Oh! I am just sooo very, very excited!! I have been given the utmost privilege of hosting the B.B.B.B. function for the month! Do you know what type of event that is? Well, I will tell you, it is the "Big Bears Barbecue Bash" party!! And it "the" social event for bears each month! It is so much fun! All of us bears get together, and we chat and talk and dance…and best of all we get to eat some yummy , tasty, delicious food!! Yippee!! Hooray!! Good food and good friends equals good enjoyable time!! Now how will I arrange this party? Let me put on some "thinking music" on my bear ipod . Yes, lots of plans are jumping about in my head. Now if you will just excuse my presence for a little while whilst I put all these plans into action…

Hello again! Wow!! Last night was the B.B.B.B. and it was a complete and utter success. I invited all my teddy friends, and they came from everywhere!! Mr. Oliver the bear of course came with the bears that live in his home, Humphrey B.B Bear arrived from Adelaide, and it was so much fun to see when all the other bears appeared from all the different rooms of Residents who live in Strathalan. Well, the whole area outside the Kiosk was abuzz with noise!! Bears were skipping there along pathways from I.L.U. units, others were creeping along tracks after escaping from Melaleuca rooms whilst their owners were asleep, other teddies were gleefully hop/skip/jumping as if playing hopscotch as they left their  Lodge homes!! And when teddies get together, there never ever are strangers…we just instantly are all friends with each other!

We put some of the male teddies in charge of cooking the sausages on the barbecue as well as barbecuing the sliced up potatoes. ( I don't like shrimps, so "throwing a shrimp on the barbie" was never a food option for the party!!)  I had strung lots of pretty multi-coloured lights all along the top of the galleria area. Some of my other friends brought out some salads to have with the sausages, as well as some slices of bread. And what an appetizing smell infused the air from those sausages that were cooking!! We put on the music stereo and the teddy bear music station started to play lots of fun and bright musical tunes that got us all dancing and twirling and twisting about !!

But…then all of a sudden that very nice food scent turned quite differently and when we looked over to the barbecue …we discovered very, very  burnt and charcoaled sausages!! The teddies that had been put in charge of cooking these sausages had decided to have a little chat and dance themselves…and they forgot about the sausages and potatoes!!  Any teddies that like their sausages "well-done" please line up in front of the barbecue with a plate!!  There were no teddies that took up that offer!! Well, what do we do when we haven't any sausages cooked? "Do not worry!!" called out Deidre the Delicatessen Bear,  and Bertie the Butcher bear called out;: "Just wait a moment!!" and these 2 very nice bears leapt into their bearmobiles and as quick as you could say :" Teddies  taste twinings tea together in teacups, and truly think truss tomatoes to be tremendous." they had gone and returned,  carrying in their teddy paws wrapped up white packages filled with lots of nice slices of ham and chicken and roast beef. "Three BIG teddy cheers for Deidre and Bertie" was exclaimed in unison from all the teddy party-goers!

Theresa Teddy is quite a Masterchef in creating desserts, and I was very delighted when she offered to bring with her a HUGE pavlova for us to "gobble" up!! And it really was very enormous in size!! Our teddy eyes were very wide open in amazement when we saw her come to the party carrying it very carefully in both of her hands.  She called it a "Four Quarter Pavlova." It was covered in cream, and every quarter was decorated differently. One quarter was decorated with strawberries, another quarter was topped with peaches, another had lots of flakes of chocolate and peppermint shavings and the last quarter was a mixture of kiwi fruit and passion fruit. There was quite a long queue of teddies lined up one after another to grab a slice of this…and there was hardly even one strawberry left on the serving plate once the teddies had finished eating their dessert!

Of course, I made sure that I had in my possession a very important item for the night: the bearoguard. (Humans have their own version of it called "aeroguard"!) We really don't want flies to ruin our party!  I was also going to hang up some "bug zappers" from the roof of the outside galleria patio but decided against this idea because whilst I'm not against these flies having an abrupt end to their lives by being hit by a rolled up newspaper, I somehow just a feel a little bit "queasy"  at the thought of hearing the "sizzling" sound of many flies who have come to an early exit from their flying about life!!

Throughout the night, lots of discussions took place about the upcoming bear football season. I don't actually participate on the football field, but I am a very keen spectator at many of the footy matches. My two favourite teams in the official  B.F.L. ( also known as the Bear Football League)  are called: "Tiny Teddies" and "Bit Bigger Bears."  There was quite concern expressed about Theodore teddy who did his "bear hammy hamstring" in the off season and also about Bradley bear who was kicking a football in the front of the McKittrick Centre very early one morning...and he kicked the ball a little too hard causing his body to do a big '"topsy turvy" trick and he landed down with a big "thud' and now requires a total knee reconstruction! The bear doctor did at first thoughts think that he may have just sprained an ankle but no, just like the humans do in the AFL, the prognosis was definitely that he had done "cruciate ligament" damage. The season will start later for these teddy footy players!!

Well, the party turned out to be a "beary" good success!! At children's parties, when the guests leave to go home, they are each given a little "take-home bag" with them. I wanted to give my teddy friends the same sort of bag, filled with things from the Strathalan Kiosk! So… into these nice white paper bags that were decorated on the outside with lots of heart stickers went:

 * a cherry ripe bar  

 * a kitkat

 * a freddo frog

* a little tub of goulburn valley fruit

* a tub of fruit in jelly

* a small jar of IXL jam

* a packet of Soft Fruit Jubes

And poking right out of the top was a packet of iced vovo biscuits, which are always nice and marsmallowy!!

It was such a lot of fun seeing all my teddy friends clutching these white bags in their paws as they headed off in all sorts of directions back to their homes!! Some in their bearmobiles, others by paw foot skipping along tracks and pathways back to their individual Strathalan owners homes.  And all of them were excitedly shouting "Goodbye! See you again soon!!" I did wonder how we didn't wake everyone up at Strathalan that night!! But…we didn't hear any complaints from Strathalan Residents the next morning so it must have been okay!!

Until next time,

   Your friend, Mr. Kiosk-Ted Strath

                       Also simply known as 'Ted".!!