Ella attended her last day of high school today. Next year sees Ella go to Lake Ginninderra College for Year 11 and 12, the final two years of school.
She had to put up with a few obligatory family photos including one with the grandparents - both who are broken at the moment!!
It has been busy on the work front with 4 extracurricular activities within 10 days!!
First up was a fantastic travelling workshop - the guest speaker a paediatric cardiologist from Sydney. Our doctors send patients to him for a second opinion / management regarding baby heart issues. He was excellent - so enthusiastic and full of valuable tips.
We didn't have long that afternoon to scrub up for our work Christmas party held at the arboretum. A fun evening socialising with colleagues (and various other guests) over dinner and drinks. The evening had a few surprises including a lucky door raffle - 10 prizes up for grabs. Very lucky for me when my number came up and I brought home a new iPad!
The following weekend was another travelling workshop taking up most of my Saturday. This time the speaker, a senior sonographer from QLD, who spoke really well and provided lots of practical information on a range of topics from her experience working at a tertiary level hospital in obstetrics. Most interesting was listening to her description of some of the surgical interventions.
Finally the last work related thing was giving a talk to my fellow colleagues on endometriosis. In order to keep their attention, I presented it as a travel guide and road map! The talk ended up taking around 90mins (bit longer than expected). I had lots of lovely positive comments from the gang which was nice to know they appreciated the talk.
The weather has been so warm and beautiful recently. We ventured up to the top of Mt Painter for a post dinner wander. The colours were sensational!
Some were better than other...
Katy's layered passionfruit meringue - yummo
Andy's rigatoni pie - looked great, tasted ok but was soooo much work! It's a one and done recipe...
The garden continues to grow and I'm looking forward to summer harvesting! Let the warm weather continue!
Our Saturdays usually involve little athletics at our local oval in the morning. Katy happily competes with her friends and is growing in confidence in running both in sprints and middle distance.
Ella spends her morning delivering the On Track Program to the Under 6's who all think she is fabulous!! According to reports she is doing a great job. She then joins up with the older girls to compete in whichever events are left.
By mid morning little athletics is finished and we head to the coffee shop with several other families to recover.
We then have a few hours at home before driving to either the AIS or Woden track where Ella competes in whichever throws are on offer and one of us volunteers to be retriever. Ella is still working hard towards improving her throwing techniques as she will be travelling with the ACT Schools Teams to the National Schools Athletics Champs which are held in Perth in mid Dec.
Andy spent more of November away than he did at home making life a little more busy for me! Luckily friends stepped in to help out when needed!
It was Andy's dad Dave who has been in the wars. He recently tripped over a paver at home and fallen on his face giving himself a black eye plus a cut and bruised nose. However he out did himself a week later when he fell down a steep hill at orienteering.
I had arrived with the girls and dog at the midweek summer orienteering event held at Red Hill. Usually I chat with various orienteers before wandering around with the dog while the rest of the family do their courses. However on this occasion, I hadn't even got out of the assembly area when a young orienteer came sprinting back yelling out that Dave needed help as he was covered in blood!
Grabbing a first aid kit and map, Rob, Indi and I went searching for Dave, except we couldn't find him! Unbeknownst to us, he and another orienteer had walked straight up hill while we had contoured from the saddle! We relocated him back at the assembly area where a medically trained orienteer had bandaged his hand (he had dislocated a finger). It was obvious from his injuries that he required a trip to the hospital.
A little organisation saw Rob take Indi and both of the girls home, another orienteer drove Dave's car back to his house and I took Dave to A&E. With the girls growing up, it's great they are capable of looking after themselves and cooking dinner.
The normal hour(s) waiting in the A&E triage area didn't eventuate as Dave being assessed as hitting his head was bumped up the list. It was therefore only a 10 or so min wait before we were ushered into the back treatment area. Dave had only just settled on the bed when Sandra arrived and was then whisked off for an X-ray!
Meanwhile as I was briefing Sandra on developments, Dave returned just as quickly and then we were informed he would be going for a CT Head soon. I left before that occurred.
It was as expected a late night for the grandies. An update filtered through the next day on the extent of his injuries - a compound fracture / dislocation of left ring finger (which required surgery the next day); fractured right collarbone and a broken nose!! He did a good job. His surgery went well and now he has to work on getting better in time for Sandra's planned knee replacement surgery in a few weeks!!
Produce from the garden is beginning to roll in. I harvested a deal of broad beans getting in quickly before the possums realise. The rhubarb looks delicious so a crumble is on the cards!
Wandering around the garden watching lots of fortis and vegetables grow, I unfortunately discovered a (known) bug and a (new) pest!
The known bugs are the return of the bronze beetle on the lemon tree despite dousing the tree in pest oil several times. Those one you smell before you see them. In the end I hand picked them off the tree.
The new pest was powdery mildew on my apple tree. The tree is only two years old and I was hoping to see it produce some fruit this year but perhaps not...anyway I dealt with the mildew immediately and will keep my fingers crossed.
