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Tuesday, May 31, 2005 - (see all news for this day)
lovely visit from the in-laws - 08:26 AM
(filed under 'general')
we all had a really good weekend with shroom's parents visiting from brisbane. they seemed to enjoy themselves & we enjoyed ourselves & smiley, i think, had the best time of all of us.
they left yesterday just before midday & i was quite sad to see them go. they're lovely people & they were excellent visitors. we've stayed with them before (shroom & i even lived with them for a few months), but this was the first time they'd stayed with us.
we didn't keep them too busy, but we did go to do some really nice things. i hope you're in for the long haul, because this is going to be a long entry.
when they arrived on friday, after they'd had a cuppa, i took them for a walk through the college & showed them to shroom's office so he could say hello. we then continued around the outside road of the college & they saw the horse fields & social club etc.
shroom finished work spot on 5 o'clock & they caught up properly while i prepared dinner. i was a bit nervous about cooking for shroom's mum. she's an excellent cook & makes the best food ever. i knew that i couldn't match her expertise, but everyone seemed to enjoy it & had enough to eat at each meal. i asked shroom yesterday afternoon & he said i did a good job with the food.
on saturday morning while shroom did some stuff at work, we went into town to look around & for audrey to get a crochet needle & some wool so that she could re-do some gorgeous little sheep skin soled slippers she made for smiley. they were a bit small, but now we think they're perfect. she didn't quite finish them so will be mailing them to us once they get back. we also went into the cheap shop & audrey couldn't resist buying a few cutle little things for smiley.
that was just a short trip, so after another cuppa or two (we went through heaps of tea bags. lol! 
) we headed off to the botanic gardens before it got too hot.
it's a lovely place. it's not bad at all for a place that's in the middle of drought country. rudi has the most amazing (award-winning) garden (shroom & i got married in his parents' garden) & loves plants & gardening & that sort of thing, so it was a lovely walk. smiley walked with us part of the way, but most of the time he spent up on poppy's shoulders. by the time we'd done the circuit & were heading towards the exit, he was starting to go rather floppy. his eyes began drooping, he began swaying a bit & then flopped forward onto poppy's head, fast asleep. he'd stayed awake for as long as he could, but sleep simply overtook him. it was hilarious & very cute.
sunday was going to be a big day, so saturday afternoon we didn't do much. we all just relaxed, watched doctor who together & chatted the night away over a few drinks of baileys.
on sunday we left relatively early & headed out to anakie (about half an hour away) where there's a lovely little coffee shop/gift shop. it's called 'station 8' & is brand new, having only been open since easter this year. they've set it up in the old train station there. i'm pretty sure the train station is still functioning, but trains are far & few between & i was told the place was really dilapidated. they've fixed it up beautifully & have many more plans for it. the devonshire tea & scones were lovely & served on old china. very nice.
after that we drove another fifteen minutes to sapphire to go to the local markets. there were gems & sapphires galore, cut & in the rough, being sold by local fossickers as well as the usual bakery goods, household items & brick-a-brack. i bought a pair of sturdy shelving brackets for $1.50 so that we can put up a shelf in the laundry above the sink. bargain.
we got back into the car to go to rubyvale, only another five or ten minutes away, to find ourselves a place where we could buy a bucket of wash & go for a tour in a real underground mine. we initially ended up at a place which was meant to be pretty good, but the lady there was serving some people & after standing around for quite a while without even a smile & a "hello. i won't be long" we decided we'd take our money elsewhere & found another one which we'd passed on the way into town. silly lady lost $50 & more, didn't she?
the place that we ended up going to was excellent. small & friendly. we bought a bucket of wash each & a tour. first we looked for gems in our wash. we chose a bucket of dirt each & headed out to the tables where they showed us how to do it. we were each given a largish metal sieve, a pair of tweezers & a little plastic bag for our finds & each shown to a square of carpet on a table. we poured some dirt & rocks into our sieves & shook out the excess dirt onto the ground. we then used the sieve again in a big barrel of water & washed more dirt off until there were only many stones & large lumps of stones & clay left. these we would dump onto our square of carpet & then sort through them carefully looking for gems. we'd keep the lumps of clay & keep washing them over & over until more stones appeared.
it sounds like it could be boring, but it's actually quite a lot of fun & surprisingly relaxing. you can get quite absorbed in it. shroom & i both want to go again one day & buy ourselves another bucket of wash.
shroom found heaps of really good ones. he found emeralds & rubies & some lovely sapphires. audrey did well, too. she got some excellent ones. rudi & i didn't get as many good ones as the other two, but we did okay & are still happy with our souveniers. rudi & i were sort of sharing looking after riley, but there wasn't actually too much of that to be done since he had a blast picking up handfuls of dirt & rocks & transferring them from one bucket to another. i could see him thinking, "see? i've been trying to tell you how much fun this playing in the dirt is!"
after more than an hour of that we put our little stashes into our pockets & did our underground tour. it was really interesting & the man who took us down there seemed quite passionate about his topic.
by this time, smiley was about four hours overdue for a sleep, but had hardly complained ay all since he was having so much fun. while we were underground he began to get a bit whiney & true to form, poppy was the only one he wanted. as soon as he was being carried by poppy he began to get floppy & fell fast asleep on his shoulder with about five minutes, not even to stir when i laid him down in the car to change his nappy & then strap him into his car seat. he slept like the proverbial log all the way back home.
on monday morning after audrey packed up, we took a quick drive to fairbairn dam & had a short look around. we got back by 11 o'clock, shroom's mum & dad had a cuppa & were all packed & ready to go before midday. smiley had fallen asleep at about 11:30 so he got a goodnight & goodbye kiss from nanna & poppy & was already in bed when they left.
we all enjoyed ourselves thoroughly. out of all of us, i think rudi & smiley had the best time. rudi adores children & smiley absolutely adores his poppy to bits & pieces. he's definitely his favourite (non-parent) person in the world. they went on a few walks together, just the two of them, across the road to see the horses. it's lovely to see smiley so happy with him.
since they left, smiley's been asking for nanna & poppy. he misses them already. even though he hadn't seen them since christmas, which is a long time for a twenty month old, when they first arrived you could see that he remembered them & did show & tell around the lounge room, showing them all his toys & his buttons on the video & 'his' tv & his books & his little ride-on car. it was really cute. they loved it, of course.
it was a great visit. i think we were all sad to see them go.
you really had a great weekend. and all i did was sit at the blackjack table all weekend. dunkning for jewels would have been better i think.
How lovely to have somone close to Smiley as well as his loving parents. Sounds like a perfect weekend. We used to go fossicking too, it really gets you sucked in, and i am happy to say, never found anything of value, except our memories.
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it does sound like you had a really nice time