Looks like I have some catch up to do ...... March though to November in fact and Soooo Much has
happened ....... I'll try to be brief and just go to end of August for this post ......APRIL ... We sold the house in Hervey Bay at long last! I managed to do a bit of sewing and Pete made a wonderful holder for my Cottage Garden Threads from part of the Mango Tree we had cut down and slabbed - I just love the way it came up!!
I also had to do something with all the blood grapefruit we had on the tree ...... so I had a go at making some cordial which was yummy and I continued to make more over the following months! I miss not having any of it here now. And one of Petes orchids we bought up in Townsville a few years ago finally flowered (unfortunately nothing like it was meant to be but still quite pretty).
Right at the end of April we finally got a fishing weekend at Lake Boondoooma with a few friends from the Hervey Bay fishing club. It was a great weekend and I even caught a fish!!! (obviously not a keeper lol)
MAY: My birthday month which we celebrated with Stace & John down in Brisbane
(and received an impromptu happy birthday song from the crew working).
I purchased a Garmin Watch at long last with the hope it would help me work on my health and fitness (what it ended up indicating was it confirmed the GP in that my stress levels were exceptionally high on a continual basis - but more so at work with the extreme stress the management were putting our team under together with a bully from the team who enjoyed making things much worse). This is about the time we seriously started talking about moving back down south. Pete wasn't happy in Maryborough and was finding it tough as well. Our plan was for me to take Long Service Leave in July so we could take a trip down south at the worst time of year to see if that's what we really wanted to do ...... or if we would stay ..... This is one of the crew who sang Happy Birthday!
JUNE: A weekend fishing trip to Tin Can Bay finally using our camper at long last! My little Kia pulled the camper while Petes Ute pulled the big boat! Little did I know at the time that my little Kia would be pulling this camper all the way down to Corowa a few months later!! How things change
And I had my first go at making granola ......
But mostly June was arriving home from work stressed to the max and sitting in the back yard with the fire going and having a drink with hubby to numb down the ordeals of the day!!
We took a day trip up near Toowoomba to pick up a fire cooking camp thingy which we ordered from a fella we meant at Lake Boondooma back in April. He had some interesting things in his shed ......
JULY: Car trip down to NE Victoria and the border region! Naturally that got me in the mood for organizing some knitting and crochet to do while travelling and away. It took some organizing as we had to get permits Green Zone to Green Zone and ensure we stayed right on the Qld border overnight before heading off the following day to drive right through NSW enabling us to enter Victoria without any issues! We had initially thought we would be gone for 3-4 wks so Cliffy came with us. He had a ball travelling in the ute with us and I'm so glad we took him with us ..... as it turned out it was his last holiday.
We had a bit of flooding across the road on the way down ... and stayed with our friends on their farm - enjoying helping with some sheep work.......... Cliffy enjoyed walking around the farm yard checking things out lol .......... and we spent time looking around for land or a house to buy ......... and yep, we found a house in Corowa just on the NSW side
We found out our offer was accepted and 15mins later I found out I was successful in getting a job in the area as well ........... only a couple of hours later whilst Pete was catching up with mates, we discovered that Vic was going into lock down that night and Qld would be shutting the borders ........ luckily friends from over the Murray River in NSW phoned us to go and stay with them so we would be able to leave Vic and get back into Qld before the borders were firmly closed the next night!!! As it turns out - without having been able to do that we would not have been able to get to our daughters wedding in September!!!
So we headed back home to Maryborough in a massive rush and a whirlwind to spend the rest of my holidays sorting out the house for a massive interstate move ....... we took opportunity to enjoy sitting out the back of it enjoying all the work we had done with the deck, steps, gardens and carports!! It's a shame it didn't work out so well.
So below is the front of the old house and the front of the new house
AUGUST: We were packing, sorting, spending afternoons in front of the fire pit .... Cliffy enjoyed our afternoons and liked to be included ...... he seemed to really feel the cold this winter and enjoyed being as close to the fire as possible ..... I even found him using Petes shirt to snuggle up in one day and hide from some of the other birds he didn't like. He was becoming more tired and spent more time sleeping in his little bed ........ He passed away on 28th August at the ripe old age of 21 years!!! He was a real Character and known by many of our friends and followers on both this blog, and FB. RIP Cliffy xo
Stacey and I received that news on the morning of her Bridal Shower (aka - Hens Party) ...... still, her bridesmaid in Qld (who was a best friend in Primary School) put on a fabulous Party for her! Her other 2 bridesmaids were in lockdown in Victoria - one in Melbourne and the other in Wangaratta - they spent the whole time on virtual with us! (As it turned out, they were still in lock down at the time of the wedding which was a real downer). Anyhow I'm going to finish with photos from the Bridal Shower and Leave Sep-Nov for the next post or 2........
Stacey's best friend from Brisbane hosted it for her - Cassie and her mum Kaye have been in our lives since the girls met at preschool and we are blessed to have such awesome friends! Unfortunately the other 2 bridesmaids and besties were in lock down in Victoria so spent the entire afternoon on a zoom meeting with all of us!!! Photos with them were done with laptop
