MonashMob: Let's finish 2007

Before we get into the new year, there are a number of events that I will share with you.

In November we celebrated 50 years of married life for Barb and Al, JR's parents. We all travelled to Newcastle, about 500KM away. The roads are improving all the time (combined with lead feet) and we can get there in around 4 hours and 15 minutes on a good run. This is exactly what we did on the Friday night. We were running late, as usual, and did not get away until 7.30ish. I rang the hotel to let them know that we would not arrive until around 1am, instead of the 10pm that I had enthusiastically suggested earlier in the week. After a very short break of around 20 minutes, we arrived at the hotel in Newcastle at 12.15am. JR's brother and sister were staying in the same hotel. You will be pleased to know that our trip back took over 6 hours due to bad weather.

About 10am JR went over to the club where the celebration was being held in order to help set up. The kids and I walked up to Charlestown Square, looking for breakfast. We found Darby's pie shop, (a legend in Newcastle) where everything sells for $1.00 - what a bargain huntress I am. Armed with a variety of pastries we caught up with JR and went over to Barb and Al's for lunch, where everyone else was already gathered. It was lovely to catch up with Pat (who I had not seen in a long time), as well as brothers, sisters and cousins. 3pm and most of us gathered at the pixie photo shop in Myer's for a family photo shoot. We have bought a couple, although we do not have them yet. We went straight from there to the Kahibah Bowling Club for the party. We ended up driving over, which was good as we were able to run back to the hotel at least twice, for different people and different things. It was an excellent party and Barb and Al enjoyed themselves, which was fantastic.
Here are the photo's: