I enjoyed the weekend. We seemed to get a lot of stuff done. On Saturday we went to PMB to an inter-cultural food-tasting event. Different cultural groups from the region had set up stalls displaying bits of their culture and samples of typical foods. So I have now eaten, for instance, Ghanan food, which including a quite zingy ginger drink, some sort of mashed-curried-banana affair, and peanut soup. Messy peanut soup, as they had no spoons.

My mom is very involved with Alliance Francaise in the area, and was working, beret et al, at the French stall. She'd made coq au vin and someone else had done ratatouille. I can't believe how active she is and how young she looks. I hope I'm in such good shape at 69. Looking young possibly runs in the family. It's something I'm quite glad about now, but was less so when, at the age of 18, I was mistaken for 12.

Lauren and Robyn were sorry that none of the countries had chips on the menu. So on the way home, in a gastronomically interesting juxtaposition, we stopped at McDonalds for chips, and the kids played on the play area. Interestingly, I don't believe I've heard the 'Make every day a McDonald's day' (shudder) jingle for a while now.

Saturday night was spent in the unromantic but useful pursuit of setting up a huge online shopping list. This should help household organisation a bit. We were quite impressed with the quality of the site as we were able to take half the shop each, using a computer each, and update the list simultaneously. A few of the quantities magically doubled though.

On Sunday we went on a picnic with some friends, and then came home for coffee, card games for the kids, supper, and a good game (once the kids were in bed) of Settlers of Catan: Cities and Knights. I got totally slaughtered as I just could not get any iron ore and spent most of the game getting halfway to my first city, while other players were just about building New York.

Robyn battled to get to sleep from all the excitement and because she got very emotional having to say goodbye to her godparents (despite the fact she sees them on average once a month). I think Robyn would like to live in a huge commune containing parents, friends, godparents, grandparents, aunts, uncles and cousins.

Peter got the kids all excited on Sunday too, as he's come up with the idea of our building a wendy house as a family project. Not with a wussy instant kit, though. We're talking research, concrete, and hard manual labour here. I think the kids will love it.