Fullagar Family Summit for Imp's 50th

We recently had a wonderful week with the whole Fullagar family in town to celebrate Imp's 50th birthday. Felicity stayed with us, Fred stayed with Imp and Ed, and Chonk, Irma, Bea and Eric [the Swiss] stayed just down the hill at an Airbnb backing onto the rivulet.

Elf took the whole week off, while I took 2 days midweek which turned out to be perfect. We gathered most days at some stage either at our place or at Imp and Ed's at Kingston, and just ate and drank and talked. The Swiss went off and did some tourism at times, and Fred tinkered with things at Kingston and at our place too. He got the Wimshurst Machine back in working order [I have just realised the WM has not been mentioned here before so I will need to put that right soon and I'll add a link here).

Fred is Felicity's carer at home in Canberra so part of this week was separating those two to give him a break. Elf stepped in as frontline carer and cheerleader; trying to get her mum to be more active in finding solutions to her own health problems. Chiefly her feet; they are very sore and swollen and so she is unable to exercise much. Felicity won't take pills, which is a shame as some pills are very good. She thought she wouldn't come down for Imp's birthday, but all her kids her talked into it and she was extremely glad she did, by the end of the trip. As Marcus is off back to Hong Kong in March (I'll write more about this soon), this may have been the last opportunity to see her six grandkids together for a while.

Felicity asked for someone to organise a set of photos for her so she could pull them out to show friends. So I got these for her (I'm sending her prints) and reproduce them here as a time capsule; this is what we all look like in August 2022.

Before coming to Hobart, the Swiss had a week in far north Queensland, including a look around Townsville. Bea is very keen on studying marine biology and has her heart set on Townsville as the place to do it. Eric loves fishing and was lobbying hard for the whole family to move from Switzerland to Queensland.

Marcus and Michael always get on very easily and well with their cousins here, Karri and Miah, and it was just a love-in when all six of them were together. All lovely kids. 

The party went off really well. Imp booked the Kingston Community Hall which turned out to have a no-alcohol policy. This was quite funny as she had requested a gift of a large quantity of gin from Michael and Marcus which was to be shared out with guests at the party. We surreptitiously sipped some from paper cups and all in all, it added to the Jazz Age theme.

The boys present Imp with the gin

It was well-recieved

I put together the label, based on a previous birthday dress-up effort

Siblings assemble

I was able to go along to see all the visitors off at the airport in one go which was handy. We had one last big Fullagar scrum at Gate 3 then a smaller one at Gate 4. The Swiss flew off first and Felicity, who was in high spirits, got more exercise than in the rest of the trip combined with a lot of very hearty two-arms waving. Then Fred pushed Felicity in an airport wheelchair out to their plane and she waved the whole way, even while facing out into the open fields. It was a lovely note to end the visit, she was really delighted to have come and been at the centre of the family for a while.