The 1 January walk/ride/debacle

To see the eight photos from this little walk/ride/debacle, click on:

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=133833&id=750294732&l=7fa6786c88

It seemed such a good idea at the time. It was New Year's Day, I'd just read a Facebook post from my favourite Sante Fe (USA) marathon runner and he'd been out for a run....in the snow. It was a beautiful day so I suggested we go for a walk, or ride for the smaller members of the family. All who know me that I'm totally allergic to exercise so this was behaviour way out of my ordinary.

So sun screen and hats on, bikes in the car, we drove down to our local bike path and off we set. Ethan's enthusiasm lasted about 2 minutes. He decided he wasn't going anywhere. Hmmmm. Georgia was as keen as mustard to keep riding. I wanted to walk. So Luke suggested he take Ethan back to the car and drive to the end of the bike path and meet us there. Brilliant!

BUT, we were sharing one car key as I had 'misplaced' my car key. And I had Luke's key on a lanyard around my neck. And I found the key still around my neck when Georgia and I made it to the end of the bike path 45 minutes later. We were HOT, we didn't have water (it was with the backpack I'd left with Luke) or a mobile phone and as I had the car key, no one was coming to rescue us. OH NO!!!!!

After all but dragging Georgia along the bike path to get to our designated pick up point, I now had to drag her back again. Not good. So I carried her bike, she yelled, screamed, refused to walk and needless to say, it was more than a bit stressful. Thirty (30), yes count them, THIRTY minutes into our return walk, we were staggering along about 500 metres from our destination and Luke appeared in our second car. What a marvellous sight.

Luke had dragged Ethan back to our car, realised I had the key, put Ethan's little Audi into our car in the carpark, carried Ethan home, used his house keys to get in here and get our second car and had set off to find us. He's driven out to the end of the bike path so he'd been backwards and forwards along the route a few times trying to find us. Eventually he stopped a cyclist and asked if he'd seen us (a screaming woman, a bike and a screaming child - yep, just down there mate!) so knew which street parallel to the bike path to look in.

The result? It will be a LONG time before I attempt to exercise with children in tow again.

Mum and Dad's 45th wedding anniversary

Aunty Margaret (Mum's sister) and Mum

My sister Margaret and our uncle, Frank.

Mum, Dad and Margaret.....and the dessert waffles!

Margaret and Dad - most memorable for being a GREAT photo of Dad who is not usually a fan of the camera. Must have been the pre-photo consumption of two bottles of wine and a bottle of bubbly that we all enjoyed?

Margaret and Margaret - my Aunt and my sister

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Today is my parents 45th wedding anniversary. Wow oh wow. And they still even talk to each other :)

We celebrated today over lunch at a lovely waterfront seafood restaurant. My parents, my sister, my aunt and uncle and Luke and me. No children! Very enjoyable and a lovely way to celebrate a lifetime of togetherness for the greatest parents I could have been Blessed with. Well done Mum and Dad. May you be Blessed with many more years of marriage, good health and happiness!

M x

The kitchen bench is clear!

To the uninitiated, these are pics of a kitchen. And yes, they are of our kitchen. BUT what is noteworthy about these pics is it shows what TWO hours, yes count them - TWO hours, of tidying up can do. The kitchen bench is CLEAR - aka completely devoid of clutter - a RARE happening in our home.

It is ready and waiting for the arrival of my Mum and her sister in the morning. Luke has asked my aunt over to give him a pavlova cooking lesson so Mum is also coming along to learn from the Meringue Master.

And me tomorrow? Voluntary go into a kitchen? Even though three of my favourite people will all be in there and at once? Not likely! I have a culinary disability (self-diagnosed but well deserved I think after nearly burning down the kitchen thanks to a small fire caused by a toaster and the appliance hutch plastic roller door in 2003) so I avoid the kitchen at all costs. Unless it is to unpack takeaway :)

There's only ONE Aunty Regan

Georgia is Blessed to have two incredibly amazing Godmothers (and Godfathers too for that matter!). Luckily for us, Aunty Maria is here in Brisbane. Unluckily for us but luckily for her, Aunty Regan lives in London, England......like on the other side of the planet :(


Each year or two, Aunty Regan trips across the globe and comes home for Christmas. Whilst here, she spends as much time as she can with her family as well as trying to fit in visits to friends, appointments of all kinds and descriptions and far too many things for her visit to be classed as a 'holiday'. Seems more like a marathon to me and how she does it, let alone with a smile on her face, I'll never understand.


Time with Aunty Regan is very precious. So to be able to spend an hour and half with her today was......well words just fail me and that doesn't happen often.....marvellous, wonderful, amazing, precious, special.


Waving her goodbye as she drives off is always so very hard for me. I just sob big, big tears like a little kid. I know, if I'm lucky she'll be home for Christmas 2010. And if not, then it'll be Christmas 2011 before we see her again. And that is such a painfully long time between being able to hug my precious bridesmaid and tell her how much she's loved and missed.


But we are so grateful for the time we were able to spend with her today, we are so grateful that it is 'only' 12-13 months since we hugged her last and we look forward to the next time we can hug her in person......whenever that may be.

