Another road trip!

It seems like that's all I do lately, pack up the car and drive to another place.

This time it was a road trip to Melbourne to attend the first birthday celebrations of Miss Billie.
It hardly seems any time at all since I was in Melbourne for her birth, but a lot of water has "gone under the bridge" in that year. There was the usual machine quilting to do, a trip to America, a bout or two of shingles, the usual weekend retreats, Christmas, the birth of another grandchild, and the wedding of my nephew. I think the world must be speeding up as I get older??

It was a lovely party attended by family and friends and there were lots of small children. DD3 hired a face painter which was a hit with the young ones, and she was kept busy. I did take a few photos of the painter at work, with a queue of children, but I had used my camera, which is still in Melbourne! I used my phone for some photos as shown below.

There were lots of balloons to put up, and thankfully they had been blown up before I arrived, because I can never get enough air into them to make them larger than a small ball!!

The balloons were all attached to some tape in a long trail........

........and attached to the stairs, which looked very effective. Miss Billie loved looking at the balloons hanging, when she woke up next morning, and kept pointing to them.

She was not too sure about the candle, and the singing by everyone!

.........................The cake was beautiful and very tasty.

Even the ice blocks looked very pretty with the flowers in them.

These little cakes were very popular too.

The only one missing from the grandchildren photo, was Mr Tate, who has been a bit unsettled and it was deemed not a good idea to take him on a 10 hour drive, so he and his mum stayed home.

This little man was excited to see his painted tiger face in the glass of the oven door!

                            Here are a couple of happy children with the faces painted...................

                     The face painting lady also made some clever balloons for the children................

Here is Miss Billie sitting in my car just before I left on Monday morning, pretending she was coming home with me. I do think that her parents would have not let me go too far before taking her back though.

After a lovely weekend and catching up with most of my family, it is time to get back with Max and get some more quilts done this week. We have another family gathering in Adelaide this weekend, with the 18th birthday celebrations of GD2, so I will be "on the road" again!

I will be back in a couple of days with some more newsfromjude,

Blessings, From Jude