Thursday, May 31, 2012

Somewhere between 27 and 39

Happy birthday me!  Thank you to everyone for soooooo many FB messages, texts and phonecalls - all made the day so wonderful.  Had a fabulous, earth-shattering day with a 4.5 quake just before morning tea and a full evacuation of the school.  The quake was in the Geraldine area - much closer to us than the Christchurch quakes but very deep and non-destructive.  The kids had a slightly longer morning play and we got to enjoy Chrissy's scrumptious chocolate cake, baked especially for me.  Chrissy also found a protea bush or tree and asked the lady if she could have a few flowers - incredibly special as proteas are South Africa's national flower, and my birthday always fell on Republic Day which was a public holiday in SA for about the first 21 years of my life.  I was thrilled to have such a strong reminder of birthdays past!  
Nick took me out for lunch and then graciously gave me two hours of guilt-free shopping while he walked around with me trying hard not to look bored.  Fortunately there was a definite cut-off time as we had to collect the boys from the pool at 3 pm.  In the afternoon I played with my birthday present, which is a stunning K. Otto Zimmer violin - I have had it for at least six weeks already but officially it's mine now :) 
Our original plan was to have Chinese for tea, but Matt and Adele invited us around for tea as they are shortly leaving on a long overseas holiday, and we were wanting to catch up before they left.  We were more than happy to change our plans for them :)  Adele cooked up a lasagne and some incredible breads; Madre and Leone gave us an brief violin/flute concert, and we even had Andreas sharing in the evening when he suddenly appeared in the diningroom. 
Gene (don't photograph me) set the table beautifully with an array of candles and flowers.  I mentioned to her earlier at school that we would be seeing them later - she said, "uh oh"!

1 comment:

Genevieve said...

Happy Birthday Lynn!
(I find proteas wonderful! I bought a decal of one that I attached to the window in our front door - a daily reminder of South Africa and our South African friends!)