Thinking Allowed: Familiar horizons

Ow, my arms and calves are so sunburned. We only got to the Sunshine Coast two days ago, and already I'm a shade closer to walnut. My navel is choked with sand, my sinus cavity empties random tablespoonfuls of salt water out my nose (we frolicked in the waves a lot today), and we all have bright red lips that hurt when they touched hot sauce at dinner.

Even Tova was eating the hot sauce (and lime juice) then bolting for the milk as we ate Vietnamese summer rolls for dinner, an allegedly light and airy warm-weather meal which actually involved about 90 minutes of me toiling in a sweaty kitchen while Tova and Zadie shredded mint and cilantro, then played Hungry Hungry Hippos (their new game of choice). Our house is filled with the constant clack-clacking of the insatiable ungulates; for some reason, Zadie is extremely good at this game.

Sophia's at one of her thrice-weekly gymnastics sessions, so Tamar and Aurora are hanging out Nambour way for three hours rather than add more 20-minute commutes. I was going to make chilled rice pudding with a citrus-infused honey compote for dessert, but ran out of juice both figuratively and literally, and ended up calling it quits at straight-up rice pudding, which was wildly popular anyway (secret ingredient: bay leaves). While I was cooking, Tova learned some of the lyrics to an Encanto song (her favourite character, interestingly, is the perfect flower one), and Zadie listened to six Swedish children's songs and is now fascinated with Swedish.

We all watched Encanto over a couple of days, by the way, and really liked it. The soundtrack plays once or twice a day while we tidy up, and the girls argue over what special powers they'd have. I read books out loud whenever we drive around, and we'd midway through a pretty good Flavia de Luce mystery. Tomorrow Tamar's doing an evening seminar on her favourite architects, which we're all excited about - she puts a lot of effort into them and they're always a highlight of the week. The girls all have swim assessments tomorrow morning to be placed into classes, and Tova and Sophia have a trial tennis class in the afternoon.

We've also set the goal of walking from Mudjimba to Noosa this week, which is 30 km of gorgeous beach and headland. We've made it as far as Stumers Creek, a bit less than halfway, with lollies every 5 km plus lots of storytelling. Tova and Sophia are obsessed with the story of Lilia and Marcus, two kids who ended up secret agents; Marcus has now discovered he's actually the son of Korkoroff, the kooky Russian scientist who turns out to have built the black hole machine not to terrorise the world, but rather to cure his dying wife, Guinevere, whose heart is shrinking due to a poisonous mushroom. Antonio Montevideo de Banderas de Estrellas, the archvillain, is not OK with this, but he's gradually being betrayed by his henchmen (e.g., the dim-witted Thorsby, and Ursula the trained giant squid). Telling stories on the fly is mentally quite exhausting, but the audience is pretty enthusiastic so that's OK.