On Friday night, I shouted a pre-Xmas dinner for Jason -- at the "Sunny Doll" Japanese restaurant. Joe, Kate, Anne and myself were the other diners. We ordered mainly off the Don Buri menu as you will see from the receipt below. Jason is a very clever man in all sorts of ways and he demonstrated his social skills by being a model guest. He made a point of spending some time talking to each of us. If anybody needs a guest to make up numbers at a dinner party, invite Jason. He manages to be both polite and self-effacing while at the same time knowing amazing amounts of stuff. He is a genuinely good man.
Saturday morning started out interestingly. I attempted to make ham, cheese and tomato jaffles for breakfast for Anne and myself. They came out pretty well but the difficulty was getting them out of the sandwich machine. Both Anne and I had a go at it but they all came out in something of a mess. We had to use knives and forks to eat them. But they tasted good.
Later on Saturday morning Suz put on an open house -- from 10:30am on -- as part of the celebrations for Sahara's birthday. Joe, Kate, Jenny, Nanna and I went along.
For once, I chose for myself what presents to bring so I brought four: A dolly-sized chair and bucket, some Peppa Pig cards and a small frying pan in the shape of a heart. But she got so many presents that it was hard to see what she thought of my presents. Maybe Suz will tell me if she plays with any of them.
Joe seemed to be in a rather glum mood but the kids soon livened him up. He spent a lot of time picking them up, throwing them around, chasing them etc -- to enormous shrieks of amusement from them. Dusty in particularly had a very loud scream. They kept coming back for more, as kids do. Toys are nowhere nearly as amusing as adult attention.
In chats with Suz I discovered something I did not know about her. She is a real sentimentalist. I always knew that Von had a box of little mementoes of all sorts of times in her life -- from when she was a kid. But Lo and behold, Suz does too. She got out her neat little wooden box and showed us all her mementoes. She may well be just as sentimental as Von. One item is a tiny plastic baby that Von wanted too so that has been a bit of a game between them: Hiding and finding the baby
The sawmill: There is an old sawmill up for sale near where Von lives and it would be a dream for Russ to buy and run it. But moving to New Zealand would entail lots of difficulties. As a mother of two, Suz in particular is conscious of those difficulties, though she absolutely hates standing in the way of something that would be so good for Russ. So I spent a lot of times exploring the possibilities with her.
Russ is already a keen woodworker and you could see the dream in his eyes when talking about the sawmill. A woodworker with his own sawmill is in woodworking heaven.
We had rum balls etc with a cup of tea when we arrived and at lunchtime Suz made us ham and cheese rolls.
Joe must have felt the need to be in a family environment because he spent more time at Suz's place than he usually does. So I got the chance to lie down on a comfy couch there and have a nice nap -- as I usually do after lunch. When I woke up it was to the sound of screaming kids being chased around my couch by a monster, which was very entertaining. It was of course Joe doing his best monster impersonations.
Kate played with the kids a bit so she is getting used to our boisterous ways with kids
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