Autumn

On May 11th, Mothers' Day and the weekend after Peter had been to Christchurch for early celebrations of Grant's 80th, we finally managed to arrange a date for dinner at Elle's (Eleanor's preferred name) newish flat. It was good to see her new digs in which she has a 2-room suite. She cooked us a delicious tuna pasta bake and Sophie and Rosie contributed brownies for dessert. I got beautiful orchids and other goodies from the girls for Mothers' Day and some gorgeous tulips from Will. They lasted for ages.




Our good friends, the Charalambouses, came over for dinner. Their boys are growing up just as fast as our girls, funnily enough.

Rosie is playing in several groups at school including the brass ensemble, the orchestra and the Flockhart band (the one that marched on ANZAC Day) as well as singing in the choir. On May 19 the brass girls put on a soiree after school. Rosie played in several group items and also performed a solo piece with her teacher as accompanist. She sounded beautiful. A few days later we were at Lauriston for Jessye's turn on stage. She was in the chorus for Funny Girl with a few bit parts requiring many costume changes. It was a very polished and entertaining production and so it should have been after all the time and effort the girls put in. They'd been rehearsing on Sundays for weeks and then building up with evenings as well in the final preparation. Unfortunately we didn't take photos but I'm sure the DVD will enter our archives.

The following weekend, a mere 2 months late, Sophie finally got to have her birthday party. It's become a bit of a tradition to have her party whenever we feel like it rather than on her actual birthday and I must say it does lower the stress levels considerably. She wanted to have a party at home with games like last year and some of the games were old favourites especially the mummy-wrapping. Her 3 special friends were invited to sleep over.














In an unprecedentedly social patch we entertained Auckland Normal Intermediate and Epsom Girls' Grammar old girls, Robyn Norton, visiting from Sydney, and Meg Hansen, Jessye's Principal and Meg's husband, Gary. Silly me - just remembered about taking some pics as I was dropping Robyn off at her hotel afterwards. But we did remember on June 1st Sunday lunch when Yi Wang brought his wife and three cute little daughters over. Yi was a triallist for the MSO's Associate Concertmaster job a couple of years ago, unfortunately not successful that time, but he's recently been appointed Principal Second violin with Orchestra Victoria so he and his family have made the move from Hobart to the big smoke.



Sophie has made the discovery late in life of the Harry Potter books long after having seen all the movies. She's been ripping through them one after the other giving Jessye's well-worn copies a new lease of life.

Peter got to go to Sydney for 4 days for some work training and came straight from the airport on his way home to dinner at Graeme and Joan Evans's place where guest of honour was Ed Allen who was playing with the MSO for a week. Graeme and Ed give each other trips across the ditch now and then to supplement their respective horn sections. Quite handy for staying in touch socially.

Peter and Sophie took Fred and Barney for a welcome run at nearby Jackson's Hill. With winter shortening the afternoon daylight hours it's hard to give them enough exercise these days but Jessye's recently taken on that responsibility so the dogs' lives should be looking up.

Sophie has started playing in a string ensemble at school which I've been tutoring during their lunchtime on Fridays which are usually free days for me. They are doing very nicely and last week were invited to perform for staff and parents at the school's AGM. They played 2 short pieces, one by Mozart and one by somebody else and were given a rousing reception. Unfortunately for Sophie, the 3 best violins are in grade 6 so will be moving on to secondary school next year which will decimate the group somewhat but we'll make the most of this year and maybe find something outside school for Sophie to play in next year.