Last weekend, after arriving home from our seaside jaunt (shaking the sand out of every crevice and unpacking everything plus the kitchen sink we seemed to take with us) our good friends came to visit. Good friends who we used to see lots of, used to go live in their house in crazy Papua New Guinea, chasing crazier cows and the craziest pikininnies, but now unfortunately we don’t seem them much at all (ironically enough due to the tyranny of distance…yet PNG was just a mere stones throw?!) Anywho, they came, set up the camper in the backyard, the kids had grown like mushrooms, we ate pizzas, roasted marshmallows, talked about farmy stuff and parenting stuff and gin and tonic stuff. You know those friends it doesn’t matter if you saw them yesterday or fifteen years ago? Yeah, that.
Eleanor was just in her element with all these big kids to love upon her – from Christmas to Inverloch to New Years with cousins, camping and visitors, this week has been a harsh reality in being an only child with just mummy to play with! We got Matt’s beloved pizza oven cranking, just a little el cheapo thing we got last year from Aldi, but it’s a ripper! Until we build a big permanent one it does the job quite nicely, and is a great way to feed a crowd of kids. The girls made their own pizzas and it’s quite the progressive dinner as they’re cooked, Matt adjusts the fire, another wood chop, let it burn down, another pizza, before you know it you’ve had your 7th pizza and 17th beer (well, for some anyway). A great Summer backyard session, kiddie herding away from the pizza oven and all.
We thought we’d best strap on our tourist hats and go see the sights in our very own backyard with our out of town visitors: a little drive to Walhalla for the day. I hadn’t been in years to the little historic mining village, quaint little shopfronts, a picnic in the park and a train ride over the Thompson and back…
Home again, home again, jiggedy jig…to splash in the dam on a scorching afternoon (with a giant flamingo no less). We couldn’t very well send the visitors off without some spuds, they said ‘only if you’ve got some’. Um… so we took them to acres and acres of spuds and told them to help themselves! They of course thought it was hilariously novel (we did not, and thought they were hilarious) and Eleanor of course got stuck right in and munched on the taters raw. Just like mummy at the same age in the spud dirt.*
Promises were made to not leave it so long (always) and we need to go repay the visit, with a condition that we BYO pizza oven. And spuds. Deal.
* Same age? Ok, ok… 29 year old still has a nibble on the raw spuds…
Anne@GritandGiggles says
This sounds lovely … I guess that is the thing with getting older, moving around and having a family. The avaliabilty to visit friends gets smaller and time just speeds by so fast. It looks like you all enjoyed your time.
Ainsley says
There’s always treasures in our backyard that visitor’s remind us of and we take almost for granted! Love seeing Miss Eleanor’s “I’ve been digging potato) face x