29th Wedding Anniversary and Chasing Willy

It was our 29th Wedding Anniversary this weekend and we went to Brisbane to celebrate it.  Well actually we went to see my mum's display of pastel drawings at the Redcliffe Cultural Centre and combined the weekend away with that.  The view from our apartment as the sun went down.  Ashleigh and Danielle came with and we had a great night out, eating Italian and drinking bubbles.

So this is my mum, she's 76 and has self taught herself to draw these animals in the last 2 years.  She amazes me, really she does.  She's has always been very patient, well with crafty things like sewing etc, and she has over the years dabbled in a few arty things.  She decided she would try drawing and painting and started with water colours and has moved on to pastels which she likes most.  

My favourite is probably this penguin drawing.  She's so clever and I'm so proud of her.  Mum sells the pictures for $200, she keeps only the cost of the materials and donates the rest to the WWF World Wide Funding, which helps to rescue endangered animals and their environments.  Mum is a crazy keen animal lover.  I love her heaps.

I was reading a blog the other day and the photographer, was teaching on taking pictures of sunbursts, be they actually the sun or lights like this one,  I loved it so had to have a go.  A star for you mum you're a star.

On our way home yesterday I asked Ade to drop in at the historial Newstead House.  Unfortunately it wasn't open so I just took a few shots around the outside.  This though made us a little later getting home.  We took a detour through Grantham, the tiny town at the bottom of the Toowoomba range, that was almost completely wiped out in the January inland tsunami.  To our surprise it was full of cars and policemen, we realised that Prince William had been visiting that day and must have just departed. 

Well I got a little excited.  I admit I am a monarchist.  I don't want to become a republic and the debate rages here.  My mum and her parents came to Australia from England about 60 years ago and I am proud of my British heritage.  So we were on the hunt, we sped up to see if we could see William.  We thought he had been lifted out in a helicopter so we didn't expect to find him at all.  But as we continued the drive home, more and more of the little towns along the way were still showing the signs of his visit.  Signs on sheds that read, "Thanks for the visit William", young girls holding umbrellas (it was raining) showing signs of having just seen someone famous, you know giggling, red faced jumping around.  He must be just ahead of us, we thought.  Now we knew he was coming to Toowoomba, we hadn't heard at all that he would be doing all these street stops though, how did we miss that.  I asked Ade if had read it in the paper before we left Saturday.  No he said he never saw a thing.  James Street the main street into Toowoomba was filled with people scurrying back to their cars, all holding signs, and smiling widely.  Now I'm cranky where is Willy I wanna see him too.  We never did, we were like stalkers trying to catch up but we couldn't.  Today our paper is filled with pictures of the gorgeous Will shaking hands and hugging women, That should have been me!!!!!!!!!
Oh well I will never go to Newstead House again, it was the course of my missed destiny, to hug a Prince.  I guess I'll just have to live and be happy with my very own prince.  29 years later he still makes me smile.  Happy Aniversary Darling, love you.  xo