Sixty Years Day 2

This day contained the main event. All the immediate family was present right on noon and a significant number of other family members swelled the group to make this photo a memorable one indeed. This is one nice reason for reaching sixty years even though it sounds terribly old!

The Funks gift was food from their garden, beautifully present in a way the Mennonites might have done in times gone by. A very nice idea. 

Most of us then walked up to the Chinese restaurant. This place had special significance because Peter had celebrated his 50th there. A number of original guests were able to come so that made it feel like a reunion. Because of the surprises inclusions (#1,2,3,4,5&6), plus two more surprises - nephew Nicholas and girlfriend Kathryn (#7&8), the restaurant staff had to keep on increasing the number of tables and chairs. Peter's original reservation was twelve. In the end there were 23 of us and remarkably nobody else used the restaurant at that time making it exclusively ours. 

How we left it. Let's go there for Peter's 70th.What do you think?

A new growth in our garden.

And later that day we played another game of "Ticket to Ride".

Sixty Years Day 1

When you reach sixty years of age, the celebratory engagements take some time to get through so the moments have been divided into different days. Peter thought he had managed this milestone in his life well enough. He had planned to take Barb out on the Friday night then share with others in the main celebration which was planned for noon the following day (Day 2).  All good. And when he returned home from work at school there was Simon and Barb both smiling and waiting for him to enter the house. There was even silver "60's" fluttering in the breeze over the front entrance. Inside was Peter's brother Phillip (Surprise #1). Plans had changed and they took Peter to a Greek restaurant and popping up from behind a table was Peter's brother John (Surprise #2). Sitting a few tables away and not being noticed for at least five minutes was Peter's brother-in-law also called Peter and his partner Susan (surprises #3&4). They joined us. We must also include niece Sarah and her boyfriend James (surprises #5&6) who came with John. Peter was pretty gobsmacked because both brothers live in North Queensland and Peter and Susan live in Brisbane. After all the sneaky stuff was over we all settled in for a nice night of eating and drinking. 

Afterward we played a game at home called "Ticket to Ride". Not sure who won that one. It was a big day.

Back in Australia

With both of us back in Australia, one of the first things we did was to visit family at Gembrook. This was an important family ritual, plus we had a lot of gifts to give to each Funk member. 

Just a explanatory note here to explain that Jet was initially not too pleased with his dragon gift. It had been skillfully made at a workshop near Saigon by people with injuries from road accidents. Barb had visited the place and purchased a number of these, but not all dragons were able to stand firmly since they were all made from thick cloth fabric. But that was an important factor for any animal toy in the mind of Jet. 

Vietnamese Life

Barb spent her free weekend with a number of other nurses visiting a coastal town to help at an orphanage. This was where she had a non-tourist look at Vietnam and she thoroughly enjoyed the experience. 

The children at the orphanage were tech savvy enough to instinctively know how to use Barb's phone. She let them borrow it to take what they wanted and they had a ball taking a whole load of random snaps, some of which are assembled above.

Vietnamese Conference

It has been a month since our last post and yet there were some important things to share from January. One of them was Barb's longer stay in Vietnam to engage with Vietnamese nurses in an educational exchange. This included a formal conference in which Barb was one of the speakers. Afterward each speaker was given a bunch of flowers and a necklace. Barb was blown away by such lavish gifting.