ANZAC Day – April 25th

Today was ANZAC Day in Australia.  It’s the anniversary of the Australian & New Zealand battle at Galipoli during WWI, but is now their day to remember all those who have served in the armed forces.  I’d say it’s the cousin to our Memorial Day.  They have dawn services in all the capital cities (including Adelaide) and the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge even made a surprise appearance at the service in Canberra.  We met a few of Lesley’s friends at a café for a quick coffee before we headed down to the parade.

It was a strange parade, or rather a strange parade route.  It was a really neat to see it though.  Strangely there were a bunch of bagpipers, not sure if there’s any significance to that or not. Three of her friends that were with us were in the military, but they weren’t marching in the parade.  Anyway, after we got back from the parade I attempted to do some crafty things with the boys.  Apparently I’m terrible with those little rubber band loom things that are all the rage these days.  I can do the super simple ones that you do on your finger, but the directions we had for “weaving” them on the loom were useless (at least to me).  We looked up a video on youtube and we still couldn’t get it right.  Thankfully, Dorothy and Andy came over for a bit so that helped keep them distracted a bit longer while Lesley was cooking.  She decided to have a party tomorrow for a bunch of friends, so she was making some snack food and then dinner.  I couldn’t talk the boys into going to the park and eventually Lesley decided to just let them watch TV instead of fight with them.  I was sitting in the kitchen chatting with Dorothy  about my plans while in Australia and Lesley said I could come back after my year was up – I should be a nanny and could come back on a different visa.  Don’t laugh, she was serious.

Ali called and wanted to go out for a drink so Lesley left me to take dinner out of the oven and feed the boys.  They both claimed they wouldn’t be long, but I knew Lesley didn’t get the chance to go out often, so I wisely didn’t believe them.  Thankfully the boys were quite good for me, even though they had hardly been on their best behavior during the day.  Magnus had thrown a huge tantrum before the parade this morning and had only gotten slightly better during the day.  They ate most of their dinner without much fuss and put on their PJs without a fuss too.  I could hear them squabbling a bit while I was cleaning up the kitchen, so I decided I’d best just go read my book in the living room while they watched their Friday night movie.  When it was over I told them it was time to pick out a book and go to bed.  They took their time, but did select a book and got right into bed.  It was an odd book called Diary of a Wombat, but there were two copies so, instead of me reading to them, they read the book to me.   They’re supposed to read a book each night, but they’re on school holiday so it hasn’t happened as often as it should have this week.  Lesley and Ali came back around 8:15pm and thought I was super nanny or something.  I’m 99% sure I had nothing to do with their behavior – I was just as much surprised as they were.  Lesley said I could be their Au Pair and Ali said, “Yeah, you should, she can pay you.”  Is this an episode of Punk’d or something?  If you’d told me back in December, when I decided I was moving to Australia, that I’d be babysitting, I would never have believed you.  It’s not the worst thing I’ve ever had to do. Considering the rough morning we had, this was a surprisingly pleasant ending to the day.  So keep the prayers coming, I like good endings to long, kid-filled days and there will be a lot of kids at the BBQ tomorrow night.