MFWF & Hanging out in Hawthorn

Last weekend we had beautiful weather again in Melbourne. It was supposed to be the first weekend of autumn but still felt like the middle of summer. On Saturday we ventured into the city after Ella's swimming lesson to check out the start of the Melbourne Food and Wine Festival. There were various free events set up along the south bank of the Yarra including things like: Prosecco Road, Food Truck Alley, Carnival Games, Produce Patch and Cider Orchard. It was pretty busy, especially the walk through Prosecco Road where you could taste various types of prosecco... Mmmmm! We stopped for tacos at Food Truck Alley and then continued on to meet with some friends at a pop-up garden set up by Urban Dairy, where you could get all sorts of dairy delights. At one point Andy wandered off and came back with Ice Cream Donuts topped with a huge chunk of honeycomb for us, yum!

Eating Tacos

Ice Cream Donuts

Most of our friends in this group have babies now, and we are waiting on one more couple to have theirs, due in April. The oldest is three-year old Poppy, who was very good at playing with Ella. It was impossible to get a picture where they were both looking at the camera so this is the best I could get:

Ella and Poppy

So cute anyway, and makes me look forward to when we have two kids (because I am sure they will always just play nicely and get along together).

On Sunday Andy and I decided to start a little project for Ella, a "sensory board" (thank you, Pinterest). It's basically a piece of wood with lots of different things and materials for a baby to play with stuck on it. If you do a Google Image search for sensory board this is what you get:

We headed over to Hawthorn where there is a big Bunnings and Baby Bunting to get some bits and pieces that we could put on our board. Normally when we are in Hawthorn we go to one of our favourite cafés, Hawthorn Common. This time, we got distracted by a place we always walk by called BAWA and decided we should try something different for once. This is a very Melbourne problem: do we go to a new café, or stick with one we know and love? I know, it's a tough life. Anyway BAWA was good but we both felt we'd stick with Hawthorn Common next time. I did have a nice green smoothie and chia pudding though. Yes, I realize those menu choices make me look like a bit of a (insert word that is not appropriate for my family blog). I was looking for a lighter option and I did share my green smoothie with Ella! I'm not going to lie though, Andy had some sort of pulled pork eggs benedict and I was super jealous!

Chia pudding with lots of fresh fruit

When we finished our shopping Ella was asleep in the pram so we figured we'd keep on walking until she woke up... a sleeping baby is ALWAYS the priority when you are making decisions about what to do next! We decided while walking around Hawthorn that this suburb may be our next move - as we seem to move on a yearly basis. We stumbled on the outdoor pool and leisure centre and enquired about swimming lessons for Ella. We were actually just trying to find a toilet and thought we'd pretend to enquire about something, but ended up loving the centre and wanting to move to Hawthorn, haha. 

Inside the centre there was a station where you could get a health check. This fancy machine measures your BMI, Body Fat Percentage, heart rate and blood pressure. Andy got his checked out first and did pretty well, with an over all health score of 8.4/10 (don't ask me how that is calculated). I went next, slightly nervous as I hate to lose to Andy when it comes to fitness. It turns out I didn't have to worry as my overall score was 9.6/10! Whoop! I took a picture I was so happy about it:

So happy that I beat Andy, haha!

I guess it shows that you really don't need as much high intensity cardio as I used to do... exercise for me at the moment is yoga and walking and that is obviously doing the job, along with us trying to eat more home cooked meals - save for the odd ice cream donut, of course :)

Oh, and we have started work on the sensory board and I will post a picture of it when we are done!