This post is sponsored by Nuffnang and Yoplait.
Winter sports have all but taken over our weekends at the moment. Mr I and myself are normally pretty good at just talking through the logistics, but recently it hit a peak and I requested Mr I draw me a flow chart!
And this was just for Saturday. Sunday had two games of junior footy as well. With weekends like that it is easy for it all to go by in a blur of drop offs pick ups and rushing to get from one game to the next.
Thanks to Yoplait we were to take the family on a picnic. Due to sporting commitments I was beginning to think we could never fit it in, but that was because I was just thinking of a picnic in terms of a lunch. I needed to think broader than that, so I blocked out time for everyone late Sunday afternoon and set about creating for us a fab French inspired picnic basket for an early dinner.
I wanted the venue to be something different for us and finally settled on the Sculpture Park at Heide Museum of Modern Art.
It was the perfect venue for us. Lots of space, lots to look at and in the late afternoon when we went, there were very few people around, so it felt just like us amongst all this space and greenery. We could take our dog Lucas too!
I had packed plenty of food and we were going to have a rolling sort of meal, with lots of running around and fun in between. Our first sitting was fruit, yogurt and cheese and crackers.
We scooped out the vanilla yogurt to dip the fresh fruit into. I brought along tooth picks for the kids to skewer the fruit and then dip. They loved this and had lots of fun making fruit stacks.
Of course the eldest took it a step further and combined, fruit, crackers, sun dried tomatoes and yogurt! He was adamant it tasted superb…..
While the youngest made himself a camembert cracker sandwich.
There are the most amazing trees at the Heidi Sculpture Park. The kids took off to explore them, while I reset the picnic blanket for the second sitting.
This was a combination of home made food and purchased supplies. Master 11 played his 50th game of footy earlier in the day which we all went and watched and after cooking in the lead up to the weekend for Master 6’s birthday party on Friday, I wanted to keep it pretty simple for me.
I packaged up the Strawberry Yogurt Cupcakes so they would travel well and cope with being jiggled around in the picnic basket by one of the kids as it was carried into the park.
Roast Chicken and salad baguettes where devoured by the kids and the adults too.
Everyone wanted to share what the top of their Yoplait tub had on it.
Another pause in the eating and time for some soccer fun, even if there were some hold ups on challenges to the ref.
The car park closes at 6pm, so even though we would have happily played for longer, we did need to pack up. I had taken along old shopping bags, one for rubbish and one to place all the dirty utensils in. This made packing up a lot easier and it was quick to pop everything into their respective bags, fold up the blankets and make our way back to the car.
There is beautiful lighting at Heidi and it made for a gorgeous walk back to the car.
Without doubt though, the highlight for the kids were the great big lamps on the ground near where we parked our car.
They would have played forever on them, but the car park gates were calling us.
The picnic was such a lovely way to end our busy week end. The kids thought it was the best dinner ever and I was pretty happy too with only minimal clean up to do once we arrived home!
It was such a great reminder to me about the importance of blocking out time for the family, to enjoy each others’ company and have some fun.
How do you fit in fun family outings during the busy times?