Peter baked a cake with almond-meal for tomorrow, the 13th of May (Mothers’ Day). He used apricot jam for the outside and finished it off with a cover of dark chocolate.
It was cold and windy today. But I still went for a little walk in the afternonn and took the above pictures.
I just love my early morning walks in Lakelands Park. I usually walk just across the grassy soccer fields.
I am always so happy when I get up very early in the morning and see the sun gradually coming up.
When we have an outing, it usually takes me quite some time to get ready, even though I don’t normally bother about any make-up. I think the most time is taken up just packing my boobs into some bra. It is such a strenuous job! Peter takes less than half the time to get ready for going out.
We feel that our weeks are very, very busy these days. And getting busier by the minute! Apart from doctor’s appointments and shopping trips there are now Tai Chi classes on Monday, Yoga classes on Tuesday, and I continue to go to the slow movement exercise classes for seniors on Thursdays. On Friday I continue to have a games afternoon with my friends.
Today I missed out on my seniors’ class. I felt I needed a break. Watching the German news in the morning we found out that it is a holiday today in Germany: It is the Thursday ten days before Pentecost Sunday. This Thursday is a public holiday in Germany as well as so called Fathers’ Day. On this day all fathers in Germany are bound to have a day out on their own without wives or kids! This is tradition. This day out is very much enjoyed by the fathers.
Peter and I pretended we have a ‘holiday’ today too, enjoying it with a lovely glass of chilled white wine for lunch. At around 2,30 pm we expect our daughter Monika to come for a visit together with her grandson Carter, who is now a very enjoyable one and a half.
We left at 10,30 for a 50 km drive to Berry. On the way we had to drive through Albion Park Rail. This delayed us somewhat for there was an airshow on at the Illawarra Regional Airport. Lots of people had already parked all over the area, and quite a few people were still arriving looking for more parking spots quite some distance away and then walking to where the action was. We saw heaps and heaps of cars and hundreds and hundreds of walkers!
https://www.wingsoverillawarra.com.au/page/flying-program
https://www.wingsoverillawarra.com.au/page/location
“Illawarra Regional Airport is located adjacent to the Princes Highway at Albion Park Rail in NSW, approximately 20kms south of Wollongong City Centre and 100kms south of Sydney City Centre.”
Once we made it through Albion Park Rail on the Princes Highway, we had a good run further south to Berry.
We had no idea that in Berry was a show on too. I looked it up now, it was the
I have never seen as many people and cars in the vicinity of Berry. But we were lucky. Peter found a very convenient parking spot near here:
We had some lovely ice-cream and were sitting outside with it. We only had to walk a little bit further to find a beautiful outside cafe and there was no problem at all to get a table. The coffee we ordered was very good. The weather was just perfect: Sunshine the whole time and no wind whatsoever.
At the French Bakery across the road Peter bought a cinnamon scroll and a baguette. Then we drove back home, where we warmed the cinnamon scroll up in the oven and then had it at a table in our backyard with a cup of tea.
The whole outing took us only 2 and a half hours.
Yesterday we had a few larger items plus some smaller ones removed by a junk removal company. The items were so old that they could not have been given to charity. So we had to pay for their removal. We did this gladly. We were very happy that some very friendly young men were willing to transport them away in their huge truck.
Our 40 year old bed with the 24 year old mattress is gone. We have another bed and another mattress now!
The two very large, very old seats are gone. Now there’s room for something else;
The other day I finally decided I won’t have to use these shelves any more in our bedroom. We are right now in the process of downsizing as much as possible and getting rid of old furniture that clearly has had its day.
This picture was taken some time in April last month when we noticed on our way to St George Hospital in Kogarah how sometimes a left over ‘old’ dwelling can persist in the midst of a lot of high rise apartments!
https://www.whereis.com/nsw/kogarah-2217/st-george-public-hospital
This is a tree in Lakelands Park. I took this picture last Thursday when Peter, Monika, Natasha and little Carter went to the playground of that park. It was past three o’clock in the afternoon. A little later some young soccer players arrived at the park. They practiced on a soccer field near the playground.
Seventeen months old Carter had great fun at the playground. Both Monika and Tash promised they’d come to visit us again next Thursday. If the weather is fine, we all might go to the playground again with little Carter.
Krystal’s birthday was on the 5th of April. She turned 21 this year!! I looked up what I wrote four years ago on Krystal’s birthday. Here it is:
https://auntyuta.com/2014/04/05/krystals-birthday-today/
It features some pictures what the playground in Lakelands Park looked in 2001.
Krystal has been sliding down and Roxy stands beside her.
And while I am at it, I copy here what the bush in front of our house looked like in 2000 and I am going to show what it looks like now 17 years later:
This is just a bit of the front of our house in the year 2000. I put this photo in to show how small this tree in front of our window was at the time. (After it had been there already for some six years!) It looks very huge now, and the gardener trims it every so often, otherwise there would not be enough room left for the parking spot left of the house. 
This bush looks so much bigger now. Also, the trees behind have grown enormously! And now back to the playground, what it looks like at present at Eastertime 2018:
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This picture is from Good Friday, the 30th of March 2018, when I went for an early walk to the playground in Lakelands Park. Some Peter Rabbit Books for the Kids
In this picture is our daughter Monika with her three daughters, also Peter’s sister Ilse who was at our place in Australia on a visit from Berlin, Germany. Natasha, the eldest daughter of Monika, is next to me on the left.
Camphor Laurel, they are very persistent!
These are very recent pictures.
I am looking forward to go today for another walk across the grass in Lakelands Park. Yesterday I had meant to write about certain things, however one thing or another kept me pretty busy until lunch time. And when after an early lunch I finally could spend a bit more time on the computer I nearly forgot that at 2 pm I wanted to be at my neighbour’s place for our Friday games afternoon together with two or three other neighbours. This get-together we always enjoy very much. So at 1,30 it suddenly occurred to me, that I had to get ready for my afternoon away from home. Luckily, I still made it on time. This meeting with the neighbours is very important to me. It is a good way to not loose contact with all of these neighbours.
I thought, I had saved what I had written yesterday. So I went to yesterday’s draft savings. And I only found this bit:
“Today, both of us were awake before six. We are looking forward to another busy day. After breakfast I would like to go for my little walk in Lakelands Park, the same as every morning.”
The above bit is what’s left of yesterday’s earlier writing that I think I had done before breakfast.
The hour’s writing I had done yesterday between 12,30 and 1,30 pm has all gone. I had written about how to discard most of our books. I also had mentioned what was going on yesterday in Berlin about a World War Two bomb disposal. This writing has all gone. Ah well, I did not like it very much anyway. So today is another day.
We already found out that the bomb disposal went well. Everything is back to normal in Berlin. This disposal was a major undertaking for they dealt with a 500 kg bomb in the midst of Berlin near the central city railway station (Hauptbahnhof), a lot of public buildings, a hospital, as well as quite a few residential buildings. All this had to be evacuated. Really a major undertaking that required a lot of planning.
There is always a lot of building going on in Berlin. During excavation work it happens frequently that they still find World War Two bombs that have not exploded yet. And this after well over 70 years!
AuntyUta 