Monday, October 31, 2011

Busy October

This month has seen several birthday celebrations, a family wedding, school holidays, trips to Sydney, the buying of our new car, visitors from afar ( Josh and Sandy from Tassie, then Alison. Blake, Jonas, Ruby,Amos and Ezekiel from Ballarat. We also fitted in a whole lot of work in between.

Lois going out to meet Josh and Sandy who were visiting Canberra

Rick is very happy with his Skoda. He bought it on- line, flew to Melbourne and drove it back.

Lyndal turned 30 and we enjoyed her 70's party to celebrate her birthday and being in their new house.

Cameron and his new hairstyle for the 70's party.

Emma and Marc's wedding in Sydney on a beautiful day - Sunday October 16. 

Emma and Marc with the grandparents

Stuart with Deirdre, who  looked lovely as the mother of the bride.

us at the wedding

Deirdre with daughters , Sarah and Avril.  They were part of the bridal party.


The reception place overlooked Sydney Harbour. It was a stunning  view and a glorious day.

The day of the wedding was also Rick's Birthday. The next week was Stuart's birthday.

Lois has just turned six months old and is very entertaining and time-wasting for us. She is healthy and happy and her parents are doing well too. They have been in Australia, and living here with us, for three months now.


Lois is now 6 months old and is sitting by herself .

Wednesday, October 12, 2011

Lois is fun to watch

Lois is learning to sit up. We made a little soft play-gym for her.

Tuesday, October 11, 2011

Lois... our favourite passtime


Lois is five and a half months' old and is growing fast. It's fascinating to watch.


Cherie is hiding behind Lois! She loves to "stand" now and is enjoying her first few days of solid food. She is such a good baby. Usually eats and sleeps with little fuss! We don't hear her cry at all.

Before dawn....Tuesday

Just got up after lying awake for an hour or two. This takes me back a year or more to when this happened most nights. Hope it's a one-off! Maybe it's because my feet and legs ache from walking yesterday. Sounded like a great idea at the time, but I over-did it. Bev and I walked a bit far, thinking that we'd find a nice spot to have a drink. The place we headed for was closed.Neither of us had a phone with us so we couldn't ring our husbands to come and pick us up. 2 hours later we were home.
I am glad it's school holidays, as I wouldn't be much good at school today! It's frustrating to realise I still I can't walk and do "normal" things because of the joint aches ( medication side effect). It's now two years since diagnosis and 18 months since starting this medication.
This coming weekend will be busy. We are all going to our niece's wedding in Sydney. It should be lovely and we are looking forward to it. The drawback for us is that it's on Sunday afternoon and evening in the heart of Sydney, so we need to drive straight home in the middle of the night to be ready for work on Monday.
I imagine it will take all the next week to recover from that, but it will be worth it I am sure.
When I recover enough, I will try a new medication that the oncologist has suggested. It is a similar drug to the one I am on, but it has a different active ingredient.The hope is that it will alleviate the body aches. I think it's worth a try, even though the list of side effects is very long and daunting.

Cameron sold his car today. Rick and he only advertised it,on-line, the night before. This was a good outcome.

Cameron has now bought our Astra. It's a good car, so I think he'll like driving it. His old car served him well, but it was going to be too expensive to fix this time around.

These photos were taken last week when I was with Mum on the bus trip to the Burragorang Valley.

An old wooden church that still has services once a month and has a graveyard dating back to the First Fleet.


The Burragorang Valley that was flooded to make Warragamba Dam. The townships are below the water now.






Saturday, October 8, 2011

So much to catch up with!

I haven't seemed to find the time to blog since August! I suppose it's mainly because we have Stuart, Cherie and Lois living here with us. We often just sit and watch Lois as she is very cute, entertaining and extremely time-wasting! It has been wonderful having them here. Lois is now just over 5 months old and is discovering toys to bang and suck,as well as faces and hair and tablecloths to pull. She is also beginning to roll over.

Going to play group at their church in Charnwood



Lois is very alert and watching your every move !
 Stuart is doing well with his course while Cherie has been looking after Lois wonderfully well. Cherie is also really enjoying cooking in a kitchen with an oven. It has been a great help to me and we have been very much appreciating her delicious meals and all sorts of home-made cookies.
Granddad loves spending time with Lois and she loves him.

Yet another "Book Week" at school and a quick outfit to be the  "Mad Hatter"!


Solar panels are now installed after many months' delay, but are not connected as yet!

These solar  panels are so heavy. We were amazed to see the men able to carry two up to the roof at a time ! One at a time was a big ask!


Mum holding Lois at Emma's Kitchen Tea on October 1st..


Mum and I had fun on the Bus trip to Oakdale and surrounds on October 5. I took Dad's place, as he wasn't well enough to go.

This week marked 2 years since I was diagnosed with breast cancer ( Oct 6, 2009). It's been a long two years, but I am very glad to be alive and relatively well these days. Still dealing with side effects from the drug I need to take, but am doing pretty well overall. I am working the equivalent of three days a week at school and managing that quite well.
Richard has just finshed three months full time  on a contract with Dept Health and Ageing. He now moves to three months of part time work in the same place. He is hopeful that they'll be able to extend his contract past the end of this year.
He just flew to Melbourne this week to pick up and drive home our new car! It's less than  one year old. he is very excited!