Ollie is 18

It's official, this incredibly smart, talented and sweet young man has achieved the milestone age of eighteen. Happy Birthday dear Ollie - and welcome to adulthood, with all its new freedoms and responsibilities!

Claire organised a wonderful birthday celebration last night for Ollie and the fam, and all Ollie's fave male friends - at Walsh's Hotel in Queanbo - all according to Ollie's wishes. It was such a happy night!

A highlight of the night was the speech delivered by Ollie's best friend Tom - a very special tribute to all Ollie's (much loved) ideosynchrosities, and his ability to mount a good (and dogged) argument and, above all, his kindness and strength as a friend. It was a wonderful speech - and so Ollie!

These young men are all so sweet. Things wrapped up relatively early and they all went home sober and safe (and well fed) - not always an 18th birthday celebration outcome these days!

I didn't get photos of everyone last night - but these two of Claire and Jody, and Joshy and Ella, are gems!

The two pics below are from Ella and Abi's recent "pupil free day". We took them to their choice of "shopping till you're dropping" places (horseriding stuff for Abi and Op Shopping for Ella) and lunch after at Verity Lane Market in Civic - a very good day was had by all of us!

And lastly, I think Spring is coming - although you can't tell that yet by how wet and cold it is every day we wake up! These were a gift from our neighbour - aah Spring!

 

Ella is a Champ!

We saw Ella compete in the annual ACT Gymnastics Comp at the weekend - the first time we've seen her perform in a comp in nearly three years (thank you Covid!).

Despite all the disruptions Ella has sustained her passion for Gymnastics throughout the pandemic/lockdown years, working hard and overcoming every challenge that presented itself. She combined hours and hours of training each week with a significant coaching commitment too - working with younger age kids. 

Ella competed at Level 9 at this comp. Her first event was the individual floor routine - which she nailed! Gaining a #1 Rank and a high score of 12.266. This picture does not in any way convey the dynamism (danger) and energy of her amazing routine.

Next event was the vault - which is always a strong event for Ella - and, another #1 Rank and a high score.

Then it was the bars .....

Another beautiful routine - this time #2 Rank and another high score ....

Last event was the beam - very scary to watch but Ella's routine was very measured and controlled - this time #3 Rank and a very good score.

Ella ended up with two gold medals, one silver and a bronze but the outright gold medal winner of the Level 9 competition overall - the best in the ACT!

Her South Canberra Gym club team are very close, very supportive of each other, and they seem to have a lot of fun together in amongst the intense discipline required by this sport.

And their two coaches are so supportive and encouraging .......

.. and full of fun .....

We are so proud of this medal winning girl - not because of the medals, but because of all the hard work and the courage she has shown in overcoming all the challenges that achieving at this level involves. Go Ella girl!

Abi found Gym Comp interesting at times - especially when Ella was competing (and winning!). She had a great horsey game that kept her diverted at other times.

Doing Winter

And this man is back! Four weeks after his first Covid symptoms appeared Rob made it up our local Mt Pleasant on the weekend - a bit out of breath but not too bad considering it was a mountain after all. Maybe he's not ready for Mt Ainslie yet - but its coming!

We're in the depths of winter here in Canberra - and a cold wet winter at that. We've had lots of days that start out looking like this from our front windows ....

We walked up to our fave Sonoma Bakery on a recent -40C morning, where we sat outside (very Covid safe) and enjoyed a coffee and a morning bun, a regular treat for us, but even more appreciated this freezing morning!

Another cold wet day we walked into Civic, just in time for the street food outlets at Verity Lane Markets to open. We couldn't believe it's taken us this long to discover Ramen Daddy - perfect winter grey day food...
 

But Canberra does a beautiful winter day, like no other city does (IMHO). Those clear blue skies go on forever and the light has such clarity (and warmth!). Our regular lake walks are just a delight on days like this.....

We had a brief but welcome visit from our friends David and Ro from Cairns last week. I took this pic of Ro walking into our Parliament House on Wednesday. She had a meeting with our new Minister for the Environment and Water Tanya Plibersek to talk about the last State of the Environment Report that Ro had had a hand in writing. David and Ro were here straight from the Tropics - but Canberra did us proud for the two days they were here. It was winter perfection.

We enjoyed hearing a full report of Ro's meeting with the Minister - a decade has been wasted but maybe as a country we are going to start on a better track from now on!

 

COVID strikes again

Yes its been Rob's turn this week - three days of scratchy throat and developing cold symptoms (and three negative RATS) developed into full blown flu like symptoms and this positive RAT test last Tuesday morning. One positive PCR test later and we were in full iso mode for the week.

Rob has been quite ill (like the worst flu he's ever experienced he says!), but he's been on the anti virals since last Thursday and is recovering fast now, thank goodness.

We had a four day break in Melbourne booked for last week too so it took most of a day to unbook and unpick all the hotel, galley, restaurant and theatre bookings we’d carefully made, to say nothing of the old friends we’d made plans to catch up with after a long absence. And we thought we’d kicked our border crossing bad karma after successfully making it to Cairns  last month!

We’ve also been planning a Margaret River WA trip for August. It’s making me nervous already! What will go wrong this time?

But we're lucky we live in a roomy apartment, sunny and warm, with lots of windows we can open to disperse the virus and plenty of Internet, streaming services and devices to keep us entertained. Around my patient care duties I have gone back to working on my latest photo book in the long hours I have available ("Two Visits to India in 2013 and 2018"). We've just had delivered my book on Dad's family story - a project that has taken almost a year involving a huge photo/slide scanning effort and family history research. I'm pleased with the result and there will be a copy for each of Stan's grandchildren, who never got to know him very well, regrettably.

That's seven photobooks I've made since 2020 now - at least one silver lining of Covid lockdowns etc!  

And thank goodness for FaceTime too - an hour with these lovelies works magic in keeping the spirits up in Covid iso!

 

We did it

It's difficult these days to get all the Canberra family members together in the one place at the one time - but last night we did it, here at Chez#13!

Not only was it Claire's birthday, but it was the start of the school holidays, the mid-point of the year and one night when we were all in town at the same time and able to celebrate our good fortune together!

Abi was the photographer last night (using my trusty X20) and she captured a few cracker shots of the fun we had.

The mood was very mellow, no doubt enhanced by a few glasses of Majella and Ollie and Angus's musical accompaniment. They are both so talented!

The young ones (and Joshy) were all quite chilled last night, but they did enjoy a few Jenga tournaments between courses.

I did manage to get one shot of our photographer .........

And Ella finished off the evening with a few of her Gym coaching stories (among others) for our entertainment ...

We didn't get photos of everyone this evening but the memory of a such a lovely chilled happy evening together will be the thing that lasts. Hope we don't have to wait as long until the next one!