Australia Day!

so here's an interesting fact i discovered while i was checking some info before writing this post. i was about to tell you that on january 26th in such and such a year, australia declared itself an independant country. but in fact, it did not. it was on january 1st 1901 that such an event occurred.

what did happen on january 26th 1788 was the british claiming australia for their own (only the eastern half. the west was dutch). seems surprising to me that they celebrate australia day for when the settlers first came over instead of when they officially became the commonwealth of australia in 1901. but whatever. australians don't always make sense to me :)

not that it matters now. what matters now is that january 26th is australia day. a day described by one of amy's coworkers as "you know that show cops? that's australia day". what a nice thought.

we decided to embrace australia day this year, as last year john and i had barely stepped off the plane. we celebrated in typical australian style: we hit the beach. amy and i donned red, white and blue bikinis (by mixing and matching existing bikinis) and i had a flag sarong. john and eli had their red and blue boardies and bandanas were wrapped around their heads. we played cricket on the beach, ate aussie rolls (vegemite and cheese in a cinnamon roll style...thanks ellen!) and got covered in sand because it was so darned windy at the beach. we listened to the triple j top 100 songs of 2007 (an annual event we were told is a big part of australia day) though we were thoroughly disapointed that "muse" took out the song of the year (by only 13 votes over silverchair- fyi great album).

after the beach, we returned home to get cleaned up and waited for our friends to come over. we had a bit of a back yard barbie. there were prawns of course.we ate pavlova for dessert, an australian specialty. we celebrated the fact that our friend diana is now an australian citizen. we popped dozens of party poppers (fab!) and lit some sparklers for the event. the night finished off with a mixed doubles ping pong tourney (in honour of the australian open being played in melbourne right now).

we heard the fireworks in freo, but were unable to attend them as our friends have a one and a half year old son who was sleeping soundly in our bedroom. but that's ok, because it's not about the fireworks. it's about the friends and the good times. and there were many, had by all!

xo