Max Was Here

I'm in recovery mode after Max, Beck and Dot departed for Canberra earlier this morning. I'd forgotten how demanding and tiring a 4 yo can be especially when they're as energetic as he is. He constantly wanted to play in the park, build LEGO (we supplied 5 kits in a week and he, perhaps I should have said I, constructed everything from spacecraft to racing cars and a truck), water the cats (sorry garden), have books read to him, look for spiders and snails, hide from us, visit shopping centres and so on. We used to push about in a stroller at our speed, but that's been discarded in favour of running ahead of us as fast as he can go ... which is fast even by my standards.



The reason for the visit was Beck's residential school in connection with her Masters of Resource Management It was only a 4 day school, but they spent 6 full days with us and 7 nights. They flew up late on Sunday 14th September after Beck's team won their division in the Grand Final earlier that morning. I didn't know that her team was sponsored by the Croatian community ... she's an honorary Croatian! Max missed out on this triumph, preferring to go to a birthday party instead. Today, they departed by road on a 10.5 hour drive to Canberra as Dot wants to visit Floriade ... the city's Spring Festival. She'll be back here next Friday, just before Emily and Greg get back from the US. They're leaving Yellowstone today (Oz time) for the comforts of Hawaii.

Yesterday, we took Max to Armidale's SLEX (Sustainable Living Expo). You don't have ot be a genius to work out what this is all about and it was quite an interesting way to spend a morning, not that Max was interested in any of the exhibits except when they offered free balloons.

AS

Concert?

We were due to attend a Musica Viva concert in Armidale last night (Saturday 13th), but things didn't quite go to plan ... and it wasn't my fault! Two of Australia’s rising musical stars, Feng Ning & John Chen joined forces to perform the piano - violin works of Mozart, Beethoven, Debussy, Dvorak, and Wieniawski. Feng Ning’s first prizes in the Michael Hill (New Zealand) and Paganini (Italy) violin competitions have led to invitations to perform across the world. John Chen became the youngest-ever winner of the Sydney International Piano Competition in 2004 and competed in the 2007 International Tchaikovsky Piano Competition.

They performed magnificently ... what we heard of them because we arrived in time for the interval and missed the Mozart and Beethoven! Unfortunately, Judy, who bought the tickets, was convinced that the performance began at 8.00 and we were booked in then to a restaurant in town before heading out to UNE's Madgwick Hall. Alas, the concert began at 7.00 and we missed the first half.

The performances of the Dvorak, Debussy and Wieniawski showed excellent control and subtlty in works of considerable difficulty and we were shell-shocked that we had missed so much. Alas, there was no way to get half our money back!

AS