Christmas gathering in Silvan

One of the favourite activities of the grandchildren: the annual demolition of anything that looks like edible gingerbread, here it is still in one piece, not for long though.Family-games in the backyard of Oma and Opa.

TheBoxing Day Cricket match, a great Australian tradition. Here trains the future national team. Watch out Ricky Ponting...your days as captain are numbered

And here they are, we are so very proud of them ::: our perfect grandchildren..... always smiling...
who happened to be actually all quite normal.

Mirror, mirror on the wall, who is the most beautiful of them all ???

The chocolate factory

Chris thinks he is in heaven at the chocolate-factory on Phillip Island where the chocolate is made the Belgium way, which means disgustingly nice. Too much to choose from, watch that figure....

So we had to try this too, in hot chocolate form while being entertained by miss Megan.
You reckon she likes the stuff ?

Here is another chocoholic in the making ......

Why did they ever discover it ?

Family Summer Holidays at Phillip Island

Gary and Annemarie bought a new ocean kayak which had to be tried out, of course.

While the others stayed on shore to find crabs and all sorts of other seacreatures hiding under the rocks.
The 2 youngest Aiden and Megan with the 2 oldest of the grandchildren Rachel and Michelle having a rest at the Nobbies on Phillip Island. Fortunately the cousins get on with eachother very well.

The only 2 male cousins Ben and Aiden were inseparable while exploring anything that moved in the rockpools along the beach

6 o'clock dinnertime. Fish, chips and potatocakes are always favourite with any member of the family. Here we all sit on the beach at Cowes enjoying an easy meal.

A visit to Echuca on the "mighty" Murray River.

We just arrived at our home for 3 days when we were welcomed by one of the locals. He sat right beside us, appr.30 cm. away from us. We heard him and his family laughing quite often nearby during our stay.The Murray-River is famous for its paddle-steamers. It is actually here where the T.V.series :"All the rivers run", was filmed. We made a trip with this paddlesteamer down the river.

We had a lovely cabin along the river, where we watched part of that series.

Chris made sure that our steamer "EmmyLou" stayed on course. It was a very peaceful trip, no seasickness, just right for pensioners.

It looked just like the Blue Danube, here we are turning the ship through the "rough and wild rapids" and fortunately we arrived safely home.

All in all a succesful outing.

Melbourne evening and Andre Rieu

Thanks to Corinna who presented us with tickets to Andre Rieu , we took the train in to the city for a special evening.The (fairly new) Federation Square is a great place to eat and we had a bit of a look around the city. Melbourne has changed a lot over the years,with the river being a focal point these days .

One of the many bridges across the Yarra is this pedestrian-bridge.

It was a real balmy evening in Melbourne and many people on their way to the Rod Laver Arena at Melbourne's tennis centre where the Andre Rieu Concert was held

Willy on her way back from refusing to pay $25 for a programme. "Not in 25 years" Willy said, that's my girl .....!!!!

Keep smiling sis, it suits ye.

Out with Willy and Chris

The first few days with our visitors were quite wet ,so when we went to this waterfall it gave us a beautiful show. We travelled to Traralgon to see Jack and Sophie Hooimeyer.Jack took us to a town which had been badly affected by the bush fires last Feb. We were saddened by all the destruction , but as you can see, the trees are coming back.

Jack and Sophie took us out for lunch . Sophie's sister Corinne drove about 1.5 hours to join us, which was a lovely surprise

Back closer to home -we had a barbeque at Warburton. There are really good cooking facilities in most parks and we had the place to ourselves so it was a real hit.

Warburton is situated along the Yarra River which flows through Melbourne further down. The locals have made a walk along the water which is very pleasant.As you can see the gumtrees are huge!

Continuing Willy and Chris' visit Oct 09

Willy and Chris visited us during the months of October and November. They stayed with us for just over 5 weeks. We really enjoyed eachothers' company. We stayed at Phillip Island for appr. 5 days and did lots of walking, the weather was just right, here we are on Churchil Island which was very close to the holidayhome from where we made our excursions.A hike around a small peninsula gave us scenery we had never seen before.

At the halfway point we had a break and enjoyed the scenery.

There were plenty of seats on which the elderly could regain their strength.

At Kilcunda we sat on the beach and watched the surf. The weather was just ideal for walking not too warm, nor too cold.

Will

Willy and Chris' visit

We went to the aquarium in Melbourne - the new penguin display is very impressive. Here they are being fed. They know their keeper. The conditions are the same as in Antarctica - extremely cold! Here a walkthrough dome allows us to see the fish and sharks and manta rays from below them.

The manta rays are huge !

Kiran (Tim and Amrit's youngest) stayed with us when Willy and Chris first arrived. She loved them. This is the forest where we usually go for our walk in Silvan.