Goodbye Alec

Alec's mission farewell was a happy affair, shared with David Gray who he has been friends with since they were five and who left for his mission on the same day.

Lots of friends and family, baked potatoes and toppings, five hundred home baked biscuits (Jesse worked all day and talked Beth into making her delicious honey biscuits), a fire with marshmallows to roast and a balmy starry night.

Alec was there too - photos will follow.

Noosa North Shore

The week before Alec left we let Peet have another day off school (good thing the student services ladies and I are best friends), and organised everyone for an overnight camp at Noosa North Shore. Four wheel drive access only so we took Alec's car and Roger's. Jesse and Alec went up early and found a camp site away from the few other campers there. Roger took Louisa and Max up at lunch time - it was the first day in Pines new building - and Peet and I drove up to meet them after Peet finished at school.

It was divine.

Jesse was in the middle of exams and crammed in some study.

There was fishing.

We didn't take a tent - just a tarp and we all slept under millions of stars.

It was a fabulous two days - we walked five kilometres down the beach - and back - at night to the bushfires burning in the national park, ate chicken rolls for dinner - no cooking, swam in crystal waters a stones throw from the camp, and talked and played and generally had a lovely time.

Now we just have to wait two years till we can do it again - with the whole family anyway.

Glasses

Max is the latest kid to catch the glasses virus that seems to be afflicting our family and friends. So far we have Robert, Louisa, Lauren, Madisen and Max - all within the space of about a month.

Max loves them and does seem better able to concentrate, which is their primary purpose.

The Berlin Wall

With the anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall, Jesse and I have been talking about the hardships and the triumphs. Max is fascinated. He recounts stories of injustice and daring to anyone who'll listen. And by way of visual aid here is his representation of the wall. One side is multicoloured and happy - the other uniform and red, for obvious reasons.

Jerusalem Quartet

Joan, Louisa and I were so excited to see the Jerusalem Quartet - they even had a guest cellist. The only difficulty was that we had to sneak in the back door because Joan had received an email from the Palestinian action group she'd just met the weekend before at their film festival saying that they would be holding a protest and would we like to come?

Apparently the Jerusalem Quartet are funded by the Israeli government making them a political statement and something no-one in good conscience could possibly attend.

But the tickets were $90 each so we went and snuck in.

Turns out we're just not that high brow. It was quite the night. 3 hours of solid chamber music - nary a word or a smile the whole time. Fascinating - but an hour or so might have done the trick.

It was a great night still - Louisa wore the dress Susie bought for her birthday and we had Vietnamese for dinner quite late and felt very cosmopolitan.

Temple

Alec attended the temple prior to his mission on Friday 13 November. It was a good night and Alec said he loved it (phew) and couldn't wait to go back.

These photos don't actually show how happy Roger was!

(I was there - just taking the photos - David and Beth and Joan came too.)

True Happiness

Max had a dream:

Max, Samuel and Max's friend Zeke from school were climbing a tree - Robert was having a bad day so he wasn't there.

Suddenly the tree started to shake - not just the leaves the whole tree - trunk and all. They looked around and discovered that monsters were causing the shaking.

They realised that the only thing that would get rid of the monsters was True Happiness and they only had ordinary happiness - not True Happiness.

But then a family came walking along laughing and talking and eating ice cream and they had True Happiness and the monster disappeared.

I'll leave it to you to draw from this what you will!