Up to Lately: April 2013

Thursday, 25 April 2013

I cannot believe I didn't post this... Crazy! In my defence, we were about to move from one side of the country to the other, but I feel like a very bad daughter. I let my parents wedding anniversary pass by without a post... Shocking, I know! I was scanning my posts and matching up my pics and realised I completely passed it by. It probably doesn't help having 2 cameras plus an iPhone which I use to capture my memories. And for the occasion I pulled out my big gun - my Nikon DSLR D80. And as I don't often use it, I didn't post about it... All excuses aside!

So Mum and Dad decided to take a break from their remote community life inWeipa and spend time with the family and also to celebrate their 48th wedding anniversary. We thought about all going out for dinner but decided to put on a family feast at home. We got the nieces and nephews involved and decorated Suzi & Phil's (my sister and her husband) carport, while Suzi, Maureen and I cooked up a banquet. It poured with rain but we were all comfortable and mostly dry. To top off the evening, we organised to have all of Dad's old slides scanned to disc and played the slide show. The slides, which he shot in the 1960's in Papua New Guinea before and after he met Mum, were awesome to see. Most of them anyway. We didn't get a chance to censor them and there were a few of Dad in his single days enjoying himself a little too much. But it was still pretty cool to see our Dad when he was young and the adventures he had when he was single. I love my Parents and can't wait for their 50th anniversary!!

I have attached a few images of the night along with a few shots from Dad's slides for a bit of nostalgia.

Our Bunting flags that the girls made

The decorated carport

Three beautiful generations of women (Mum, Suzi & Kiri)

The Happy Couple

Mum with a mustache prop from the photobooth

The kids at the photobooth

And again!

Tight squeeze!

Dad in the Highlands of PNG in the 1960's

Mum sitting on the canoe

Mum & Suzi

Dad in Mt Hagen

My Dad - the Intrepid Explorer!

Camping!

So life has become pretty routine for us now in good ol' Shepparton. We've settled into our pioneering here and have some nice RV's finally. As I mentioned in my previous post, the territory here is very different to what we were used to and it's taken me a while to adjust. I've come to realise that we were living in a bubble in FNQ and were very spoilt with nice people and spiritually hungry people. Here.... Not so much. It's good training though, nothing toughens you up like a little abuse at the doors!
A family camping trip was organised, and at first we weren't so sure if we would go, but we are so happy we did. It was so great to just take time out and go for walks, do some fishing and spend time with our family. There is nothing like the smell of the campfire that seems to permeate everything. Even when you get home, and have washed everything, you still seem to smell it. Maybe it gets embedded into your nose. We introduced the family to s'mores, well as close to it as we can get here in Oz. I managed to find some Hershey's chocolate in Melbourne at USA Foods when we went down to stock up on Sweet Baby Rays BBQ sauce and some Stubbs Wing sauce that Jonno has become addicted to. Sorry, I digress. The only thing I had to substitute was the graham crackers, I had to use McVities Digestive, biscuits which as Google told me were the aussie substitute. They were a huge hit, although I'm not sure if Jonno over-indulged but he ended up hugging the porcelain later that night. Poor guy. I'm happy we weren't roughing it and had some amenities nearby.

The only down side to camping is that we might have got a bit of a chill as it stared to get cool, and we've both come down with the flu... But it was still a hell of a lot of fun! Can't wait for the next camp, hopefully in warmer weather.