Time is 'flying' again!

My goodness, already a week has gone by since Easter Day!

The flowers in church on Sunday were in memory of a friend's mum who died at this time last year...

It was an extra special day this year for us, as we were putting on a lunch for the two lovely people who had taken DH and I on a day tour of Vancouver last August. Ann and Ross have been cruising and their ship, The Celebrity Millenium, stopped in Brisbane on Easter  Sunday. My late BiL Keith, and his wife Sonja, had become friends of Ann and Ross many years ago when Keith and Sonja taught in Canada. So we had Sonja and some of her family over for lunch too.
 

DH was in charge of the barbecue...

A platter of nibblies to start though first...

And there were some gifts handed out too...

Ann prints off photos that she's taken on their many travels and makes them into notecards...beautiful idea! 

And some salmon!

One very excited little girl, tries her new Canadian hat on her mum to see how it looks! 

While her dad catches up with his godfather Ross.

Even though I had spent most evenings for a few weeks before, making sure the house and garden looked their best ( Ann is a real estate agent/realtor), and complained how tired I was after working all day...it was all worth it! 

And the bunny with the bellyful of little Easter eggs, still had a few left...

But the best thing of all for me was the thank you note that Alex (in Year 1) wrote to me before she went home...

As well as a chocolate bunny, we had given her a little stuffed fabric bunny...and in her note, Alex finishes by saying she will take good care of it and keep it warm! 

A Sunday drive...

On Sunday I went with a group of my schoolfriends to visit another friend who had moved into her newly built home in a new estate at Caboolture. Caboolture used to be a sleepy town known for its dairying industry but its growth in recent years has been quite phenomenal.
It definitely seems to be a place where 'you can get a lot for your housing dollar'.

Here is the front of the house which is approximately 200 square metres in size...

This new estate is fairly small and does not have a main road going through it. There are a number of housing blocks left for building on but there is also a fair bit of open space left...

We all commented that this parking bay opposite our friend's house,was a great idea and one we had not seen before...

 Inside, we started with a tour of the house...it featured beautiful fittings and lovely light filled rooms; a really beautiful house!
As well as having coffee and eats, we naturally posed for the obligatory photos...

I took a liking to that beautiful chair...it felt like I was sitting on a royal throne, lol

 Our friend Alison is a nurse, but she also has a little business where she sells shoes on Ebay...naturally we had to look at her latest stock...

And another group photo with a change of photographer...

We had a lovely time sitting around and talking and laughing and of course we got around to talking about our school days. I mentioned that I really wanted to find one friend whom we haven't seen for  45 years. (OM Goodness I can't believe it is so long ago!) Well one of my friends there on Sunday said that she had found this person's name in a Google search as being on staff in a NSW school in the mid 1990s.

I wrote a email to that college last night, asking if anyone on staff might know our friend as we were looking for her for our 50th reunion in 2014. My friend not only got the message, but she sent me an email this morning; she said she remembers how she and I always sat together in Modern History classes in Grade 11 and 12.
I do love the Internet! 

Friends...

I was 17 when I left school and went to Teachers' College.

First year...no not my car!

On my first day there I met Pat for the first time...we both commented that the other looked familiar. Finally we decided that we must have seen each other at church as that seemed to be the only place that we both had in common. We became very good mates...

My beautiful friend on her wedding day

In our first year, we both did our teaching practicum at Mitchelton State School and we both attended college social functions such as the balls. When we graduated we both got posted to the same school. Pat was transferred at the end of our first year, but after a few years she was back at the same school. Transfers and motherhood would then see  us not working together for a number of years. Then later in our careers we were back working together in the same schools.
Now Pat had married Patrick, who had been in the year ahead of us at college, and in the 1990s he became Principal of a large Brisbane school. Pat and I did relief teaching at his school. Eventually both of us were employed as 'permanents' in different schools but of course we stayed in touch.

Enjoying their retirement doing a bit of travelling (in NZ) 

Pat and Pat retired a few years before me. After the floods here in 2011 they both volunteered at the St Vinnies (St Vincent dePaul) Warehouse sorting donations. Patrick has continued to work as a volunteer 'sorter' ( he does toys) and this year when he found out that K4BN was always grateful for yarn donations, he arranged for oddment balls/skeins to be put aside and he then purchased them for the group. (The balls still with the bands on them go to the op shops for sale)

The other night my friends came over for dinner and Patrick handed over a very heavy bag full of yarns...collected over a number of weeks, and so appreciated.

