On Friday night I met up with old SMH mates for my first farewell drinks. It was such a mild evening I walked from work in Redfern to Pyrmont wearing a vest, jeans and flip flops - not bad considering it's only two weeks until the official start of winter. It was great to have a few wines and reminisce about lots of funny times on the paper.
On Saturday I launched into a new phase of my current project - getting rid of most of our stuff. We are endeavouring to sell the majority of our furniture before we move back to England. As well as my huge successes getting rid of stuff on ebay and through work colleagues and friends, I decided to get rid of the smaller bits by holding a garage sale. I have been gathering things in our spare room for several weeks now and on Saturday morning spent almost 2 hours bringing stuff out to the front of the house from the spare room, the attic and garden and setting it all up along the footpath in front of our house. Everything looked great but I had overlooked one small matter - advertising. Apart from the small flyers I had taped to lamp posts at either end of our street the day before (flyers Rob found the next day blowing around in the wind) I hadn't placed an ad, sent an email or told anyone from school. After meagre sales to two of my neighbours, who I'm sure only bought things out of pity, I abandoned the sale due to lack of interest. Rob and I decided to pack everything back in the attic, to advertise in the local paper and have another go next weekend. But after sleeping on this, and having what I like to refer to as 'a tantrum' upon realising we have so much on every weekend between now and when we leave, I've decided to give it all to the Salvos and to Flo's childcare centre instead.
I spent the afternoon prepping lamb shank pie for our dinner party that night. Martin and Drew came over alongwith Cait and Pete, who came up from the Shire with their kids Max and Eve and so they stayed the night. We packed the kids off to bed by 7.30pm and had a great night catching up on fun we had together in the UK years ago. On Sunday a little worse for wear we took over two tables at Revolver for breakfast before walking to the local park with takeaway coffees. While the kids played, Pete had us in stitches telling stories about the various faux pas he's committed at work not least the time he accidentally tripped over the false leg of a colleague sending it flying across the room. Until then I never knew coffee could come out of my nose and mouth at the same time. On Sunday afternoon we drove to Bondi for lunch at Julia and Rich's. Julia prepared a warming feast, now that the temps have dropped to more appropriate pre-winter levels, and the kids played beautifully. Alarmingly, Alice appears to be crawling - at 7 months - and had to be repeatedly brought back in from the garden once we noticed she was missing. I felt my first tear well up when we left and Flo said goodbye to her mate Tess and Scarlett hugged Ella as I realised this was probably the last time they'd see each other for a long time. Since then have rescheduled a return visit at ours for 2 weeks' time!
On Saturday I launched into a new phase of my current project - getting rid of most of our stuff. We are endeavouring to sell the majority of our furniture before we move back to England. As well as my huge successes getting rid of stuff on ebay and through work colleagues and friends, I decided to get rid of the smaller bits by holding a garage sale. I have been gathering things in our spare room for several weeks now and on Saturday morning spent almost 2 hours bringing stuff out to the front of the house from the spare room, the attic and garden and setting it all up along the footpath in front of our house. Everything looked great but I had overlooked one small matter - advertising. Apart from the small flyers I had taped to lamp posts at either end of our street the day before (flyers Rob found the next day blowing around in the wind) I hadn't placed an ad, sent an email or told anyone from school. After meagre sales to two of my neighbours, who I'm sure only bought things out of pity, I abandoned the sale due to lack of interest. Rob and I decided to pack everything back in the attic, to advertise in the local paper and have another go next weekend. But after sleeping on this, and having what I like to refer to as 'a tantrum' upon realising we have so much on every weekend between now and when we leave, I've decided to give it all to the Salvos and to Flo's childcare centre instead.
I spent the afternoon prepping lamb shank pie for our dinner party that night. Martin and Drew came over alongwith Cait and Pete, who came up from the Shire with their kids Max and Eve and so they stayed the night. We packed the kids off to bed by 7.30pm and had a great night catching up on fun we had together in the UK years ago. On Sunday a little worse for wear we took over two tables at Revolver for breakfast before walking to the local park with takeaway coffees. While the kids played, Pete had us in stitches telling stories about the various faux pas he's committed at work not least the time he accidentally tripped over the false leg of a colleague sending it flying across the room. Until then I never knew coffee could come out of my nose and mouth at the same time. On Sunday afternoon we drove to Bondi for lunch at Julia and Rich's. Julia prepared a warming feast, now that the temps have dropped to more appropriate pre-winter levels, and the kids played beautifully. Alarmingly, Alice appears to be crawling - at 7 months - and had to be repeatedly brought back in from the garden once we noticed she was missing. I felt my first tear well up when we left and Flo said goodbye to her mate Tess and Scarlett hugged Ella as I realised this was probably the last time they'd see each other for a long time. Since then have rescheduled a return visit at ours for 2 weeks' time!
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