D.I.D....

Ta @Determined.
She's home again. We picked her up yesterday, carefully kept masks on and windows down enough to keep fresh air circulating in the car. So far, she's OK, hope it continues that way.

Life's further complicated by my Mum being in hospital at the moment too, and being in a border town, the hospital is actually on the other side... so we're hoping and praying she'll be OK. At the moment, I'm not confident we'd get a permit to visit her.

@Smc that is tough not being able to visit 🙏

Sort of mixed feelings @Determined. Being a 400km trip, it can be a hard call as to whether we're needed when one of them is hospitalised.

One time when my Dad went into hospital, my sister arranged days off from work, we arranged someone to look after our animals and absented our Younger Daughter from school, all at short notice.

We were about 100kms along the road when we got a phonecall saying he'd improved, so he'd been sent back to the aged care home. By that point, it wasn't worth turning back, so we went up there anyway.

So on one hand, it would be good to be on hand if things went downhill with Mum. On the other hand, it sort of takes the uncertainty out of should we/shouldn't we go.

@Smc

Thinking of you and family and trust all is as well as it can be 🙏

Understanding that 'well' is a relative term :face_with_rolling_eyes:

@Determined, all going relatively OK at the moment. No big issues with parents or Older Daughter.

But I've been rather absent from the forum for the past week because we've been helping my sister move house. After years of chasing the "moving goalposts" of the property market, she had an offer on a very suitable house accepted. But the week she was meant to be moving, someone she works with came in while "symptomatic"... and later tested positive for COVID. So the moving week had to be dalayed while she self isolated. Only for one week because she'd had both shots, and thankfully her tests came back all clear.

So... we were not only moving a houseful from one place to another, we were also moving a portable garden... Her new place is on a large town block, 2000 sq.m.. Not quite the small acreage she was initially hoping for, but big enough that she can plant out the irises, trees and native plants etc. that she's been growing in pots for years (while the goalposts kept moving). Her yard is going to be a private botanical garden... the neighbours and the local wildlife are going to love her. 🙂

Hubby and I feel like we've done a marathon multi-day hike with weight training built in. Hubby's strained some muscles, so he's got medical advice on rest and gentle exercise plus some pain relief for the meantime. I'm just a bit generally achy, but OK. Thinking I need to work out how to schedule in some ongoing exercise to retain the bit of extra fitness I've probably built up over the past week. My sister is recovering from a hamstring injury, so she was able to do most of the packing, but very little of the moving, which was frustrating for her.

Side benefit of the week's work is that our Younger Daughter helped out for a lot of it, particularly with the heavy lifting jobs, and working together with her seems to have broken down some of the teenage angst barriers that have been in the way lately... another thing we're hoping we can continue to build on. I've "missed" her. Very happy to see her "coming back". 🙂

Merry Christmas @Smc 🥰❤🎄🎁

Thinking of you and your family xxx

@Determined , @Faith-and-Hope

Happy Christmas to you and yours too, @Shaz51. 🙂

We had the pleasure of enjoying Christmas in my sister's house this year- the first time for a long while that we haven't had it at our place. We all helped out, but it was nice not being the main organiser for once.

I think it would have been beyond us this year anyway. A couple of weeks ago, we had a trip up to visit my parents and clear their yard a bit so the place looks less deserted and less like a fire trap. Then last week was an overnight trip down to the "big city" to see Hubby's parents, catch up with an end of year breakup evening, and we stayed overnight with our Younger Son, and got some time with him as a bonus.

So we haven't had much time at home for Christmas prep. (And that's also why I haven't been on the forum much lately!) I did get cake and pud made, and White Christmas... and the decorations went up while Younger Son and his girlfriend were visiting Christmas Eve afternoon... and the small selection of pressies got wrapped Christmas Morning after church/before lunch.

Older Daughter is going reasonably OK at the moment. All sorts of odd "how do we take/handle that" moments, but nothing serious. Long may that continue.

Checking in @Smc

Trust things continue to be steady as they can be.

Hi @Determined. Still going along much the same. We had a big assessment appointment two days ago, the "early years"/parental observations part of it. We were going to do it face to face, but the car is in for repairs to a leaky radiator, so we did it by phone instead. Turns out it was good that we did, because it went about 3/4 hour overtime. We had considered using public transport to go to it, but the last train home leaves before 6pm, and we would have missed it by a long shot.

Not sure what's going to come out of it. The "odd" behaviours we were remembering didn't seem to quite line up with the question fields. I commented as we were finishing up "Sooo.... complex?" and the psychologist agreed. And we've remembered a few things since that I'm planning on putting into an "addendum" email to her.

Oh, and we were in the heavy weather region of the state over the past few days too. We're OK, but some nearby towns took a battering. The creek behind us came up far enough that the town was somewhat on flood watch, with CFA observing from bridges and the town's FB page very busy with nervous people. I was edgy myself, but trying to do the sensible thing of observing and interpreting rather than catastrophising. As it turned out, the creek leveled out below the point where it would flood houses. It reached that point about 10:30-11-ish at night, so we were able to go to bed confident enough that we wouldn't wake up to soggy floors.