Partying

It was Jim's 80th birthday on Saturday, so we had an afternoon tea party to celebrate.

Lindsey and I swapped cars early on Friday morning. She went off to work in my little Ziggy. Jim and I went to Mount Martha in her more spacious Alf to collect Stella and to bring her to Mount Helen for. the celebrations.

Wendy had intended to come up by train on Friday afternoon. This seemed a bit silly since I was in Melbourne in a large car, so we swung by her place and picked her up too.

Lindsey's capacious car was very carefully packed with a wheelchair, a walker, suitcases, party food that we picked up at Tully's and various other bits and pieces. We delivered Stella to Lindsey and Ian's place and went with Wendy down to ours.

I made teeny tiny cupcakes for the party. I made teeny tiny frogs in ponds, with teeny tiny chocolate frogs I found on the Internet. I bought in party pies, party sausage rolls. Freyja brought vegan friendly party pies. Lindsey made sausage rolls and cupcakes. The dining table was laden with afternoon tea goodies. The desserts were all vegan friendly, apart from Lindsey's cupcakes. We had a variety of vegan friendly party pies and party sausage rolls, as well as meaty ones. We had wine, non-alcoholic wine, beer and tea and coffee.

We had guests too. Lindsey, Ian and Stella. Wendy. Freyja and Simon. Jim's daughter Jeanette and son in law Matt came down from Sydney. Some of my oldest friends (not seen since before covid) came. Young friends came, including a 2 year old who Brandy and Whiskey were not delighted to encounter 😂 Matt and Belinda called in with Sage and William later in the afternoon. It was a very good afternoon.

Thanks to Wendy for this photo

And thanks to Wendy for this photo too

You may remember that my niece Emily got married in Canada last November. We had all intended to go to Canada so we could attend the wedding. Alas - Covid border closures meant that we attended via Zoom instead. At Christmas, Emily and Andre went to visit his family in Trinidad and had a wedding celebration there. On Sunday, the wedding celebration train arrived in Victoria. We all made our way out to Nintingbool, just outside Ballarat (and not far from the Mushroom Farm) to the Nintingbool Winery. We were hugely blessed with the weather, which was just perfect for an outside celebration in the beautiful countryside of the Central Highlands. It was a lovely, lovely celebration.

It wasn't, of course, an actual wedding service, so it could be quite informal. My nephew Christian "officiated". Various people made (short) speeches. Emily and Andre renewed their vows. And then there was (more!) party food, plenty of wine (as befits a celebration held at a winery) and much merriment.

If you should be looking for somewhere to hold a celebration in the countryside outside of Ballarat, you could do a lot worse than the Nintingbool Winery. Not only do they produce exceedingly nice wine, they also produce exceedingly nice food in a magnificent location

Wendy drove us home from the celebration, then she went back to Melbourne with Freyja and Simon. Jim took himself off to bed and didn't reappear until breakfast time on Monday! We had clearly worn him out.

And a word of caution: If you should ever borrow your sister's small car for the day, be aware that it does not have all the bells and whistles that your car has. This way you won't come back to the car after work, only to find the battery is completely dead because Ziggy does not automatically turn off the headlights in the way that Alf does!!!