Celebration

Recently we paid off our mortgage and were wondering how to celebrate. Perhaps unwisely, we asked Louka what she thought. She mapped out a plan for a day - Sunday, because Daddy had to work on Saturday.

1. Waffles for breakfast

2. Go to the beach and build a huge sandcastle

3. Ice-creams on the way back from the beach

4. Home-made hamburgers and home-made lemonade for lunch

5. Chocolate cake for afternoon tea

I think fish and chips came into it too somewhere, but were perhaps superseded by the hamburgers.

Waffles were easy - we always have waffles on Sunday anyway. Then we made our way to the beach. Louka was trying out new step patterns all the way so it was slow going. At 9 o'clock the sun was pretty hot, but soon after we arrived it clouded over and got nicely cool. We built a huge, if ungainly, sandcastle, in imminent danger of being completely washed away by the rising tide.

Graham, then Louka, buried their feet in the pool of water left by the excavations for the monstrosity.

Graham had had enough and kept suggesting ice-creams but Louka was having fun. Eventually I said 5 more minutes and soon after that we left the beach, bought ice-creams from the surf kiosk and sat in the park to eat them.

Home again, Louka picked the two ripe lemons off the lemon tree, cut them in half with a bit of help, squeezed them and added a tablespoon of sugar for each lemon. Then it was topped up with cold water and put in the fridge for lunch.

I persuaded Louka to get on with the cake before lunch so it would be cool enough to ice for afternoon tea. She did pretty well, measuring out ingredients, breaking eggs, greasing and flouring the cake tin and pouring in the mixture. Once it was in the oven, though, she wanted to get on with the burgers.

We'd bought plain meat patties at Coles yesterday, so they just needed frying. Louka chopped mushrooms, tomatoes and avocadoes and put them on separate plates. She picked sorrel leaves from the garden. I cut slabs of turkish bread and toasted them. We assembled our own burgers from the ingredients available (and tomato sauce, of course). They were nice, and so was the lemonade.

Cleaned up, then made the frosting. Louka wanted lots of colours but I eventually beat her down to two colours, blue and green. We added a few drops of blue colouring, she made a picture of the house, then we added yellow and green to the remaining icing and surrounded the house with green. A tube of brown fudge icing added some detail. The cake was very nice too.

I think that's the end of Louka's celebration plan. Graham is cooking dinner, which is good enough for me.