Between the 19th, when the house actually settled, and the 26th when we drove away, we spent our days finalising business matters, dropping things off to various people, attending to many, many things that needed attention before leaving, and trying to get a chance to say goodbye to as many people as possible. As a result the week looked like:
Tuesday - God Blokes farewell for me
Wednesday - Bible study group farewell for the two of us
Thursday - Hailey's class had a farewell at school in the afternoon, Leisa and I went to Cherry's place to have dinner with Cherry and Elizabeth
Friday - Rebecca went to Kat's youth event
Saturday - Barbecue farewell with school friends in the day, dinner at Tim and Leah's in the evening
Sunday - Send-off prayers in 10:00am church, barbecue farewell at church for lunch, send-off prayers in 6:30pm church.
Monday - Visited Leisa's Nan in Gosford, then went to Sharyn's for dinner in Umina to say goodbye.
Tuesday - Farewell dinner at Grandma's with the Sydney cousins (except Sam, who couldn't be there)
After all that, we needed a holiday!
Dianne fortunately had booked some time in Canberra for three of the nights. She was very patient with our "home invasion" for the rest of the time. We were sleeping all over the floor and there was clothing, both clean and dirty everywhere... as well as a semi-functioning office! The flat was knee-deep... on a good day. Anyone who knows Dianne will know how gracious it was of her to allow that!
As it approached the time to leave and go to the Blue Mountains, we started giving some details to the kids. When we told Hailey that our accommodation was going to include beds, she ran into the next room where Rebecca was texting, excitedly saying, "Becky, Becky,... we get beds!"
How little it takes to begin to become appreciative of our blessings.
We realised (too late) on the Tuesday that we had not been adding up how much stuff we expected to be able to bring in the car with us. We had much more than would comfortably fit. We therefore uncomfortably shoved it all in and headed off. There was much giggling at the ridiculous sight of all our junk piled up on everyone's laps. Hailey was in danger of disappearing under it all!
We got to the Katoomba destination some time just after midnight and began our holiday.
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