Happy Australia Day 2014

It's Australia Day today and what better excuse for a picnic with some of our favourite Australian foods.

The girls and I spent yesterday baking sausage rolls, Anzac biscuits, cheese and vegemite scrolls and attempting (unsuccessfully) to make lamingtons. There were plenty of other family favourites I would've loved to have also made such as pavlova, jelly slices and vanilla slices, but we already spent the whole day baking as it was. Plus I'm not really allowed to eat any of those things!

Today we headed to one of our favourite parks in Berkeley and had a little picnic with our home made Australian goodies. I picked up a few Bundaberg ginger beers on the way to round out our lunch with an Australian beverage - maybe not the best thing for me considering the high sugar content. Oh well, it's only Australia Day once a year!

Our little Australian picnic

Ava takes a bite of her cheese and vegemite scroll

Kim eats a sausage roll

Ava was excited that the picnic set had wine glasses to drink out of

The park that we chose for our picnic is filled with towering gum trees and due to California's current state of drought, the grass was quite dry and crunchy. Add in the blue sky, sunshine and relatively warm weather and it did almost feel like we were back home. So much for Winter.

Just like home

Lola fell asleep in the stroller on our way to the park and slept the whole time that we were eating so she missed out on the picnic. She did wake up in time to play in the playground though and had lots of fun going on the slide while Ava went backwards and forwards across the money bars.

Weeeeee!

Sliding together

Down the fireman pole

Ava climbs along the side of the monkey bars

I'd better move out the way!

The girls love playing hide and seek when we go to this particular park as it has a series of concrete tubes perfect for hiding in. Surprise, surprise, that's exactly where Ava went off to hide straight away as Lola counted to 20. The girls then had fun playing in the concrete tubes which always remind me of the pipes in Super Mario Brothers - although these ones don't lead to underground worlds or have man eating plants popping out of them!

Lola counts while Ava hides

We found her

Playing in the tubes 

It's a long way down

Heading down to go home

So that was out Australia Day for 2014. I hope everyone back home and all the Australians around the world had a great day.

Happy Australia Day!