WEDDINGS AND FUNERALS

Isn't it a shame that, in these busy times, we often only manage to see our uncles and aunts and cousins at weddings and funerals ?

Such was the case for me today when I attended the funeral of my uncle, one of my mother's seven brothers.

Yes, she had seven brothers.....

And six sisters !

My mother was number four in a family of fourteen children so my childhood was full of cousins and aunts and uncles. 

Mum might not have been the eldest in the family but she was the glue that kept them all together. There were always family BBQs, picnics and celebrations and family visiting from far and wide.

But families grow up, begin careers, marry and move away and gradually the contact between the cousins dwindles as they have growing families of their own. 

These days it is the funerals that bring us together and despite the sadness of losing the older members of the family it is a great joy to reconnect with those cousins that manage to make it to the funerals. Nowadays we are managing to reconnect with the help of email, 

and Facebook lets us share in the daily events of their family lives wherever they are I this great big world.

RIP Uncle Noel.

BACK !

We've been home from our lovely holiday for a week now and life is a bit "ho hum".
A 30+ hour journey takes a bit of getting over and flying backwards in time
- from west to east - doesn't help either !!
At first you sleep like a log purely through tiredness
then you begin to wake up in the middle of the night  - or in my case at 4:00 am - and can't get back to sleep so the next night you are more tired again.
 this goes on for a couple of days if you are lucky and a couple of weeks if you're not !

Just as I was beginning to get through this process a new torture began
and THIS is what was responsible !

 

Who knew that such a small gadget could cause such torture ?

Yes, it's a smoke alarm !
We have three of them installed in our house.....
and at 3:00am on three consecutive mornings their batteries began to run low !

One by one,

one morning after another,

the darn things began to emit a high pitched bleep like a cricket !

Our ceilings are higher than normal, so even on a chair I can't reach the damn things.
I had to wait till Tony finally stumbled out in the dark to wrench the battery out of the offending alarm and silence it !

So...
the suitcases are all unpacked and put away,
the clothes have all been washed, ironed and put away,
and routines are slowly being resumed.

Tony is busy making a photo book of our holiday
and I'm researching where to go next year !
All good !

Cheers!