Family Photo with Grandpa

(Taken Monday 9 November 2009)Left->Right: Joshua, Jeff, Samuel, Anna, Abigail, Grandpa J (Jeff's Dad)

Jeff's father came in for a flying visit - arriving last Thursday and leaving again on Monday. He has been living in Jakarta for several years and Aceh before that, working as a water and sanitation engineer in the aftermath of the Aceh tsunami. In between contracts, he comes to visit his family, spread across Australia. He left us to visit his new(ish) grandson in Adelaide for the first time, and then his mother (Great-Grandma J) in Brisbane.

While Grandpa was here, he took us to the Perth Zoo on Friday, when we took Joshua out of school for a privilege day, since Grandpa isn't able to visit us as often as we would like. We visited the penguins (my choice), the Reptile House (Joshua's choice), the playground (Grandpa and Jeff's choice, since the kids were very full of beans), the Rainforest Retreat (no surprises, that was Anna's choice again), the Nocturnal House (Abigail's choice this time) and the Monkeys (Samuel's choice). Before we left Grandpa treated Jeff and the kdis to an icecream cone each. (Joshua picked mint choc-chip, Samuel picked choc deluxe, the girls both had rainbow flavours and Jeff had rum & raisin, just in case you want some real insight into their personalities.) It was a fun and exhausting day.

On Saturday Grandpa took us to an Indoor Play Centre nearby. Being super organised, we were the first people there and actually had the entire centre to ourselves for the first hour! Despite my dosing the boys with their inhaler before they played, Joshua had an asthma attack, his first brought on purely by exercise rather than a cold. It was also his first attack with obvious, classic asthma symptoms: skin sucked in noticeably at the V in his collarbone and just below his bottom ribs, and very heavy, laboured breathing. He came straight up to me, I saw what was happening, got the spacer, face mask and inhaler all together and gave him 12 puffs. And five minutes later he was all better, raring to be off playing again. Amazing! Several of the kids fell over running around madly, and Sam now has a prominent bruise on his right cheek, but that is the predictable price of three hours of madcap play, I suppose. Jeff, Graham and I had a delightful time reading the newspapers and chatting, enjoying the children's independence.

On Sunday Graham came to church with us in the morning, and then babysat the kids in the evening so Jeff and I could sit together in peace for one service! It was great since I am teaching King's Kids (Sunday School) this month and unlike many Sundays, Jeff was not preaching in the evening.

Grandpa took Abigail and Samuel to the park on Monday morning, while Jeff took Joshua - and Anna! - to away-school, and I managed to get out to the Uniform Shop only to find it closed for the next fortnight. Aargh! Jeff and I arrived home at the same time and we all took Grandpa to the airport to wish him happy visiting with the rest of the J family.

Aah. Happy memories!