Happy Birthday Cheeky Monkey!!!

A very happy 84th birthday to my amazing grandmother who leads the pack in terms of spirit, determination and cheekiness. No doubt about the women in my family, or where we get it from...

Lady Clark (the ammended version)

Nan, Lin and Marg, dropping in for a latte in Manly. We went in December - one of Nan's longest drives since her stroke - not that we let her at the wheel! My first time driving the wheelchair, which i thought I was doing fairly successfully until Lin came racing up to help me get across the road (which admittedly was very busy). She clearly thought I wasn't going to make it across, so raced up to help heft from behind, thinking a bit of extra push would mean i was more likely to miss the car coming up towards us. I don't think it was in her plan to step on my thong and thereby make me lose my shoe in the middle of the road and nearly land on my face on the wheelchair... or was it???

(Ammendment requested by my [now hidden] auntie, whose sleeve I've left in as evidence that she was there that day too. Don't say I'm not responsive to clients!)

The Conolly Five 

My gorgeous sisters 

Return to Paradise... well, to Moresby anyway

Second day back at school, and it's been bucketing down all afternoon. There's something about heavy rain that makes you think that everything will just automatically stop, an instantaneous expectation of yay, we get to pack up and head home to snuggle up on the bed with a good book... Unfortunately it doesn't really happen that way in the real world, and the rain started hitting just at the moment when I had to leave my book, wash up my lunchplate, and flip flop back down to school. Registration day today, where we teachers had hour-about rotations of collecting and recording deposit slips from parents and students as they came to show they'd paid their school fees and so could enrol in class, starting Monday. It was a good chance to say hi to the kids again, and it was nice to get a lot of smiles from girls from last year. And it was better than sitting in staff meetings all day. But it's still not home, and I'm really missing that at the moment. Six and a half weeks is a long time to be back in Sydney - long enough to start calling it home and back here 'Moresby' again...

Give me a week or two and I'll be re-aquainted with Bomana, but I don't know how I'll settle back into that foam mattress after the luxury of a proper bed and sheets for over a month!

More soon...

Sam and Doug

Newly-weds

Renee and Jed's wedding

Me and the Tregear mob at the wedding

Renee's wedding, the start of my time in Sydney. This is her, about to be walked down the aisle by her brother