We know we have been very slack with this update page. Perhaps we should rename it to a Whenever-we-feel-like-it-page.
Firstly... Dale is now 30 years old.
We celebrated this by trashing ourselves for 3 nights running and let me tell you we were not a pretty sight the following Monday.
Friday we spent locally on Commercial Road, Saturday we spent the first part of the evening at a mate's re-run of his own 30th from last year (Grant had suggested Ross simply keep having his 30th until he gets it right...). The secret to the success??? - pack 50 people into a flat, ply them with deadly cocktails and then leave them to their own devices.
Somewhat surprisingly Ross failed to make an appearance, but was more than sufficiently covered in his absence by his big sister Ruby who had made a long flight from the South of France just to be there. The family resemblance is remarkable; though one was forced to concede Ross makes a rather more attractive man than his sister does a woman... maybe that vile number she was wearing had much to do with it.
Even less surprisingly - for those of you who caught on already - is that we have actually never seen Ross and Ruby together at the same time...
Cheered by those hours we then left for Barracuda - and from there to the D.O. Peel almost immediately. Unfortunately for us the Peel still had ample supplies of beer and we left just before dawn having seen in Dale's birth day and gas-bagged with strangers for the night. To bed, to bed, to be... zzzZZZZ...
Sunday was spent snoozing under a warm Doona. Grant gave Dale a restored art deco lamp and a card that had taken 2 days to make - it ended up so heavy after being attacked to within an inch of it's life with a glue gun that Grant had to run out on Saturday and buy metal hinges from a hardware store so that the creation would actually work like the card it was supposed to be.
We left our cosy bed at about 5pm, got ready, dropped in on a few friends and then went for dinner on Commercial Road (with excellent bottles of Yarra Valley "champagne" and a sparkling shiraz). We then wandered down to the D.O. Exchange to catch the cover girls and - more beer. A quick and secretive word to Miss Lucy Loosebox had Dale dragged up on stage where he turned a suitable shade of vermilion. Then down to Diva before a long trek home via McDonalds
Rebecca also had her 6th birthday the week before. As a present we made 15 really girly hair clips - you know the type of thing, lots of fake jewels and little pink flowers - together with elaticised hair ties in a dazzling range fabrics. As Rebecca opened the box she started squealing and gushing as each hair clip or hair tie emerged, each one apparently more pretty than the last. We've said it before but we stand by the statement - you can truly bring so much pleasure to people through the correct use of a glue gun!
But we do have a few other things to report on, not least being the fruits of the efforts of four friends - not all together, mind ... but as two couples.
Craig and Al took delivery of a 10½lb baby boy (ouch!) - their second - while Rob and Claire took delivery of a somewhat less dauntingly sized boy in the Netherlands. No photo from the Dugans yet but here is Claire looking very happy with their first effort who has obviously come complete with very cute sticky-up hair and tiny fingers.
Welcome Benjamin!
Oh, and Grant had his graduation ceremony. Jenny and Michael were able to come along (Mum was still not well enough so the "orang tua" stayed home) and here's a few photos that resulted from the afternoon. Can't say a cap and gown will be making a come-back as sensible day wear but it was kind of fun to swish around in the things for a few hours.
Here is Dale fooling around with the mortar board trying both the "90 degree turn" and the "push it in your eye" looks on Grant. (Sorry, didn't realise the tie had popped out for the photo)
20 of us then headed off for the rest of the weekend to the Cape Shank Lodge for great food and comfy beds in a very pleasant part of Victoria. Better than all the creature comforts was again catching up with the friends who had left for distant work - Ute in Singapore (and we finally got to meet Kepala!), Mark in Perth and Ellen, Karen and Adam in Sydney.
Thanks to the good work of Laura here's a few photos from the weekend (these are stolen from her website at www.ozemail.com.au/~lshirven). Robyn came up with a wonderful new material for clothing - bull kelp - and we shall leave the modelling by herself, Laura and Ingmar to speak for itself.
That will do for now. Hope everyone's well and in good spirits.
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