Congratulations Elliot!

After years of learning the piano, we were finally brave enough to enter our first competition. Congratulations to Elliot for being one of the prizewinners at the UMT piano competition! We were probably more nervous than he was! The $70 prize money also came in handy...I would have uploaded a video of him playing if I had actually managed to get a good video. Oops..

A proud teacher!

Waiting to start

Elliot's cheer squad!

What better way to celebrate than enjoying chocolate treats at Max Brenner!

My favourite...the chocolate souffle

The classic Belgian waffle...yum

Musical Moments

Its that time of the year...concert time! We've had ballet, band, strings, choir, piano, plays...multiple that by three and that's a busy concert schedule! I shall not bore you with details of all but here are a few highlights. Or least highlights where I had obtained some sort of footage!

Lara playing the double bass as the fairy godmother, her character in the class play

Jonah just missed out graduation from Level 1 this year, but did complete Book 1 and thus was able to play in his first recital outside of his teacher's studio. For a moment, I thought he would decline to play as he stuffed his hands in his pockets. But play he did! Phew!

A very proud Jonah with his certificate

Lara and Elliot completed Levels 3 and 6 respectively and had the privilege of performing at the graduation recital at the Sydney Conservatorium of Music. I am so proud of all three children and looking forward to hopefully having all three play at the same concert next year!

The $300,000 plus Steinway concert grand at the East Recital Hall of the Sydney Conservatorium of Music. Oh what a beautiful instrument! It made my children sound so good...

Sing A Song

Last minute ticket, not too bad a seat!

Last evening, I had the opportunity to spend some treasured mother and daughter time with Lara. Elliot had auditioned successfully for the school's Arts North choir. The grandparents were still around at that time and happily went to watch him perform at the Sydney Town Hall. Lara had also auditioned successfully to be part of the combined choir for the Festival of Children's Music concert. The choir comprised of children from  choirs of local public schools. Select performing arts groups such as dance troupes, vocal ensembles, string ensembles and bands also took part in the concert.

With both sets of grandparents away, mother had to step up to the plate! I was too happy to arrange to leave work early. The two boys were eager to stay at home with the promise of having chicken nuggets for dinner. Seeing as Lara had to be at the concert venue by 6pm, we took it as a valid excuse to have dinner out together.

We took the train from North Ryde station and alighted at the next stop...Chatswood. We walked around to find the Japanese eatery that took our fancy the most. Lara settled on a new ramen house that we had not tried before. As we were only the second table in the house, the food came very quickly! We munched away happily whilst playing around with the various photography apps on my iPhone.

Lara's choice of dinner venue

The funky interior. Playing around with iPhone apps! This one taken with pudding cam

Lara's dinner...Chashu ramen. Puddingcam again

Kaarage-don. Yum! Plain old iphone camera this time!

It was then time to cross the road to The Concourse, where the concert was going to be held. What used to be a collection of old and dingy buildings had been turned into a wonderful complex consisting of a concert hall, theatre, library, restaurants and shops. It was a far cry from what was there when I was a teenage girl!

The Concourse

After dropping Lara off with her teacher, I had time to give myself a treat. ZenQ was conveniently across the road from the concert hall. Ah...it was bliss to enjoy some dessert with husband or children getting in the way! I went for my favourite grass jelly, milk pudding and pearls. With my stomach sated, I strolled in to the concert hall.

How doesn't love grass jelly, milk pudding and sago pearls!?!?! Instagram photo

I was pleasantly surprised by the quality of the performances. Most of all, I was proud of Lara for singing with so much gusto. My only regret was not having a video camera to capture all the shoulder heaving, head movements, wide open mouth and those oh so expressive eyes! She really took our family motto of "singing with glory" seriously!

The concert stage and the wonderful children. The band from Pymble Public School was awesome! LOVED the drummer.

The two hours flew by and we were picked up for a ride home. Stay tuned for more concert news...

Saturday survival

Today is the first day of the long weekend with Malcolm being on-call. Preparations included shuffling Lara off to my parents so that I could take Elliot to soccer. For the first time, the team didn't win. It was a draw and a far cry from the 20 nil victories that the boys were used to. The boys took it well. Jonah thankfully was happy to watch for most of the game.

We hurried to Macquarie shopping centre for a fabulously healthy lunch of McDonald's. They've been good to me in the past in my hours of stress and I thought I should show some loyalty. I was lucky enough to get a parking spot straight away. Lunch also went by uneventfully. After a quick visit to the bookshop, we headed towards the hospital for a long overdue visit of grandpa. We were again bestowed with parking good luck and got a spot right outside.

We took some home-made banana and date muffins along with some lime curd. He looked much better and was a lot less short of breath. An angiogram has been arranged for Tuesday and hopefully that will yield positive news as well. Jonah again decided that he was happy to sit still...for over an hour! Was this really my son?!?!? Okay, so it helped that he had an endless supply of food.

By late afternoon, Malcolm still hadn't finished (he was working at the same hospital) so we decided to call it quits and head home. I tried to make new reservations for the Novotel at New York. The rate at surprisingly dropped to US$280 last night. I managed to make a reservation for our family this morning but by the time I finished making our reservation the price had gone up to $355 per night! As we had to go to soccer I left the rooms for the other 2 families for later. I could have kicked myself. When I tried again at 5pm, the cheapest available room rate was...$425 per night! And you had to pay upfront. I couldn't believe my eyes.

Moral of the story when a price seems too good to be true, book it straight away! I tried to soothe my annoyance with some Disney but I couldn't find my all Disney CDs! An incomplete collection?!?!? Arghhhh!!! I could take it no more...so I bought myself the complete 5 CD set on ebay for $24. Money well spent I think. I am feeling a lot more relaxed already...