And this is Pat and Maria; friends since they were 17 years old...

And earlier last Friday a K4BN member dropped in with some squares she had crocheted for the group. A mere 164 squares! Christine is a 'crocheting machine' I think! lol

Christine carried these from her car in one trip...I carried them one bag at a time from our veranda to one of the spare bedrooms...they were heavy bags! 

A good way to get the house clean and tidy :-)

When I was a young bride, my friends and I all worked fulltime so housework tended to  not be done to the standard of that of our mothers. We used to say that the best way to get motivated to do a thorough house clean was to invite people over...and it still works :-) And so it was that in a whirlwind of action, I got the house ready for me to host the annual Christmas lunch of one of the groups that I belong to...The Newmarket Mums. We meet the last Sunday of each month in a local coffee shop, but in November it had become a tradition to bring food to a member's house for a lunch get together.

I volunteered for that role this year. And what a lovely time we all had...fine food and wonderful conversation with lots of laughter. Our side veranda gets the most delightful breezes and last Sunday was no exception. We started off with drinks and nibblies...

This is my friend Carmel; we taught together in the 1970s, had our children at about the same time in the early 1980s , and later sent our children to the same school

 Then it was time to move on to the main course...

We laid out all the food on the dining room table, so people could help themselves...

Merry Christmas everyone! And a great New year in 2013...

And then it was time for Secret Santa... I had cut up a sheet of paper into 10 squares with each square numbered. Everyone then drew out a number. This was the order that people went in to select a present from under the little tree...

If you look closely you can just see that little tree between Sandra and Liz...

As each person chose a gift, we all watched while they opened it...

My friend Margot had drawn #1...

A sweet little trinket box with Australiana images on it!

One of my friends had drawn #10 but I knew she had to leave early and this gift opening was taking a while, so I got her to swap her number for mine which was #5. Then I started to wonder if I would be left with the gift I had bought. I watched as #6 and 7 were chosen...my parcel was still there! Then Robyn with #8 chose that parcel! Phew! (although I did rather like what I had bought, but it's not a surprise! lol)

I had bought this lovely fabric basket at the St John's Christmas Craft markets. I also popped in some Lindt chocolates

Closeup of the Japanese folded flowers placed in the middle of the cathedral window patch...so effective!

And what did I get from Secret Santa? A rather large box of lindt chocolates...DH is ecstatic as now that I avoid sugar, they're all his!!!!!

A picture's worth a 1000 words so they say....

A picture's worth a 1000 about 400 words, so let's see what I can come up with :-)

This photo was taken last Monday night when a group of old schoolfriends gathered to celebrate a friend's 60th. we gathered at Valerie's home who is standing next to me in the photo. So what are some things that come to mind when I look at the photo?

• We all went to Newmarket High in the 1960s
• I'm the odd one out in a kind of way; I was in the 10A2D class, the others were in 10C1 which was a commercial studies class.
• Valerie's son James, took the photo with the instructions,'don't make us look fat!' lol
• It was an unbelieveably hot evening with temperatures in the 30s celcius.
• Most of the group left in Year 10 to start working.
• Two of us trained as teachers but only Christine (middle of back row) is still teaching.
• All of us have children.
• One of us, Valerie, is a widow.
• Two of the group are still married to their first husbands
• Three of us have been through a divorce
• Alison, in the white, is now in the process of her second divorce.
• The three of us in the front row are not grandparents yet
• All of us have travelled overseas and two of us have lived overseas for a time.
• Six of us live in Brisbane; the birthday girl lives in Sydney.
• A couple of the 'girls' have at least one parent alive.
• Some of us admit to joints stiffening and the dependence on reading glasses.
• Three of us don't work but one of those is looking for work as investment returns are disappointing.
• We enjoy recounting anecdotes of our school days.
• We tease Jane, front left, for forgetting that we used to do sewing at primary school. She's blocked out ant memories of those samplers we stitched! lol 
• Sue (white hair in back row) hated high school :-(
•  All of us have a Facebook page and we are big fans of the social networking site as that's how we've found lots of other classmates.
• On Sunday we are all meeting at Alison's new place for a deck party to celebrate her moving into a new home. Alison has downsized and says that the deck is the largest part of the house!

