Summer....

These months are full of traditions but there is one I particularly don't enjoy and that is the fact that for the last two weeks of the school holidays Daryl goes OS leaving me to fill the days without him. I tend to simplify, this is the key to survival, so here I am night one, pizza. Who cares. I plan but I don't, it is nice to have a little bit of an idea of how I am going to fill the days, movie here, school shoe shopping there, but one of my favorite things is to get up a little early, make a coffee and fold laundry while the house is still quiet. I think my sister thinks I'm weird but it feels productive yet tranquil as I fold and sip and contemplate the day ahead. I also prefer to be up before the girls greeting them cheerfully, starting their day on a good note ( 'cause God knows it's only going to go downhill).

So Daryl is somewhere up there, I don't like to think of that too much and am always glad when he has landed. He will have a day in Santa Barbara followed by a funeral in Tulare (those connections can also be so painful), then New York then London. Phemie said tonight how much she likes it when we are all in the same room. So do I.

Anyway, summer has been wonderful and isn't over, I must remember every moment how much I love to have the girls around and really do savour the holidays. I'll head back to Lorne where we'll eat two minute noodles and ice cream and play in the rock pools and read and snuggle on the couch and then we will come home and so will he and we'll all be in the same room again.

So nice to be back at the farm although with temperatures soaring this was probably one of the few pleasant weekends we will get over summer. Hazey has really grown up over the past three months, happy now to venture off on her bike with her big sister.

I called my husband the Anti Christ in front of the children. I meant to say "anti-Christmas", but it came out wrong, saddest part is I think he took it as a compliment! I love Christmas, I love Christmas, full of festive cheer and family tradition ( too much alcohol and screaming at the kids). Well this year I determined to change all that. It is going to be about lovely family memories, togetherness and simplicity. I just don't feel that Daryl is totally with me on this but I'm pushing on, starting with a nice night of carols while we put up the tree. So the sound system, after 23 years, decided to fail us just when we most needed some background music ( mostly to drown out the sound of "Thats mine I want to hang it"), but finally the tree was up and decorated with our very eclectic mix of ornaments, many made with loving little hands over the years. Then for the introduction of my new tradition (always risky but they have to start somewhere), the Advent verse and lighting of the candles. Daryl also found some Advent stories on his iPhone (I'll embrace technology if it adds to some old fashioned family fun...hmmm?), but the first paragraph contained the word "bosom", so through peels of laughter we decided to wrap it up and send the kids to bed. I feel a bit defeated. How do you make Christmas about meaningful things, not necessarily over the top religious but just about togetherness and gratefulness and family without Mummy screaming "fine, stuff the lot of you, I give up, I'm going to bed! It has happened.

Home feels flooded with memories of newly weds and dinners with friends and shopkeepers I know and much treaded paths and first baby bumps that I can barely believe and art I've made and hung around here and my own old tea towels and a cup of tea in my old mug and dropping in and the warmth of Summer reminding me to put up the same tree with the old decorations that too are part of many years with the man I love and now the children who bind our family and run around inside our home. It is just that, it is the history of our life that swims around us here that makes it so nice to be back........