Chocolate moose

Today, Thumper, BallFiend and I visited StompyDad who has been busily 'decluttering' as a result of the xmas gift that I gave him (a book called Sorted). A gift that has sadly backfired upon me as StompyDad now requires that I spend many, many hours at his house to look through the piles of stuff that he has determined to be clutter. Presumably so that I can shift it all to my house and ultimately end up with an equivelent clutter problem in 30 years time.

And so we were all off to see StompyDad and his clutter. (Except for DeepSpice who got to stay home and attempt to recuperate from the dreadful night's lack of sleep that we both had, courtesy of Thumper waking and wailing multiple times. DeepSpice did most of the getting-up, so I thought this was fair enough).

We stopped on route at a bakery to pick up lunch supplies to take to StompyDad's house - just some pastries and a few sweet treats. I chose lemon tarts for StompyDad and me, BallFiend opted out, and Thumper choose a chocolate mousse. (Both kids also decided to chuck massive tantrums in the shop so that by the time I left, I was completely embarassed by them and furious with them. BallFiend was very contrite afterwards. Thumper not so.)

We arrived at StompyDad's house, ate our lunch and then I was given a grand tour of all the recently decluttered sites around the house... "Open that cupboard. Look in here. Now I just want to show you this, it's important..." and so on for about an hour and a half. Eventually StompyDad left me to actually look through the boxes of stuff. There were some fabulous finds, in amongst the many things that should have been thrown out or sent to the op-shop years ago. The best prize was finding my and CutLuce's Wind in the Willows audio-book, on three cassettes. You know, the kind with actual magnetic tape in them! Recently I've been reading Wind in the Willows to the kids (and Gran and GrandPaul took them to a performance of it at the Royal Botanic Gardens last week). So I have been wishing I could get my hands on that audiobook again. Now I can. All I have to do is work out how to get it transferred onto a CD-rom. Piece of cake.

I also found my old Barbies and a toy rubbish truck (my favourite toy vehicle when I was a kid) and Pick-up Sticks, and a wierd maths toy that you stick rubber bands on and make symmetrical and mirrored patterns with. BallFiend took to these immediately, especially the maths toy. "Now I have something to use my rubber band collection on" he remarked with great joy.

After many hours longer than I had intended to stay, we headed home, the car boot filled with newly rediscovered treasures.

Once home, we sat down to dinner (thanks DeepSpice) and began to tell DeepSpice about our day...

Thumper mentioned that she had had a "chocolate reindeer". I corrected her: "No, you had a chocolate mousse." As soon as the words left my mouth I made the connection: chocolate mousse > moose > reindeer. Of course DeepSpice was way ahead of me and had already sussed out Thumper's thought process...

A few weeks ago we went up to Mt Buller for a couple of nights. While we were up there we went to the cafe at Mt Buller Chalet where they have a large stuffed (ie. taxidermied) Canadian Moose on display. At the time, Thumper was pretty obsessed with reindeers (due to the whole xmas-Santa thing), so we mentioned to Thumper that a moose is a bit like a reindeer.

For a three year old, this kid has an amazing memory and an amazing ability with words!
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