Now during the vening we talked about lots of things, and one topic for discussion was our school uniform. As a group we rather liked our old uniforms and the outfit was certainly different to other school uniforms of that time. Most other high schools had a pleated skirt and a button up blouse with a hip yoke; we had a dress. Jane commented that it was a shame that we didn't keep our old uniforms...heh heh. I have a surprise for them all on Sunday.
Ta dah....!!!! From out of a storage crate in the crawl space under our house...please ignore the creases as it's been in storage a looong time! lol

The uniform that I wore in Years 11 and 12

The hat that was introduced when I was in year 11 to replace the old panama white hats

My friend Tricia...

On Friday I went out to lunch with my friend Tricia. We met in 1976 when Tricia was in her last year of Teachers' College. She came to our school that year to do her prac teaching blocks. During one block she spent 4 weeks with my Year 7 class and we became great mates. We discovered that we both went to the same high school, but because I was five years older than her, I'd left by the time she started.
When Tricia graduated she was appointed to my school and completed her probationary year with us before being transferred out of the area.

Cafe Urbano; my steak sandwich

Every year, in at least one set of holidays, we'd meet up for lunch or to share our mutual interest in sewing clothes and patchwork as well as a craze then...Hobbytex! And so the friendship continued with transfers for Tricia (single people always seem to get more far flung transfers) and eventually motherhood for me. Tricia was DD2's godmother too.  Then I started relief teaching for a while. Tricia was so helpful when I did relief teaching as she gathered together a huge pile of resources suitable for year levels that I had never taught...that is 1-4. Tricia sewed for my children and occasionally baby sat as well. She was a great support when my marriage broke down.

At Cafe Urbano; Tricia's BLAT

When DD2 was little, Tricia bought her first home. She made it into a lovely comfortable home and improved the garden areas. Then after a number of years, Tricia bought a brand new home in a new estate. She had to make all the gardens and she again did a great job. But, just as I've found in the last 10 or so years, the job of teaching has become harder than it ever was. We work long days and on most weekends as well to keep up. Tricia had planned that the new house was going to be her home until the 'pine box'. But she has so little time to clean a big house and even less time to keep a garden in order. As she said to me the other day...'I find my priorities have changed...I no longer enjoy my garden'. So the big house is being readied for sale and Tricia will be downsizing...a lowset townhouse with a courtyard is her first preference. The other preference is that she plans to move 'in' from the shire where she lives now...she'll be closer to her mum, sister and of course me! lol  Hmmmm maybe some nice pots for the courtyard would be a nice housewarming gift...but I'm getting ahead of myself!

Cafe Urbano; within 15 minutes of this photo being taken, we experienced a torrential downpour!

Last Sunday of the month...

The Newmarket Mums' Christmas Lunch 2010

The last Sunday of the month, I meet with a group of friends for coffee and a chat. We've been doing this for about 8 years. We refer to ourselves as the 'Newmarket Mums' and one of our clever members has even organised a 'Google group' for us for easier communication. In a previous post, I explained how we all met when our children attended Newmarket State School. Two of us had also been teachers at the school and I had also been a student there!
We are all still mums of course but most of us are 'empty nesters' these days. Collectively we've all had our share of dramas; sometimes family dramas, sometimes work issues, quite a few health scares and issues, including depression affecting spouses as they head through middle age. We've shared the joys of grandchildren (vicariously for some of us), most of us have enjoyed overseas travel which we could not have imagined doing all those years ago when we struggled to stretch household budgets. We've celebrated 'milestone' birthdays, celebrated engagements and marriages of children, commiserated when some of the children divorced or when babies miscarried.

Some of the mums at my second wedding

Not one of these ladies were judgemental when I made the decision to leave husband #1; they were caring and supportive. When after a few years, I met B and later when I accepted a marriage proposal from the future DH they were all so happy for me, gave me a lovely pre-wedding party and a basket of clarins beauty products. They danced all night at our wedding and wished us well.

Some of the Newmarket Dads!

My brother gave me away!

I look forward to the last Sunday of the month. Over the years we've met at a number of cafes around the suburbs of Newmarket and Alderley. For a while we've been meeting at Gloria Jeans but we all insist on our coffee in a china cup! lol  We talked today about having a luncheon together in either late April or early May to celebrate my coming 'milestone' birthday...We've picked the venue- the Newmarket Hotel. I grew up in this suburb and the pub was a 'dive' but it's pleasing to report that this is no longer the case.