Aunty Jane's 90th

A couple of weekends ago the girls and I set off for Sydney to help celebrate Aunty Jane's (where the "Jane" in Rosalie Jane comes from) 90th birthday. She is the oldest of Dad's three sisters and lives in Matapihi just down the road from Mt Maunganui. She never had children of her own so her sisters, Mary and Anna, Aunty Mary's three children, Maureen, Maxine, and Thomas and Dad's descendants are her closest family. She decided to spend her birthday at Aunty Mary's place in Sydney so Aunty Anna from Hobart, Maureen and husband Ray from Adelaide, us from Melbourne and Maxine and Thomas who live with their mother in Sydney converged to celebrate. The actual birthday was on Friday May 26th but since I had concerts on the Friday and Saturday we could only go on the Sunday morning for one day and night. The best fare was on the 6:30 am flight - it was still dark! At least Rosie was happy because she loves the excitement of getting up in the middle of the night to catch a plane. Before takeoff she was already on the go with Sudoku.

Jessye read the emergency procedures and taught everybody the brace position.

In our rental car Sophie got into the swing of things with her toy cell phone which came filled with lollies.

On arrival at Aunty Mary's house while the oldies chatted the girls got stuck into a game of Skipbo.

It was a beautiful, sunny day so we had some photo opportunities in the back yard with Aunty Jane and my cousin Maxine who also turned 50 this year about five weeks before I did.

Sophie spent quite a while photographing the many birds fed by cousin Thomas regularly. They are quite fearless and come to the back verandah to hang out.

Aunty Anna, who doesn't look much like it but did in fact celebrate her 80th birthday in February, was busy in the kitchen with cousins Maureen and Maxine.

Under the coffee table I noticed a basket of beautiful shells from Fiji and Aunty Mary told me they had belonged to her parents, my grandparents I hardly remember because my grandfather died before I was born and my grandmother shortly after we had moved to NZ.

I enjoyed a cup of tea and a catchup with Aunties Mary and Jane on the verandah while Sophie did more bird photography.

Lunchtime came. The girls were seated at their own table.

Sophie provided some entertainment.


At the end of the afternoon session the ladies gathered for a group photo taken by Ray (Thomas had sloped off for a nap).

Then we went to check into our accomodation for the night. Maxine had booked a nice two-room unit for us just up the road from them.

After a couple of hours break to give everybody time to rest and reenergise we went back to the homestead for the evening session which included more food, a spoons tournament won by Sophie, more Skipbo, time to reminisce over old photos and finally another group shot before we headed back to our motel for some sleep before a 7:30 flight the next morning. It was probably the only time ever that that group of people had been together in the same place at the same time so I was really happy we had made the effort to join them - especially good to see Dad's three sisters together.