80TH BIRTHDAY and FIRST GRANDCHILD

Another "0" Birthday in our family for 2018, My Mum turned 80 on Monday 10th December, 2018. We celebrated with a Birthday lunch on Saturday 8th December, 2018.
There were 8 siblings in my Mum's family, Mum being the 3rd born and now the eledest as her 2 older Brothers have passed.  This photo is with the Eldest sister and the youngest sister, there is 15 years between them.  We celebrated with a home lunch and lots of memories shared. Youngest sister and her hubby live about 1-1/4 hours away from us and we invited them as a surprise, Mum was very surprised when they arrived.

                                                          This was the lunch spread

 
                                            Mum with youngest sister and brother in law

                                             Mum, Kate (almost ready to have baby) and me

                             Mum with her huge Birthday cake, Stephen & me, Kate & Josh

                                     

2 days later Monday 10th December 2018, Kate gave birth to our first grand child, a baby boy named James Stephen born at 9.37am weighing 3,400 grams and 50cm long. Such excitement in the house waiting for the phone call, I literally jumped up and down with excitement exclaiming "I'm a Grandma, I'm a Grandma" and of course tears flowing.....
James Stephen Brazier was born 80 years after his Great Grandma, Mum is most excited.....
This is the first photo we received and had to wait an hour to find out if we had a grandson or a grand daughter.   Kate wanted to tell us so they face timed us once they were back in her room. Josh NEVER smiles in photos, his face looks like he caught the biggest fish in his life...….


                                           

                                                      James, Kate and Great Grandma

Granny, Grandma and James

                Four generations photo, Great Grandma, (AKA Granny), Grandma, Mum and James

                                        And of course a photo with Grandma and Grandpa

                                                     Aunty Rebecca and James

                                                   Grandpa Stephen with James Stephen

   
                                                     Kate and James after a feed in hospital

                                            Kate, Josh and James just before leaving hospital

                                                                James 4 days old

                                                        James and Grandma

                                                           James and Grandma

James and Grandma

                           


Stay tuned for more photos...….        So, I have seen James everyday since he was born, he is now 17 days old. James is definitely a Brazier, he looks just like his Daddy.....

I hope you all had a wonderful Christmas, Our best Christmas pressie ever...…….

                                                        Cheers
                                                        Kaylee

40TH WEDDING ANNIVERSARY

We celebrated our 40th Wedding Anniversary a week ago, Sunday 25th November, 2018.

So many said it wouldn't last, we dated for 7 months when we were married on Saturday 25th November 1978.  Many years after we were married my brother told me that several of my family members including my Mum and Dad sat around putting bets on how many years it would last.

So I think we came out the winners...……… 

This is a collage of a few photos of us over the years.

                                                  Stephen and I last Sunday at Kate's house

Rebecca and her boy friend cooked us a most delicious Lasagne for dinner, Kate did the salad....

                                       … and a small piece of cheese cake for dessert

Not long till we're first time grandparents.....

                                                                         Cheers
                                                                         Kaylee

BABY SHOWER

We had Kate's baby shower on Saturday 10th November, I wanted to share some photos of the gorgeous Mother to be.

Kate bought this new dress for her baby shower, it suits her so much, she is just glowing, pregnancy suits her so well.

             I love this photo, the expectant Mother, the most excited first time Grandma (aka me!!)

                                                          The two first time Grandma's

                Kate looks so wonderful, she hasn't put on any weight in herself, only a baby belly

Kate and her BFF (they went to school together), this is Karly's second baby, he was born on 21st September.

             Kate opening one of the gifts with her Goddaughter Emelia, who is totally excited.

My niece, Kate's cousin, Lisa and her little boy Charlie.  Kate and Lisa are great friends, Lisa is an only child.

So, our other big news is, we decided to sell at The Tweed and move closer to Kate, Josh and our first grandchild.  We put our house up for sale at the beginning of August, it took 7 weeks to sell and a long settlement.  Settlement was last Friday, 23rd November, 2018.  What a job, we've been at this house for 11 years and we had TOO much stuff, we took 2 tons to the rubbish tip, I sold over $900 of things we no longer required. We took several load of all sorts of things to op shops around our area. It was still a very big move.  Saturday 17th November we hired a truck to do a pre move before the removalists came.  Kate, Josh, our good friends and us loaded the truck which Stephen drove, Kate and Josh had a ute and a trailer full of plants and other stuff from the shed. I drove one of our cars with the boot and back seat packed full.  John and Vicki had their car packed full and we headed off in convoy style with our 2hour trip ahead of us.  That was a big day, we arrived back home in the truck at 9.30pm. The Sunday Stephen and I packed the kitchen up, which took all day. The removalists arrived at 8.15am on the Monday morning with a LARGE truck and packed it full but it still didn't fit everything, we packed our car again and we were on the 2 hour journey again.  On Tuesday morning Stephen and John went back to the Tweed with car and trailer and filled it with the bags and boxes the removalists couldn't fit in the truck the day before...…. we're finally here and settled.

This has been my excuse for not posting any BLOG posts as it's been a mammoth job with sorting through everything, packing etc...…..

We bought a 3/4 acre block of land at Elimbah, 15 minutes from Kate's house.  We are currently renting Kate and Josh's first home at Narangba until our new home is built.

