The Fête, the Fête, I Cannot Wait

The title of this post does, in fact, rhyme, if you pronounce "Fête" like an Australian, as in "fate" not the french way, as in "fet".  A fête, is an event of enormous planning that serves as a large-scale school fundraiser.  A carnival or festival is set up on the school grounds, parents and sponsors donate huge amounts of food, goods and time. 

The kids raced from the giant bouncy slide to the rock climbing wall to the cake table to face painting while we parents peeled bill after bill from our wallets whilst sipping Australian wine and eating fish tacos and almond croissants in the shade out of the hot sun.

Since our school is 50% French, we benefited from food stalls laden with croissants and pains au chocolat, fine cheeses, french macarons, fois gras and baguette, and a wide selection of french books.  Our school also has a large Hebrew population so we also were spoiled with middle eastern food like crispy falafel and bowls of creamy tahini.  Murphy ate about a kilo of spilled popcorn, approximately a thousand bits of discarded cupcakes, and an undetermined amount of forsaken pita bread. 

The day started grey and cool but quickly changed to blue skies and hot hot sun.  By 5:00pm, sweaty, more than a little sunburned, and with an aching back, I was happy to corral my purple-haired face-painted skeleton, bid adieu to the fête and bonjour to a cold glass of beer.

Back at home, we packed up Murphy and set out for the dogsitter.  Murph will spend the next week in Brad's chaotically welcoming home while J and I fly to join the erstwhile C2 in Perth to steal a little quality family time.  Stay tuned for a post from the pristine beaches of Western Australia.