For the second month in a row, when this post is published I’ll be heading away for a long weekend. This time I’m off to Pop and Pour, an annual food and wine festival. We have been going for the last few years with our friends from running. There will be a lot of eating, drinking, dancing and general silliness.

• A long weekend at my parent’s place. BONUS: I thought it was just going to be us and my girls but it turned out to also be my sister, brother and wife and four of the neices/nephews. My other sister and her husband also came down for the day on Saturday. The was a lot of good food and lots of sitting round chatting. I love those kinds of weekends.
• I caught a cold but, it was during my recovery week, so I didn’t have to miss too much running.
• When it was warm enough, I’ve been eating breakfast outside in the new sitting area we’ve set up.
• Picking and eating the broad beans out of the garden. They are a bit of a pain to prepare, but I only have them a couple of times a year when they are in season.
• Going out for lunch to Mya Tiger to celebrate E and K’s birthdays. They are only a month apart and E is hard to pin down for a meal because he has been touring. The food was great as usual.

• Seeing a bit more of Ethan than expected (although not for a great reason—he was injured at work and has been put on light duties), but it has been good to see him adulting while he has been home. He had to make appointments to deal with his injury, sort out his dental appointments and navigate getting his own insurance because he aged out of ours and has done a good job. It also looks like he has his suit for his wedding. Edited to add: He got the results of his MRI yesterday, and he has a small fracture in his femur just behind his knee cap. Not great, but at least he has a timeline for returning to full work, plus he has been cleared by the doctor to tour as long as he doesn’t lift anything over 7kg until after the 18th December.
• Painlessly finding a new dress to wear away this weekend, as well as shoes to wear to the wedding.
• A spontaneous visit to the NGV.
• We couldn’t find any 2000-piece puzzles at the op shops so we got to work on some 1500- and 1000-piece puzzles. We cranked them out so quickly.

• NaBloPoMo – its been a bit of a time suck, but I’ve kept it manageable by posting lots of lists and shorter posts. It’s been lovely visiting some new blogs as well.
• Celebrating a friend’s birthday with steak night at the pub.
• Catching up with our friend and running group coach at brunch on Saturdays. He’s been away for a while, firstly at the World Para Championships and then having a holiday with his family.
• Getting another solid three-week block of training in. I don’t know whether I’m progressing—but I hope so. I may have a chance to test that out at the Echuca Parkrun this weekend.
• Making it to this month’s prayer night at church, and catching up with my friend for a one-on-one catch-up and prayer session.
• Successfully, organising the worship team for one of our Sunday services. Picking the songs, providing the chord charts and deciding how we’re going to play the songs. It’s crazy that it was me doing this, but it worked out OK.
• Averaging 11 families at our mainly music group this month. Some families have toddlers and babies so that works out to around 16 littlies. The families are mixing well and forming good connections. I’m so happy that we are able to provide a place for carers (mums, dads and grandparents) to mix with other young families and bond with their little ones. It can be lonely being a parent to young children sometimes.
• We’ve been enjoying watching Down Cemetery Road.
• Last month I posted about my peeve with the way people talk about ChatGPT. I really enjoyed the sensible talk on this by Cal Newport in two recent podcasts episodes: The Case Against Superintelligence and Chat GPT is Not Alive!. He includes a really clear explanation of what’s happening in these tools.
• I made it to prayer night this month and met with my friend for a catch up and prayer session which we hadn’t done for months because I was away then she was away.
• We booked our major holidays for next year. In March, for our anniversary, we go to Kangaroo Island for three nights, with an overnight in Adelaide on the way. In September, we are going to Germany. G will do the Berlin Marathon and visit clients and, we will do some travel, probably the Rhine Gorge and Bavaria. I will have about a week of solo travel on that trip while G is visiting clients.

I hope your month has been full of good things too!