Some Mothers Do 'Ave Them.

I have been blogging for a long time & for a good bit of that time I was a homeschooling mama with an elite sportsman & an elite musician still living @ home.  I ran.  If I wasn't @ a soccer game I was enroute to Brisbane for rehearsals or a concert. If I wasn't doing that I was scrabbling to finish school work before the end of term & there were never enough hours in any given day & I was fraught.  Brisbane is not my most favourite place.

Almost overnight that all changed.  My girls grew up.  Once ODD was fully licensed my services were no longer needed & my life became much quieter ~ much, much quieter than I ever expected while I was running. It revolves slowly around church & cats.  I am pretty sedentary because my work now involves a lot of study & while I don't miss the running & the time constraints & the angst I do miss the music & just being with my girls.

CG, of course, is not here, being in Chile & all that but ODD is only across the water on the mainland & she organised for me to come over on Friday so she could take DIL & I out for brunch to celebrate Mother's Day.

She chose the Arabica ~ which we know quite well having first discovered it when ODD was singing @ a local church & we needed a quick, light meal in between performances. It does really good cafe meals for a reasonable price & we have always been very happy with our meals there.  The service can be a bit dodgy as it is popular & when they are busy, as they were Saturday morning, they are definitely understaffed & our meals came in relays.  We didn't linger, as we otherwise might have done, as people were starting to queue up for a table & rain was threatening.

ODD & I have always been quite dreadful when we go out.  We generally eat reasonably healthily if @ home but out we can almost be guaranteed to choose the unhealthiest option on the menu ~ in this case freshly made waffles with icecream, cream & maple syrup.  Definitely yum!

 Bonus was spending some time with the Little Man, sort of crawling now & full of smiles. His hair is dark but it has a real ginger tinge to it & with big, dark blue eyes he is rather striking looking.

 My DIL had sent over a Mother's Day present early.  I suspect ODD helped choose as the socks have been very welcome as our days chill.  The cup is exquisite.  I love the colour, the shape & the feel but it is a little big for every day use. MOTH refers to it as *The Bucket*.

Meanwhile the girl added Googly to my surprise.  Seriously? Love the colour but not sure what to do with him.  I'm not a nick~nack person.  Dust collectors are way too much work.

 As just about everyone in our family is involved in some sort of ministry on Sundays everybody was celebrating Saturday.  ODD got left holding the baby ~ literally.  I had to get back to the island so I was on hand for Sunday & T1 was taking DIL out for dinner in Southbank.  Am wondering how that went as it rained & they were training.