Birthday celebrations, Easter and boats

Lisa and I decided to celebrate our birthday with a family dinner at Hugo's. It was a lovely sunny evening and once the kids got bored Tess was able to drive them home leaving us to enjoy the rest of the evening. 

On my actual birthday Jules and Tom headed up to the farm for the Easter weekend so we did a quick present opening and then they were off.  Sadly, so was most of Sydney and the usual 3.5 hour trip took 6.5 hours! I was a little sad not to go too but Tess wanted to stay in Sydney and I didn't feel entirely comfortable leaving her for that period of time. Also, Jules had invited Jamo and Ryan to come up from Melbourne and join them so I would have been a spare part  - or Dobby the House Elf doing all the cooking and cleaning! 

At about 5pm on my birthday I cracked open a bottle of very nice champagne and Tess and I played Rummikub and Bananagrams, had a lovely meal and then spent the evening on the phone to Perth and the UK - a pretty perfect way to celebrate my birthday! 

The boys had an awesome time up at the farm and went to the Rylstone Bull-a-Rama one evening - very country. They set up a camp at Cape Craig and had a lovely evening there. The farm manager came over one of the days and set them all to work mustering the cows as they needed to separate the older steers from the mums with the younger calves. Tom is thinking of Jackarooing in his year off so that gave him a great taste of what he would be doing!

Ryan, Tom, Jamo

I was busy with work during the week and Tess learnt how to mow the lawn - she did a great job with a lot less complaining than we get from her brother!

Tom did a dive course during the week with Harry, Joe and Ewan. They did a couple of dives as deep as 20 metres!  

On Saturday night we had a Kia Kaha end of season celebration.  The Close's very kindly hosted us at their amazing boat house right on the water. Jules spent a lot of time choosing appropriate prizes and gave such a funny presentation - everyone loved it. Sadly Deb couldn't join us but we zoomed her in for the presentation so she could be with us virtually. I'm lucky that I'm good friends with all the crew's wives so we had a great time catching up too. 

What a spot!

LtoR: Stevo, Diccon, Andrew, Jules, Derek, Jono

Susan, Sue, Lenka, Deb