Araluen

Over the weekend, we decided to celebrate a little victory by treating ourselves to lunch at the Millbrook Winery and a visit to Araluen Botanical Gardens. Unfortunately, lunch was a bust. Stephanie missed her nap and was too tired to eat, Ellie was just too choosy to eat, and Markus's meal was so unsatisfying that he didn't eat at all. Oh dear. At least there was Araluen afterwards to enjoy, and we were thankful too for their little tearoom.

Stephanie has discovered chips/fries and ketchup. (Ellie still can't understand the appeal.)


Both of them fully understand the appeal of ice cream!



And oh, the sugar high that followed was oh-so-very high!


Good thing there was a lot of space to explore and roam...



...and Papa to climb on as well.




We all had such a great time at Araluen that on our next visit, we plan to pack a picnic and just stick to what we know works! (more pictures in the flickr pool in case you'd like to see)

Down south AGAIN

Markus had requested Monday and Tuesday off in case we could convince Mary to extend her stay a bit and take in Sydney, and once he had the leave, he had to take it. Rather than stick around home for a long weekend, we headed down south again on Sunday for a three-day, two-night farm stay in a different spot: Margaret River Hideaway. In past visits, we have always stayed in Dunsborough, so we knew that area pretty well. Margaret River is almost an hour south of there, so we had some new spots to explore. Not that we explored much...our little farmers (most especially Farmer Stephanie) were completely happy to stick around our farmstead.

Tourist spots seem to use the term "farmstay" quite loosely in that none we've seen are actual farms. Perhaps they were farms once, but now they are big properties with a few cottages for tourists and a few animals for a farm-like feel. We liked this one a lot more than the last one, and not just because the accommodation was less dodgy (though thank goodness for that). The animals roamed free on the property, and there weren't any "no go" zones, meaning we were welcome to go anywhere or through any gate as long as we closed it behind us again. The geese, peacocks and guinea fowl roamed around most often right in front of our cottage, so the girls were up and out the door first thing in the morning to observe and fraternize.


At 9am, it was time to help feed the animals.




Afterwards, how could we resist such an awesome playground?


As usual, there are lots more photos in the flickr account. If you want to see more, just click on the sidebar.

Markus and I have realized that we go down south so the girls can have fun with animals and we can enjoy good food and wine. We don't go out in Perth, so the wine region is our food and wine time. We try to have lunch at a different winery each day. Of course, we made an exception to that rule to have lunch at Amberley on our way into town. It's the best overall in that it offers great food, wine and service in a setting where the girls are very comfortable and happy. Can't beat that!



At least, we thought we couldn't beat it until we discovered the Xanadu winery on this visit. Julian at our farmstay recommended it highly, so we headed over there for lunch on day two. Given that it was a Monday off-season, it wasn't surprising that we were the only ones there. Markus pointed out that it would probably be very noisy inside when it is full of people, but it was gorgeous and peaceful and all around fantastic when we were there! While I tend to be put off by artsy food presentation, there is no getting around the amazing flavors they were serving up (and the wine was excellent too!). They also prepared the best kids' meal we've seen: a tasting platter of small sandwiches, cheese slices, pear slices, dried apricots, and handcut potato wedges in sea salt. YUM!


We always make sure to stay somewhere with a kitchen so we can prepare breakfast and dinner at home for the girls. Ellie could eat pasta with pesto every night, and she did while we were there. Stephanie is happy to eat whatever (or too busy to eat anything). Later that night for dinner, Markus and I made our way through a bottle of Amberley's merlot while munching cracking and triple cream brie from the Margaret River Cheese Co. I am pretending that was a healthy meal, because man oh man was it good!

We experienced some fairly wintry weather this time. The first and third days were rainy, windy and cold. Day two in between was grey, but at least it wasn't bitter. The girls had a blast on the farmstay. Stephanie could not have been happier. She is such a true animal lover, and she was in seventh heaven. Usually when we come home from being away, the girls are so excited to be back. Ellie was this time too, but Stephanie started to cry when we pulled into the driveway. "Don't go home! I want to go see farm!" Sweet girl. We'll go back!

It's all about the food...I mean, the view!

When we go down to Margaret River, you could probably guess that for me, it's all about the food. This time was no different. We didn't even stop to check in to our rental accommodation before we went straight to the Amberley Estate for lunch. What a wonderful start to our stay and a great introduction to the local wine region for Mary!


Since that stop, we've been joking that like the woman on the Ellen Degeneres Show (starts at minute 2:28), Mary loves Jesus, but she drinks a little. She really enjoyed the Amberley Chenin Blanc (hello, any of Mary's friends who can find Amberley stateside!) and of course she liked her lunch too. We visited one winery each day, and we discovered two fantastic breakfast spots. While Artezen in Dunsborough offered up the best breakfast by far (you MUST eat their blueberry pancakes with neufchatel and passion fruit puree!), the winner of the best view goes to Bunker's Beach Cafe.



