Anniversary Present

Charlie gave Rich a book called True Green Kids for his anniversary. Here is Rich enjoying his new book. Thanks Charlie!

Anniversary dinner

Rich and I were given the best dinner ever tonight in honour of our 13th wedding anniversary. It all began when Charlie called a kids' assembly. The children got togehter and planned a wonderful evening of service and entertainment. The mood was set for a romantic dinner for two with a gorgeous table setting by candlelight. We were invited to the table by our waitress, Jane. She presented us with a detailed menu and took our orders. Rich chose the vegemite cheesy-bite toast, and I ordered the peanut butter toast. This was complemented by pineapple and mango juice and water.
The entertainment began with Josie doing some wonderful dancing and ribbon waving, accompanied by tuneful humming. Rich and I were almost finished our first course, when our chef Charlie delivered some beautiful fresh baked bread and yummy chicken courtesy of our neighbour, Cathy. We all agreed that this turned an already great dinner into a feast. Thank you, Cathy!
Grace then presented our waitress with dessert - juicy strawberries floating in bowls of water.
Altogether, a fantastic dinner and evening.
Thank you Charlie, Grace, Jane and Josie!

The tide has turned

This photo shows Charlie's first defeat of Rich at chess. Chess has become a bit of a craze at school, and Charlie is improving fast. So far he has managed to beat Rich twice, reach stalemate once, and demoralise Rich into conceding once. This gives him great pleasure. Yesterday he was devouring chess demonstrations on youtube while Rich nervously encouraged him to go and do something else. When there is no-one else around he will invite me to a "quick" game of chess. "What do you mean, quick?" I ask, and he grins wolfishly.

Junior Sports Day

Grace and Jane had a great time at their sports day. Jane turned out to be unexpectedly speedy.

Aah, Summer!

Lunch before church on a sunny Sunday.

Beauty Shop

Gonga, Purple Monkey and Pink Bear all have a bath and a makeover.

Holiday's End

I took this photo on the way home from the airport.

Children

City Park

Every time we come to Launceston we visit City Park. The kids love it, and photos on the canon have become a bit of a tradition.

More from The Gorge

At The Gorge

Janny took us to The Gorge. How have we never been here before?! It was beautiful.

At Pah's Grave

Tasmania

Well, time has slipped by, and I just realised that I didn't even finish posting holiday photos! Here are some snaps from Tassie. It was so great to be with our family again. Thanks for having us, Janny and David!

Melbourne

Thank you, Grandad!

On our last day we drove from Canberra to Melbourne, our biggest day of driving by a long way. Around Albury we discovered the bucket of M&Ms Grandad had given us for the journey. We had stored it and forgotten about it. It was quite a moment when it came to light again.

Duct tape

On the last few days of the trip the van slowly fell apart. If you look closely in this pic you can see a portion of the side panelling hanging off. We taped it up and drove on. As we went, duct tape became crucial to the success of the enterprise.

Canberra

We drove up to Richard and Claire-Mary's place with enormous relief. It was great to be there, especially to see Josie and Izzy become best mates within 15 minutes. We had a lovely time and were sorry to leave so soon. Thanks, Thomsetts!

This is Living

Life on the road was great, but reality sometimes reared its head. This is Rich emptying the toilet cassette. His exact words as he did so were, "This is living!"

Bushwalk in Sydney

We are kicking ourselves that we did not get the camera out in Grafton and Tamworth! We really enjoyed both places, particularly Tamworth, where we caught up with Rich's Uncle Barry, and Dot, Susan, Geoff and Zachary. We had a barbeque together and a lovely chat.
Here are some pics from our bushwalk in Sydney before we made the trip to Canberra. It is supposedly 3 1/2 hours to Canberra, but in some weird twilight zone experience, it took us all day to get there.