An up and down week

We knew this was going to be a hard week: our darling Maxie died 12 months ago on the 25th November, Rob's dear old Mum died a year ago too (on the 23rd November), and Rod lost his great mate Kev (the surgeon from Mildura) in the past week too. It's all been a lot in our thoughts this week (even more than usual!)

But our lives are full of ups and downs these days, and this week was no exception.

We met up with dear friends on Friday afternoon at our favourite spot on Aspen Island, for drinks and nibblies picnic style - as the sun set over our beautiful lake.

We all feel the presence of our amazing friend Irene too, especially at times like this. We lost her on 5th March this year. 

However it's special to share happy times in this beautiful place again while remembering so many happy gatherings with Irene here too.

The end of November brings final preparations for Christmas and I was pleased to get the girls' Advent boxes ready for their handover at the start of this coming week. I've been doing Advent boxes for them for quite a few years now. It used to be a novelty chocolate a day when I first started but now I try to outdo myself by finding 48 tiny gifts of every size shape and category for their Advent gifts - to give them an extra reason to look forward to the onset of the silly season!

The girls stayed over with us at the weekend. But prior to this Abi ended off the week in her usual space - at the workshop helping her Daddy work on his current collectible car project.

Josh and Jody hosted their work Christmas party on Saturday: a slap up lunch for all the workers, partners and families, then hours of fun for everyone at the new "Kingpin" venue in the Canberra Centre. Ella and Abi came home with us after this session while the grown ups partied on for a few more hours in the city. 

Abi found she had all the necessary riding skills for the motorbike game at Kingpin.

It must have seemed quite tame here with us after the excitement of the party... but Abi always looks forward to a play in our park and the chance to meet up with all the resident puppies - and other wildlife.

We even had the excitement of a fire alarm this morning which was a bit of a novelty for the girls (no fire just a bit of dust in one of the sensors caused by the strong winds today, apparently).

We ended off an up and down week with a lovely interlude tonight. Our nephew Joel and his Kay are living in London now and their Vincent (Prince Vincent) turned 2 today!

The whole of the UK is currently in very strict lockdown (a 4 week lockdown due to end next Tuesday) so there was no way PV was able to have any friends over to share his birthday celebrations - so we came instead - from all around the world, via ZOOM. It was pretty special to see PV blow out the candles on his bumblebee cake, open his presents and share the joy with family in Seoul, Geelong (and PV Joel and Kay in London).

Happy grandparents: Ros and Pete.......

 

Life is what happens ........... when you can't make other plans

Rarely a day goes by without us saying how lucky we are to live in this city, in this country - especially in this year of upheaval and anxiety. Although no one can be absolutely certain of anything over the next few months, we have made tentative plans for family get togethers in the lead up to Christmas and the young ones have even been game to make holiday bookings at (NSW) beaches.

But meanwhile, we are living our best lives here in Canberra. We're not travelling much. Our Coogee place is rented for another 12 months, longer than we wanted, but Sydney is not the best place for us to be hanging out in at the moment.

But Canberra is looking just beautiful to us this spring after all the rain. Our view from our apartment windows has never looked so densely green!

Rob and I are doing lots of walking this year - 3 or 4 times a week we do the bridge to bridge lake walk (about 6klm) and most Mondays we do the Mt Ainslie climb (usually with our friend David) as well - which is good for increasing the heart rate (843 metres and steep in parts). Our reward after the Mt Ainslie climb is breakfast at our little local coffee place - Intra. They introduced a new menu this month at intra - still a small menu but always fresh and interesting, and the best coffee in Canberra (big call!).

We are very lucky to have an active social life in the midst of the pandemic too: lots of time with our family, lunches and coffees with friends, book clubs, guitar group, gardening in our shared park, and new friendships formed as a result of moving to the C5 precinct. There are lots of occasions now where our new sourdough making skills are in demand.

Rob and I socialise with each other too - regular lunches and movies, and drives to the country in that new car of ours...........

Our National Gallery opened up (at last) last month and the amazing "Know My Name" exhibition is the first big item on the gallery calendar. It's a curated collection of the work of Australian women artists from 1900 to the present day. The 7 Sisters installation by the remarkable weavers of the APY Lands is a stand out in this great show, the start of a new approach to gender equity in the gallery collection. Our National Gallery (in walking distance for us) is a source of great joy to both of us - and it feels great that it is open again, just like it used to be. 

When we were in strict lockdown in March-April we really took note of how our apartment worked for us and where there were any improvements we could make for our enjoyment. We ended up ordering a new rug, a couple of extra stools, some new lighting and art work and a small piece of furniture for the front entry. We finished all the orders and purchases back in early July -and there are still a few things that haven't arrived yet. But our front entry shelf was finally installed last Friday.

This was Sam, outside our apartment, doing the final precision scribing of the shelf so it would fit neatly against the entry wall..

And here it is in position. A beautiful simple piece of jarrah joinery that is a good match for the lovely unit that David made for us in our living room.

We ended up doing a bush walk last Sunday instead of our usual lake walk. We started at Kambah Pool, along the Murrumbidgee Discovery Track ......

..... walking around 2.2klm until we reached the Red Rocks Gorge lookout - with its great views of the Murrumbidgee River.

There's a nice swimming hole beneath the lookout, but a bit steep to climb down to.

Peregrine falcons breed along the river at this time of the year - but the only bird life we saw down by the river today were very friendly magpies (no doubt hoping we had some food).

I'm pretty sure this was a Wahlenbergia sighting (Canberra's floral emblem-Bluebell)

At only 4.4klm return this was a shortish walk for us - but because it was 27oC at this time of the day - with most of the track unshaded, we felt a bit hot, dusty and bothered by the time we got back to the car... a great excuse to end off our Sunday with a long cold beer at our local "Pedlar" (pub) before returning home.