A year in the life…day 366: the end

So, New Year’s Eve. A year that began in Honolulu and ended in Adelaide and went a number of places in between. Thank you for sharing the year with me (though I clearly need to go back and audit the entries to get the days right). It has been a big year – I got my own Branch and got to manage it and start some processes of change; I went from barely being able to stand up on skates to having done scrimmage at derby; my youngest started school and my oldest started to show signs of becoming a teenager eventually. I got to travel to Texas, to Delhi, to London. But mostly it was a year of ordinary happiness and frustration, of the joys of family and friends and small daily achievements. Thank you for paying attention – in 2013 I won’t have an entry for every day, but I will try to every week!

A year in the life…day 356: grandchildren

Here are Nana and Poppa and all their grandchildren. Happy to be together.

A year in the life…day 355: wineries

After a few wineries in the morning we headed to Skillogalee for lunch. Lovely to sit under the olive tree and eat beautiful food and drink lovely wine.

A year in the life…day 354: love at O’Learys

James and I left the boys behind and headed to Clare for the weekend. Our first winery was O’Learys where they were setting up for a wedding. Can understand the choice of location given the beautiful view.

A year in the life…day 352: T20

Family trip to the T20 cricket, taking advantage of my family’s member status. The boys made extensive use of the face painting services and the give away merchandise-I think we ended up with eight sweat bands. The game was rather fun and we all had a fun time and unusual for us to be part if a multi-generational family outing.

A year in the life…day 351: Boxing Day

Christmas Day ended up rather late, so in addition to all if us, my brother, his partner and our aunt all ended up staying over. So everyone was lined up for the start of play in the Boxing Day test. Except for Sam, who was still asleep.

A year in the life…day 350: Christmas!

This year a few family traditions changed as we had Christmas lunch at Lucy my sister’s house rather than at my parents house. But somethings fortunately stay the same  – Mum made the delicious summer pudding for lunch.

A year in the life…day 248: road trip

Today was spent on the car travelling from Canberra to Adelaide. The DVDs and various electronic devices did the usual trick and they boys were very well-behaved. Which was good because we had various dramas, particularly when we discovered that one of the back tyres had a slow leak causing a few wobbles when overtaking at high speed. But we got there safely and sanely in the end.

A year in the life…day 346: last day of work

While it was most pleasing that this was my last day of work for the year, it was dismaying to get to 2.30 and find I still had this much work left in my in-tray But I managed to power through it and get out of the office without feeling like I had left much undone.

A year in the life…day 345: Jude and a chook

Helen and Sean offered us dinner while we were homeless, and even though we were home and further testing had assured us the house and garden were thankfully asbestos-free, we were so exhausted thstbus we were enormously grateful to still accept the invitation. Also lovely to see friends of course. As usual the boys loved seeing the chooks, and even learnt to pick them up this time.