It happens rarely - 1997, 2003 and today

There are some things that don't happen often in my life. Like buying cars.

I bought my Toyota Corolla in 1997 so it is now 13 years old, Luke and I bought our Nissan X-Trail in 2003 when Princess G arrived into our family and today we did it again - we bought a car to replace the Corolla. Pics are above. A new Ford Focus Zetec. Silver (as if that wasn't obvious in the pics!), all the safety features possible (very important on my shopping list), and Luke was happy as he wanted electric windows and to be able to connect his iPod....and tick to both of those.

What makes this purchase rather remarkable for us, other than the fact two Accountants have let $ out of their wallets and spent money, is the fact we've been contemplating this purchase for nearly 3 years. And I know that because I just found photos taken at in early 2007 of a Focus Luke brought home from a car dealer at lunch time one day. We have a rather steep driveaway so we had to see if the car would go down it....and yes it did....unlike the Mazda 3 which wouldn't.

So after nearly 3 years of deliberating and tooing and froing and worrying (on my part) and putting it on the back burner repeatedly (on Luke's part), I got up this morning and decided enough was enough and it was 'Buy A Car Day'.

By 7am I'd found the car on a car sales website, by 8am we'd heard from the dealer it was available, we were driving it by 10am, we brought it home for a test drive to go up and down the driveway and in and out of the very snug fitting garage. And then we pondered and thought and looked on some more websites and compared more cars and decided yes, this was it. So back to the dealer, did the obligatory haggling and by 2pm we were home after signing papers. We pick it up in the last week of January.

Here's to Luke and the Ford have many years of safe, incident free and comfortable commuting between here and work (into the City - a whole 6km or about 4 miles but always done in crazy, horrid peak hour traffic) for the next decade or so.

Based on the car buying interval precendent so far (six years between one and two and seven years between three and four), it should be 2018 before I have to buy a car again. One can only hope!

The Invisible Woman

A dear friend in the USA emailed me this video. It is too big for me to email on so I've found the link on YouTube.

Wow it spoke to me! If you have a few moments, take time to watch it:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9YU0aNAHXP0

And to all of those Invisible Women and Men out there, just keep on building.

It's a DRY day

As the parent of the child with special needs, you learn to rejoice in every teeny, tiny little bit of progress. When milestones are ticked off by Miss G, the joy we feel and the sense of achievement are absolutely enormous. I've often said about G's milestones, and I'll say it again as it is SO appropriate, but on days like today, I can't imagine winning the lottery would be more exciting.

The physical and emotional energy exhaustion, the constant investment of time and the at times all but crippling cost of raising a child with special needs isn't anything near easy. BUT, on days like today, every little bit of blood, sweat, tears (and there have and always will be lots of tears) invested is SO worth it.

And why the celebration today? Georgia has had a DRY day. Yes, Georgia and DRY in the same sentence! It's taken 6-1/2 years, reward charts and stickers galore, games, a toilet training course to see if there was something easy I had missed (and alas, no there wasn't) and so much more but today, SHE DID IT. Not ONE wet Pull-Up. She even took herself to the toilet at a friends home tonight, undressed herself, redressed herself (albeit with shorts on backwards but who cares?) and then came to tell us what she'd done. Talk about a RED LETTER DAY.

As with everything in the world of G, we know there will be setbacks, we know that this is just a first and tomorrow might be quite the opposite. But now we know SHE CAN DO IT. And having done it once, hopefully she can do it again and again and again.

Luke and I reflected tonight on our good luck. How lucky are we that G was given by God to us to be our daughter? How lucky are we to be Blessed with the absolute joy of seeing her achieve milestones? How lucky are we to know how hard fought these milestones are and to share in the ecstasy of achievement with her. We decided that although parents of 'normal' kids may have a simpler life than ours, they don't get the highs we do on days like today. And we wouldn't swap our life for anything else.

Well done Miss G. We are so extraordinarily and incredibly proud of you.

Happy New Year.....with a Christmas picture

As most of what happens in our home has no rhyme or reason or is completely back to front on what most would see a logical, I thought it therefore probably appropriate to start 2010 with a 2009 Christmas pic. How back to front is that?

Knowing that Christmas pics are a kind of torture for parents and children alike, we debated whether we put us, G, E and poor Santa through the trauma of trying to get a pic. We eventually decided that why not, we've done it before so let's do it again. Above it the result.

Georgia, wearing her JOLLY Christmas tree shirt and skirt was great. She sat, she rather reservedly talked to Santa. And then there was the other child. Master E the Three. Oh my! The only way we could get him onto Santa's knee was to grab a Thomas the Tank Engine gift set off a nearby shelf in the toy section and get him to hold it. Throughout the fuss, dear Santa sat and told us it was all in a day of work for him. God Bless Santa....I think he deserved a medal.

So Master E the Three looks good, Santa scrubbed up well and G in her JOLLY shirt doesn't look overly JOLLY. Rather downright glum I would have said. But hey, it is a pic and the moment is therefore preserved for immortality! And on that note, HAPPY NEW YEAR :)