October Favourites – PLAYWORKEATREPEAT

Hi friends! I hope you’ve all had an amazing week. I’m excited to be back to share some of my favourites from October. It’s an October Favourites edition! Which feels just right, since (can you believe it?) it’s the last day of the month. Oh, and by the way, Happy Halloween!

I’m pretty sure I say this all the time, but whoa, didn’t the month go by so fast!

We said cheers to the first day of October with a yummy snack of salami, crackers and halloumi.

Spring School Holidays

In  October, I had a relaxing school holiday break and enjoyed the gorgeous spring weather.

First on the holiday agenda was a fun catch-up with friends for lunch.

The Royal Botanic Garden Sydney

I also did a day trip to the Royal Botanic Garden in Sydney, where my funny friend and I admitted we do not have a great sense of direction. To be fair, the garden is huge!

We ended up using my phone to guide us to where we wanted to go. My iPhone has this feature where you hold it up and giant blue arrows appear to show you which way to walk. They reminded me of the arrows in a Mario Kart game, hehe.

Here are a few pics of the beautiful gardens.

Pamela Allen Exhibition

After the Botanic Gardens, we went to see The Pamela Allen Exhibition.

Pamela Allen is a children’s author from New Zealand who made her name in Australia. She wrote Who Sank the Boat? and Alexander’s Outing. We read her books to the children at preschool all the time. Such classics!

After a big day out, you really can’t go wrong with a chicken and leek pie. It was so nice to sit down, eat, and chat.

Cousin Connect

In October, my aunt hosted Cousin Connect. Most of us managed to get together before some of our travelling cousins went overseas.

October is Birthday Month

Our younger son turned 21! We got lucky, and all five of us, the three of us plus my older son and his fiancée, had time off work during the day. At the birthday boy’s request, we went to see a movie and then had burgers and chips for dinner at a place called Mister Gee.

We saw the Leonardo DiCaprio movie One Battle After Another, and it was so good I didn’t fall asleep once!

In October, my eldest son turned 32. He came over our way with his fiancée, and we had dinner at a Chinese restaurant, Lilong. Then it was back to our house for cake. Let me tell you about the funny cake incident.

Since Luke moved out, he’s always come over for his birthday dinner — but this year, we were all less than amazing at communicating. I didn’t want to assume he was coming in case he had other plans, and he figured I’d automatically know he was coming over.

So when he rang me while I was at work and said, “Hey Mum, I’ll be coming over at 7,” I was of course super excited… but we hadn’t actually planned dinner or a cake. I rang my husband and he came up with a plan: we’d go out for dinner, and he would ice and decorate a banana bread he’d baked and pass it off as a birthday cake. No one would ever know.

Well… everyone figured it out immediately. At the very first bite: “Hey, isn’t this Dad’s usual banana bread? He’s just put lollies and choc chips on top!” Hahahahaha!!! “He thought we wouldn’t notice!!”

It was very funny, and now we’ve made it official, Luke will be coming over for his birthday dinner every year, and next time he’s getting a spectacular birthday cake!

A Day of Action

In October, some of my work colleagues and I went to a day of action in the city. We’re standing up for fair pay for preschool staff and against the Premier of NSW, Chris Minns’s proposal to turn community preschools like the one I work in into long‑day care centres.

If it goes ahead, I know I’d seriously be looking at my options.

Community preschools are different to long day care centres. They mostly run during school hours and only during term time, focusing on the year or two before school.

They offer more structured play-based learning, are not-for-profit, usually run by a parent committee, and have smaller groups with long-standing staff. One of the reasons we have less staff turnover is because we get term breaks. There’s no way I could work in such a demanding environment without those precious term breaks. I really don’t understand why the Premier wants to mess with something that works so well.

Some of the signs I saw at the rally were very clever!

Mochi Ran Away

Last weekend, Mochi, our indoor cat, ran away! She got out into the courtyard and hid behind some pot plants. We didn’t notice and accidentally left her out there, which gave her the perfect opportunity to jump onto the neighbour’s garage and disappear into the neighbourhood. We walked up and down our street, knocking on doors, but she was gone, and we were so sad.

I Googled “how to get your runaway cat back”, and it suggested going out late at night or early in the morning when everything is quiet and calling her name. So at 2 am, I went outside and did exactly that, and she appeared. I waited until she came to me and then gently picked her up. Well, I may have gently-ish grabbed her because my heart was pounding! Phew, what a relief to have her back home again.

And that was a glimpse at a few of the things from our October. Thank you so much for stopping by today. I hope you have a wonderful weekend.