Well it’s not quite winter – 9 days away yet. But on Thursday night the first BIG storm came through! Woken at 3am with screaming winds and hail lashing our bedroom wall and windows. Wet and wild all Friday. LOTS of rain on Friday night.

Then this morning as Rob and I sat in our lounge room having breakfast, I noticed something different about the air, something…clean…and fresh…and full of the rich leafy smell of our garden.

It’s been such a long dry that I’d forgotten how good it was, that smell:-)

And the birds were very happy and very busy!

This morning I picked up my mother about 11am and brought her back to our place for an early lunch with Tristan, Blaine and the kiddliwinks. It is perhaps the clearest view of her persistent tiredness these days that she did not want to be the centre of attention, but rather was happy to listen to the burbling that always happens around our table. After lunch, while Tristan went to hockey and I read to the kids before their naps, Blaine had a good chat with her.

I took Mum to Gordon’s place to be taken over the his sister Bette’s for afternoon tea. She was tired by then so I hoped she would handle it OK. Then I came back and Rob and I went to watch Tris play hockey (the goalie in the big blue outfit!) – I’d elected to have our Mothers’ day gathering there as Jeanette couldn’t come to lunch. It was a challenging game, playing one of the top teams. At one point one of Tris’s team-mates who the group was who keep making a noice whenever Tris did anything. He replied “Oh, that’s my family”. So while Tom and Thea (after she’d woken up and Blaine had arrived with her) played behind us with little hockey sticks, we watched and cheered when Tris did anything good (often) and when they won!!!

It was a good day:-)

After a very busy day of cleaning our house and boat, we took time out to rush up to the DNA Tower on the hill in nearby Kings Park to see if we could catch the full moon rising as the sun set in the west.

We watched and waited while others came up and went down the tower, then Rob spied it to the east, peaking over the hills (in the picture with the sun still on the buildings in the foreground) . An English lady was watching, wondering what it was, and I told her that it was indeed the full moon rising. So very soon everyone else there was sharing the magic moment.

As it rose into the mauve of the sunset, the sunset was reflected in the water of the Swan River. Later on the moon was reflected in the river – magic !!!

This old watch looks very ordinary until you turn it over.

The date on the back is the date that Rob passed his final anaesthetic exam in Melbourne and I was there to present him with the watch. The thing that’s always amazed him, and still does, is that I had that watch engraved about 30 days BEFORE the event, before he sat and passed the exam.

How did I know he would pass, without a shadow of doubt?

Well, I guess I just did…

Sadly, now the watch has stopped working and cannot be fixed. But we will keep it somewhere safe to remember the day that Rob made his dream of becoming a doctor, in the way that he wanted to be a doctor, come true…

I found this gorgeous little creature in Elwyn’s old bedroom at our place, when I dusted all her trophies and ornaments a while ago. It was a present to her from someone – she loves little things like that.

Sadly when I found him one of his ears was broken and both feet had fallen off. So I packaged him up and took him into town to find a “hospital” which would make him better. That took some tramping around but eventually Proud’s jewellers took him on.

Yesterday I picked him up from his “hospital”. Somehow the jeweller had fashioned a new ear and put him all back together again.

Doesn’t he look gorgeous?

And he’ll fly with me to London in June to join Elwyn in her flat in Fleet:-)

Today is Howe Synnott’s birthday. He and Rob were friends most of the way through school and have been ever since, whereas Rob and I met in university when we were studying medicine together.

One day early in our courtship, Rob and Howe took me to their favourite crayfishing beach north of Perth. Howe recorded my reaction to Rob’s catch on camera!

When Rob emailed Howe with birthday greetings today, he attached this photo to the email to remind Howe of the way we were:-)

A good thing to do on May Day – sail down Cockburn Sound on flat sparkly seas to get over the rough sailing we’ve had these past 2 weeks. We go back to work on Monday so three days in these surroundings will do just fine to start recovering:-)

SMS from Christopher: “Clack! is out now!”

This is meaningless unless you know that Clack! is the iPhone game that Christopher has been working on for some time, and is the FIRST GAME of his to be released by Apple globally. You can find out more about it and his next games at www.elegiacdesign.com!

Of course we bought it straight away, as we now do for ALL Jeanette’s apps that she’s releasing at www.greatoutdoorsapps.com!

Yes, our kids are way out in front of us, but that’s OK ‘cos we just stand back and applaud them:-)

The people at my Rotary club really know how to have a good time – this is some of them enjoying the “Blessing of the Rotary Fleet”, ie the power boats that some of my fellow members own, by our very own reverend John Shepperd.

Looks like ordinary blisters on my finger pads…they are actually the remains of second-degree burns from our sailing trip back from Jurien Bay!

Almost the worst anchorage we’ve ever been in made our candle-ia that we use to eat dinner by fall over. Silly me tried to catch it…caught it but got very burnt in the process. The pain was excruciating, but straight into the ice until my fingers hurt from the cold, then do strong self control until the double dose of pain killers kicked in.

That was over a week ago and look at them now! New skin including my signature finger prints has grown under the dead skin, then the dead skin sloughed off to reveal the shiny new skin.

Amazing!