Lots of exciting times ahead and super excited about our Christmas gift, a grandchild.
Only a couple of weeks to wait now.  I'll be sure to up date you all with photos of our first grandchild.


                                                                            Cheers
                                                                           Kaylee

60TH BIRTHDAY and SURPRISE DINNER

Continuing with our big celebrations of 2018, I turned 60 last Saturday, 22nd September, 2018.  Friday I caught the train to Narangba, my bestie, Vicki collected me from the train station and we went to North Lakes where Vicki took me to lunch to a great Thai place for a lunch and we also had a yummy cocktail, after lunch we shopped for a couple of hours.

                          Our lunch, we had already started when I remember a photo...…………..

Saturday, my Birthday, Vicki came over after lunch with this gorgeous cupcake tower, the cakes were carrot cake, so delicious and moist, they also had edible stickers of "60" and "made in 1958".

I have been on a health regime and lost 5 kgs, I still enjoyed a lovely cupcake "made in 1958" with a cup of tea, so delicious.

The week before Kate said she'd booked a restaurant for dinner for 8 which included the 6 of us and my friend Vicki and her husband.  However when we arrived there were 2 tables together with seats for 20 people with balloons and little stars on the table. It was such a great surprise when our family and friends started coming through the door.

                    Kate, Rebecca and me, Rebecca acting like she's pregnant after her big meal.

My 2 besties, Vicki on the left, we went to high school together and have been friends for a very long time. Casey on my right whom I've known for around 38 years, I met Casey at Shop 21where she worked as a shop assistant in George Street, Brisbane back in 1980, not long after we moved from Rockhampton to Strathpine. We have been great friends ever since...….

Me with my gorgeous Kate who is my first born and turned 30 in March and is now pregnant with her first child and our first grandchild, so exciting..... You wouldn't know it from this photo but Kate is now 28 weeks pregnant and due mid December.  Before my Birthday we saw her last on Father's Day and she didn't have a baby bump, 3 weeks later and when I saw her Friday 21st September, I was so excited to finally see a baby bump.  She has been very lucky and has been very well and not even missed a day of work since becoming pregnant.

Our niece Lisa with her gorgeous little man, Charlie who turned 2 in August, he is just so cute and gives me cuddles all the time.

My SIL, Josh acting the fool with his pregnant belly, hahahaha.  He's so tall, to be able to get him in the photo we don't get to see the pregnant belly of the actual person who is pregnant.

                                    My lovely Birthday cake made by my gorgeous Rebecca.

It was a great night and weekend with many surprises. The balloons have been in my craft room since we came home on Monday and they are still about 1/2 inflated, I've been looking at them all week.

                                                                         Cheers
                                                                         Kaylee

JAPAN 2018 - PART 10

Day 16 - Friday 13th April, 2018

We had a day trip to Kyoto, we arrived at Shin Osaka train station and caught the 9.42am train to Kyoto arriving at 10.10am.  We went straight to the information centre and purchased a bus day trip for Y600, to hop on and off buses all day.

Walking to and from the train station from our hotel we saw this daily, men and women with children on their bikes, sometimes 2 and 3 children.

                   After arriving at Kyoto our first stop was to Kennin-ji Temple Grounds

                                                      and the Kodai-ji Temple area

In the gardens area we came across a Maiko (a Geisha in training) having her photo taken, we stood watching her for about 15 minutes along with many other Japanese tourists.

We met this lovely group of ladies and 1 man, I was talking to the lady in the front wearing black and white, she asked where we were from and said she had been to Australia 2 years ago.  She spoke quite good English.

                                                               They took our photo

                       We then walked a short distance to Gion where there were many people

We saw lots of girls and ladies wearing Kimono's, in Spring they all head to Kyoto and wear Kimono's around, many of them are Chinese tourists.

                                                                Little alley's

       

                              Looking down this alley I saw a lady watering plants

           

We came to the Shoren-in Temple and saw a family wearing Kimono's, there were food stalls around this area.

                                               Chion in Temple

                                                                  Yasaka Shrine

                          Passing through these Torii gates we leave the Temple/Shrine area

                                                    We then came across Maruyama Park

We were a little exhausted so we sat for about 20 minutes and took in the surroundings

                                                       3 friends wearing Kimono's

                                                        A man feeding pidgeons

                                                       Crow in a tree

     
                                                      A Wedding

As we were walking out of the park we came across a man selling whole steamed potatoes, we were so excited as we hadn't had any potato for over 2 weeks, it was Y300 and we enjoyed it so much, of course he only had chop sticks but we managed...…...

                                  We caught another bus to Ponto-cho and the Kamo River

                At the entrance is this timber post/plaque explaining the history of Ponto-cho

                                     The next 9 photos are taken down ally's in Ponto-cho

        

              

We then made our way back to catch a bus to the Kyoto train station, can you see the little Koala on my backpack ?

                                             Kyoto train station is a very big building.

                                                  The escalators go up and up forever

We got back to the train station and had a coffee and charged my iPhone waiting for our train back to Osaka.

Another fully packed exhausting day, we arrived back to Osaka at 6.30pm

That concludes our week in Osaka, the next post will see us in Hiroshima.


                                                                Cheers
                                                                Kaylee