Fingers crossed, I think the migraines have settled down, and I’m back rounding up a few good things from my week …

Family Dinner to Celebrate Graduation

S had her university graduation ceremony last Thursday and so Friday night, we managed to get her and both her siblings together for a celebration dinner. She chose Elwood Bathers, because of the sunset over the water, forgetting that the sun would be down before we arrived. Still, it was good food and we had a good time.

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London Bridge Puzzle Finished

This 3000-piece puzzle was tricky. My eldest usually does the sky and completes it before her sister, and I have finished the rest. This time we all ended up working on the sky together to finish it. The sky, the water and even the buildings were all pretty difficult. When we were finished we were missing one piece. I later found it at the bottom of the fruit bowl when I was cleaning up to come away this weekend.

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Guest Posting

at Elisabeth’s blog. She asks such good questions that really made me stop and think and got me writing about some different topics than I usually get into here. I might need to branch out a bit here?

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Monday Family Dinner +

E’s girlfriend wanted us to have dinner with her parents and grandparents before the grandparents left to travel back home to South Africa. Since her place only has a small table, G suggested we host. They bought the food, and we just provided the table and a green salad. We made full use of our ten-seat dining table.

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National Volunteer Week

This week was National Volunteer Week. Many of the ladies at church got together and made lavender sachets for the Op Shop volunteers. I dropped into the Op Shop on Monday morning to hand them out with a little thank you note to the volunteers working then. Shout out also to my amazing mainly music team member who dropped me down there after mainly music, waited while I gave them out and then dropped me back home. She is a real inspiration, 90 years old, volunteers at the Op Shop, mainly music, nursing home and and in many other ways. She’s a retired English teacher and is still as sharp as a tack and physically fit.

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G

My husband has really stepped up with the grocery shopping, driving me around (I can drive myself; it’s just a bit of a pain to take the boot on and off all the time) and suggesting that I take a nap in the afternoons to recover from, or stave off a migraine.

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Food in Jars

When replanting the veggie gardens, I had to pull out the old tomato bushes covered in unripe cherry tomatoes. Some of them had since ripened and I ate them for dinner on Wednesday night. I googled what to do with the hard green ones and found this recipe for Green Cherry Tomato Lemongrass Pickles. There is just something so satisfying about food in jars.

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Noosa

After a detour on our flight up due to a sick member of the flight crew—we had to land in Brisbane, they off-loaded the crew member and re-fuelled, and then we took off again for the thirty-minute hop to Sunshine Coast—my sister-in-law and I made it up to Noosa where G and BIL had been visiting clients and doing some strategic planning. We are here now for four nights at the Noosa Marathon Festival. I am obviously confined to the sidelines and also can’t enjoy my usual Noosa National Park Loop walking or swimming in the surf, but I might swim in the pool, and I will eat lots of yummy food.

Bonus Good Things

• I booked a hotel for my week in Paris before we walk the Camino.
• I love this Sheet Pan Chicken Tikka. We had it Tuesday night with some of the green salad leftover from Monday.
• I agree with a lot of this post. “The Walking Cure: when an injury forced me to slow down, I learned that we can only amble our way to wisdom”. So, my injury stops me not just running, but also ambling any distance, but, as a committed runner and walker, I thought this reflection about stepping off the treadmill was insightful. A little teaser: “GPS doesn’t do aimless wandering since it’s another instance of the “efficiency is everything” school. But maybe that ramble along a path you’ve never noticed before is an important way that we come to an embodied love of place.”
• Flyscreens. When we go away and stay in places with no flyscreens on the windows, I’m always so thankful that we insisted on having flyscreens put in the windows of our apartment at home. I just do not sleep well without the window open.
• The girls are looking after Riley while we are away. They love having him and we don’t have to send him to a kennel.