house to pick up my bike and cycle to work. Kristy and Oscar had teamed up to give me a Bluetooth Heart Rate monitor and a new pair of sports headphones, so I took the hint that I should be cycling more! Also, I figured it would be a big day of eating, so pre-burning some calories was probably the right play.

Sure enough, the food seemed to just keep on flowing, with a white chocolate mudcake at work for morning tea, a birthday burrito for lunch (courtesy of Jason), and a huge serving of pasta from Ziggabalis for dinner! But the crème de la crème was by far the second cake of the day, home made by superwife Kristy. Effectively, it was two mudcakes, filled in the middle with a peanut-butter cheesecake, and all topped with chocolate icing and melted Reece’s Peanut Butter Cups. I have no idea what its really called, but I’m going to coin it the “Exploding Peanut Butter Cheesecake Chocolate Mud Ultimo”. Whoever came up with the recipe originally would be foolish not to rename it.

There were only two candles on the cake, but since Oscar is a huge fan of blowing candles out, we had quite a number of rounds; I’m not sure that we would have hit the 17 rounds required to cater for my actual age in candles, but there would have been at least five.

Our work has instituted a new policy of an extra day off per year for your birthday, so I played hookie on Friday, and we headed up to Atlantis Marcoola for the weekend with The Threebie-soon-to-be-Fourbies. Between the beach, the pool and the apartment, we didn’t really do very much at all, which was perfect – a weekend of putting the feet up was exactly what we all needed.

And, now we’re back to the reality of washing, ironing, and making lists of electrical items to purchase for our house. Well, it was fun while it lasted!

A huge thanks for all the birthday messages, and especially the “Wise man says” campaign on Facebook. But, more on that later…

A big Happy Birthday to super wife and Mum Kristy, who hit (age unspecified) on Tuesday!

Kristyfest 2012 kicked off with breakfast at Buzz Emporium, where we had been hyping up the pancakes to Jason and Louise since before their visit. It was a disaster! They had run out of pancakes! We later found out that this was due to an exceptionally busy public holiday the day before, and that since they considered their pancakes one of their “signature dishes”, they use a pre-made mixture to ensure consistency (rather than making them on the fly). As such, we were forced to choose something different from the menu; this was actually a good thing, as it turns out that it’s not just pancakes that they do well!

It was a bit of a jumbled up day, as we had to farewell the Lowes in the afternoon (after a quick Chicken Curry from Hanaichi); plus, we had to do a thorough clean of the house in preparation for Mum and Dad Harvey’s return from their six week overseas holiday on Wednesday.

But, we were back into party mode by dinner time, which was on sponsored by Mom and Dad Thomas. They chose La Zucca at Bald Hills as the venue, and it was marvellous! We tucked in to two exceptional pizzas – a Margharita (Kristy’s all-time favourite), and a meat lovers (which I preferred). We even got a little bit adventurous and had a dessert pizza – essentially, melted chocolate on a pizza base, served with fresh cream and ice-cream! Yum!

So, Happy Birthday Kristy! I hope you enjoyed your day!

Uncle Jason and Aunty Susan tried their hand at babysitting for the first time on Friday night, when Kristy and I headed out to Shorncliffe to celebrate her Mum’s “21st Birthday Party” (or at least, that’s what the sign said!). It was a lovely night – the fried chicken and garlic balls were particularly impressive, and Wendy’s choice of “Marbled Mudcake” has completely changed my mind regarding the best cake from The Cheesecake Shop. Farewell, White Chocolate Mudcake! Your reign is over!

Due to a particularly poorly timed migraine (including partial loss of vision for about almost an hour), I unfortunately wasn’t much help in the photographic department, so this is all I can offer from the evening. Yes, slack, I know – though to me that seems like a good excuse for Wendy to have another party in her honour. Logic then follows that there should be another mudcake, too; I’m liking this suggestion more and more by the minute!

Anyway – Happy 21st Wendy! I hope the party was everything that you hoped it would be!

Glen and Anita were very pleased to welcome their baby girl Natalie into the world a few weeks back. We paid them all a visit when she was just shy of one week old!

When Oscar was born, the phrase we heard most often (and hence got most sick of) was that “You forget how small they are”; yet oddly enough, that’s the only thing I could think of when we met Natalie. She’s so little! Actually I don’t think it’s the size of a newborn that surprises me – it’s their weight. It’s almost as if when lifting a child, my muscles brace for Oscar’s weight, and so they get quite a surprise when a baby weighs a lot less – like when you went to the science museum as a kid, and they had a brick which for all intents and purposes looks exactly like a brick, but it’s actually made out of cardboard so you almost fall over when you lift it up.

Yes, newborn babies are very light indeed.

Anyway – congratulations Glen and Anita, and big brother Caleb…

… on the new, non-cardboard addition to your family!

When Kristy asked me what type of cake I wanted for my birthday this year, I had no idea what to ask for, so as a joke I said, “Something that looks like The Keywork“. Kristy had no idea what I was talking about. I was totally kidding. It was a very short conversation.

Fast forward a few months to today – my birthday – when I get home from work and come upstairs. Kristy takes me by the hand and says, “Come and look at this before you see it by accident”. And there in front of me was the greatest birthday cake I can ever remember seeing, ever. Ever.

What an amazing woman I’m married to!