Our Growing Family

And it’s not even a baby on the way or a new pet!

Chief and I headed to Adelaide last weekend to catch up with our children. We all used to live there but Chief and I fled the nest (way too early) to take up new opportunities in Brisbane – anyway, I digress. We hadn’t seen Tom our son since last November and our daughter ‘Flossy’ since Christmas so we were really excited to be catching up with them and their lovely partners.

Saturday morning saw all six of us heading out to the McLaren Vale, one of the premium wine regions of South Australia – I hark on about how lovely it is all the time, but it really is! We ended up at S.C Pannell for lunch where we enjoyed each other’s company, super food and taking in the lovely views and soaking up the gorgeous Summer day.

Yum!

Chorizo

Octopus

Samuel’s Gorge Cellar Door

View from SC Pannell

After lunch and a trip to a couple of wineries, we went our separate ways to spruce ourselves up before heading into the city to meet friends in the Garden of Unearthly Delights. Adelaide comes to life this time of year as the Adelaide Fringe rolls into town. It was a tight turn around and within the hour, Tom and his girlfriend Christie were back in order for us to travel into the city together.

Just as we were all assembled and ready for the off, Tom gathered us around for an announcement – in that short time of rushing to get ready to go out, he had managed to squeeze in a marriage proposal and Christie said yes! We had no idea so it was a complete and wonderful surprise to us. How fantastic to be welcoming  someone as lovely as Christie into our family; I’m going to be a mother-in-law!

Apparently Tom was going to pop the question in a more romantic location when we were in the picturesque McLaren Vale but not everything had aligned for him and he ended up bottling it.

Tom made sure his proposal was by the book, asking Christie’s father’s permission and researching which knee to go down on beforehand. Apparently there is no clear historical origin of proposing on bended knee but it probably stems from similarities to kneeling during prayer, kneeling while receiving honors from royalty and other ceremonial situations. I can remember when Chief proposed to me it was pouring with rain so he put a plastic bag on the ground to kneel on first – ah!

So the rest of our weekend away turned into celebrations of all things wedding and love. Of course there was a beautiful ring involved which will surely sparkle and dazzle for many many years. No date has been fixed yet but I know you have to ‘book early’ for your perfect venue so it could be a year or two before I’ll be in my glad rags and new hat.

Toasting each other

The beautiful ring

I can tell you one thing though – it doesn’t half make me feel old, having one of my babies embarking on such a huge next chapter of life!