Pretty amazing - my Mom had a visit in Australia! She spent 20 great days here, it was heaps of fun and great to see her.
She arrived On the 8th of Febuary, 11:45 PM. It was actually quite a bit after that because of customs, but she got here safe and sound, which was great. We went back to ours, and Mom gave us some great things from Canada; some David maple cookies, some awful tostitos nacho cheese that I really love, some lovely fragrace, shaving stuff for Dave, a couple of cute things for me, and some maple leaves (that's where the long customs procedures came in).
Mom was up super early her first day, watching the birds. Dave and I were house hunting, and a great opportunity came up, so we brought Mom to see the house too, along with Cottesloe Beach. The house looked fantastic, and the situation looked good. We went back home for lunch. Unfortunately, Mom got a migraine, and she went back to bed. Dave and I took a nap too, and then Dave took off to the Becks Music Box for a concert he had tickets to. When Mom woke up she felt better, so we had a Cosmopolitan and walked around Mt Lawley before going out to dinner at 2 Fat Indians, which was really good, and we had a great chat. Jetlag was setting in again, so mom headed back to bed, and I joined Dave and the gang at the Music Box; it was the first time I'd seen it, and it looked amazing. We had a good time, going to the Moon after the Music Box and then walking home.
Dave, Mom and I had lunch at the Flying Scotsman on Sunday, it was a beautiful day, and after lunch we walked into Perth City and showed Mom around.
The next week I had work during most of the days, but we still had some great times. Monday night a bunch of us went to our fave restaurant, the Sparrow. Yay cheap Indonesian food! On Tuesday Mom and I went out for dinner at Koinonia and had some noodles, some of the best spring rolls ever and a bottle of wine, went home and watched a silly movie together. Wednesday night Mrs Henry was scheduled gor a gig at the Rosemount. When band members cancelled, Dave decided to do the gig anyway, but solo. I came home from work, made dinner and after Dave left for the Rosemount for sound check Mom and I sat on our deck, had some wine and chatted. Then we took a taxi to the gig, saw I Love Painting Houses, who were great and then Dave, who was also amazing! Thursday - no work, yay! Mom and I went out to Caversham Wildlife Park, and even though I had been there before I was still really excited! I was so happy to see Mom getting to see all the Aussie birds and animals, and it looked like an absolutely perfect day for the park - a beautiful day, but just slightly overcast, so all the great animals came out! I even got to see a lot of the ones that were hiding the last time I came. Mom got to feed tons of kangaroos. My favourite is still the Emu I think. And I know it's silly, but I just love seeing the bunnies. Anyway, it was a perfect day. Tuesday night was Valentines Day. Dave took me to see A Midsummer Nights Dream at His Majesty's Theatre. It was a really interesting and visually stunning performance, Shakespeare with an Eastern twist. The play however was in many different Indian languages as well as English, so it didn't completely work. But it was an experience!
Friday was the start of our holiday down south. First Dave's dad was driving Dave, Mom and I down to Bunbury. Mom met Maureen, Dave's Mom, and we had Chinese food. The next day we took a stroll through Bunbury and in the evening we went to a special exhibition at the Bunbury Art Museum, and Bob Evans played a spot. We watched him while eating big, sloppy burgers from the stand in the street.
Sunday we were off to Margaret River! It was an awesome week, and I'm not going to detail all of it, but I'll give you the gist. The place we stayed at was called Al's Place. It's a cottage between Margaret River town and the beach, it's kind of in the bush. We were surrounded by lovely field and forest, and we got a great surprise the first morning - kangaroos, just hanging out outside the cottage!!! We saw them every morning, as well as a lot of beautiful birds; parrots, honey eaters, Fairy Wrens...and some rabbits a couple of nights. The week was a little weird in the weather sense. Prior to our arrival, the weather was in the late 30s, even cracking 40 degree heat. We thought we had a beach holiday lined up. But when we were on our vacation the temperature dropped to below 20 and rained. We got poured on with chilly rain when we were doing a hike and in the cottage we had a fire at night, which was cozy. We went to some wineries, breweries, cheese and chocolate factories and checked out other towns; on the way down we went to Busselton and walked the Busselton Jetty, which is one of the longest in the world,2nd only to one in the UK, it's about 2km long. Then we went on an underwater tour of the Jetty and saw some cool fish. From Margaret River we saw Augusta, and went to Jim's a restaurant where you can cook your own meat the way you like it. We did manage to get a bit of beach time, and we saw some beautiful forests. We had BBQs at Al's Place and we watched some movies. On our last night we went out for dinner at Goodfellas, an Italian Restaurant with a gangster theme.
Before we knew it we were back home. Sunday Mom, Dave and I went to Fremantle for the day. It was a beautiful sunny day. We had fish n chips, saw the markets and the town and did a little shopping. Mom got a didgeridoo and we went to the Little Creatures lounge for a drink, where we ran into Navin, which was really cool. We drove to Vic Park for dinner, and we couldn't get into the Prophet to we went to an Indian restaurant which was nice. Things started to wind down; I'll write about this later, but we were moving house. Monday we had to do a lot of that. Tuesday night we went to see Miss Saigon, and it was wonderful! I was happy because Dave really enjoyed it. Wednesday night Mom had to leave. I started school, we were starting to move. Mom and I went into town and when Dave got home for work we went out to the Prophet, where we had made a reservation, and from there, it was straight to the airport. I was sad to see Mom go, but even happier that she was here visiting us here.