The morning we went there, we woke up to a cold fog. So much for the "great view" the guidebook had promised, we thought, but we had a reservation so off we went. We drove out of the fog along the way and enjoyed a gorgeous view while we enjoyed a basic (but tasty) breakfast (and juice, of course)


I took a picture of the view from our table, and you can see the fog here:



The next day, we went back for afternoon snacks and were greeted with this beautiful (fog-free) view:




The two other wineries we visited were Cullen (a favorite from visits past) and Wise, a new-to-us winery with an amazing view of the Cape Naturaliste area. Too bad the restaurant isn't kid-friendly enough to entice us back. Sigh. If you are an adults-only group, enjoy your beautiful view and fantastic food. Seriously.



The best food discovery by far was the Yallingup Woodfired Bakery. Holy moly. If you are headed down south, please please please bring me back some of their bread. Mary has offered to drive back herself to get it, and she would even be willing to drive on the left for the prize. It's that good. The bakery isn't marked for tourists, but my bloodhound instincts allowed me to find it anyway, and wow is all I have to say. Yum. Must.

Happy Mother's Day!

Wishing all you mothers (and those of you with mothers!) a Happy Mother's Day!

We are freshly returned from a long weekend down in Dunsborough and Margaret River. We wanted Grandmary to see the local wine region, and we hope she wasn't disappointed!


Something tells me she wasn't.

On past trips when we headed down south, we stayed at Clearwater Escape rentals in Dunsborough. This time, we opted for a farm stay, thinking that would appeal greatly to the girls, as well as giving them space to run in the afternoons after the atypical amount of time spent in the car each day. From the girls' perspective, we couldn't have done better. They were over the moon! Thrilled! Excited! Happy! The adults were less enthused with our accommodation. The house was perfectly fine for something not expensive (discounting, of course, the strong smell emanating from the kitchen), and since it sleeps up to 12, it wouldn't be expensive if that many people split it. As Markus put it, if we were a dozen college kids sharing for a weekend, we couldn't have done much better. As it was, Grandmary kept saying she felt like she was at camp (I did too, and I've never been to camp), not that she was complaining...she'd stayed in worse places before. Oh my, how embarrassing. Well, as I said, the girls were thrilled. We adults focused on the main redeeming feature, which was the fireplace I used to keep us toasty in the evenings. We saw this:


For the girls, it looked more like this:



We all enjoyed and appreciated this:



As always, it is just nice to get away for a while. We were all ready to come home on Sunday morning after three nights there, but we all are looking back at what was a great weekend in our hearts.

We Survived The Great Storm of Perth 22/03/2010

Yesterday, we experienced our first real rain in months. As fate would have it, yesterday's rain turned out to be part of the worst storm Perth has seen in almost 20 years. It snuck up on us, going from dark clouds and lightening to golf-ball-sized hail in a matter of minutes. And then there was the deluge. The noise in the extension was deafening as hail pounded the tin roof. Stephanie snoozed away in a late afternoon nap, while Ellie watched with mounting trepidation as the storm raged. Around our house, the hail heavily battered trees and knocked down lots of small branches and leaves (it was closer to dime-sized here, thankfully; the worst was downtown and the heavily damaged UWA campus). Watching the hail hit the pool was amazing, and it was kinda fun watching it bounce around on the trampoline. Once we knew Markus wasn't being beaten by it on his bicycle, we were able to relax and watch it go.



At the end of the day, it was your average summer thunderstorm in the Southern US, only they aren't used to that kind of weather here.
At all.

The mayhem it caused was horrific. Unfortunately, many areas were far worse off than we were. The storm caused a mudslide in King's Park that ran into some luxury apartments. UWA had a lot of devastation. Several houses had collapsed roofs or broken windows or skylights, letting in tons of rain and damaging ceilings. Other homes flooded and many cars were totaled by the hail. In our area, there wasn't too much damage to speak of, but we learned a few things about the house. The skylight still leaks, for one. The indecision about The Mushroom Room was fortuitous; it flooded again, just as before. We lost power in all the outlets in the house; the safety switch tripped repeatedly from water leaking into the electrical system somewhere. The rest of the house lost power a couple of hours later anyway. For bonus, the drain in the laundry room floor backed up and filled the room with smelly yellow water, leaving first that room and then the whole house smelling like a public toilet. As I cleaned up this morning, we discovered the source of our electrical woes when I unplugged the washing machine and water poured out of the outlet. Markus stayed home to help me tame the mayhem, and everything is back to order now. The house looks and smells spanking clean, and the power is fully restored, though not in time to save the contents of the fridge.

I looked up a news story about it online this morning, and I was raw-ther amused to know that over 11,000 people spent their evening last night setting up and joining a facebook group called "I Survived the Great Storm of Perth 22/03/2010." It was a thunderstorm, people. With golf ball sized hail, I grant you, but still.
I have to wonder how large that facebook group will be when the 150,000 people without power get back online.