New arrivals

M's sister, niece and her two children have arrived from Turkey! M, Mi, Mouse and Fl picked them up from Brisbane Airport earlier today - and amazingly they were all awake enough to come to the Markets.

It is always illuminating to see the world through a child's eyes (another wonderful reason to have them around - besides that they are great fun!) ... as the morning progressed towards the close of the Markets, little Mu (4) commented as we sat drinking, eating and catching up that everyone else had gone and "why are we still here?" Ah, the young know little of tradition ... and that we have long been the ones to "close the market". He'll get the hang of it next week!

I was impressed though with how child-focused different folk are - like A who had balloons for the children (and adults) to play with ... because it is a long time for little ones just to be sitting around - and even though different ones took them for walks to show them different things, it is still a long time!

After the Markets, S and I took ourselves off to The Big House - to go to The Food Fantasy buffet. While we were there, at least a mystery was solved. We had noticed the previous day that part of the foyer area had been cordoned off ... S thought it was to corral people, I thought it was because the carpet in that area had been saturated in the recent storms (when their roof leaked) - but as it turned out we were both off the mark - although S was closer than I ... they must have had a big group in because they were using the cordoned off area for luggage - and lots of it.

But, back to Food Fantasy ... it has been on my list of things to do for the last couple of weeks, but we just haven't managed to make it. Alas, we weren't the only ones with that idea and the place was practically full to bursting. But, still, it was good and we had a nice relaxed lunch before going off to pick up M from Mouse's - where the children had already been put down for a nap and Me and Fe were doing their best to stay awake but it seemed to be a losing battle.

Back at Latimers, there wasn't a lot of outside work to do - but even though M had mowed earlier in the week, and I mowed yesterday, there was still some patches to do - so M went off on ROM, S settled in for some quiet time, and I continued JobFind activities. There is always something to do!

Since ROM had the new deck fitted, it's been cutting much better but it still isn't a perfect cut. But as the mechanic suggested it might take a few cuts to take out the imperfections left by the other deck - but at least the new one isn't gouging furrows out of the lawn!