A weekend in the country

We had a lovely weekend in the country. I drove up with little Amelia J and my Mum and Dad and we met up with my brother and his wife and little Jimmy A.
Little Jimmy A is the sweetest, smiliest baby with the bluest eyes and fluffy blond hair. He’s like the exact opposite of Amelia who has just discovered a rather terrifying grumpy face. If you hold him he snuggles into your shoulder and makes cooing and gahing noises while Amelia prefers to scratch your nose or pull your hair. The babies were very pleased to see one another and even more pleased to see one another’s toys. Jim is going to have to learn some self defense tactics for the next time we get together as Amelia was very keen on grabbing all his toys and stockpiling them behind her. When she ran out of toys to grab she wanted to grab Jim who has only just mastered the art of sitting up and didn’t do too well against a feisty cousing-tackle. Some before and after photos of the toy stealing can be seen here.

Saturday night was a freezing, clear-skied evening. Perfect for a raging bonfire and a shearing-shed full of teenagers down from the Ag Institute to celebrate my second-cousin-once-removed’s 18th birthday. 150 of them arrived to be sure it was celebrated properly. We tucked the little babes up in bed after stories of “Spot” and “Maisy’s Colours” and left Grandma in charge with a glass of whiskey and ducked out the front gate and across the dark sheep paddock and down for some warming bevvies by the fire. The stars were amazing. Living in the city means you forget how thick the sky is with the things. Even Mars hanging over the hill was looking upstaged by the milky way and crescent moon. We stayed for the speeches and the garlic prawn finger food, then decided it was time to head back up to the house as we started to overhear drunken teen conversations about things we really didn’t want to know about.

As I curled up under my doona around 11pm the DJ from Yass started up his cd player and the window panes and the long, post-spring-rain grass in the paddock started to quiver. Around 2am some of the more raucous, crazed teens started letting of fireworks just outside my bedroom window. Amelia ended up snuggling in bed with me as the noise was a little much for either of us to bear. Around 3.30am I found myself deliriously singing along to Pseudo Echo’s Funky Town.

I woke after a precious few hours sleep around 7am and looked out the front window to see a frost encrusted paddock filled with abandoned utes (some with smashed windscreens) and kids asleep in frost encrusted sleeping bags. A quiet day was had by all.