And so it begins...

As we move through January life is beginning to settle once more.  Much as I love my children they bring an inordinate amount of chaos into my life. The yard stinks. Whatever the lads used for fishing has been dumped summarily somewhere I have yet to find but the smell is wafting... The CG has returned to Chile & we are not a family that does well with goodbyes. I will now get random phone calls until she has transversed the globe & landed back in Santiago.

Just when we were most emotionally vulnerable our little church came under serious attack. I did not realise how strong our *little, old, grey haired, ladies were*.  They refused to lay down & die. Rather they rose up as they have been trained to do, stood on the Word of God, declared we already had the victory in Jesus Christ & were champing at the bit. The victory is ours.  I am so very grateful.

In a few weeks we will tear out our old kitchen & revamp the whole thing.  I am not looking forward to the chaos & mess but I will very much enjoy having a working kitchen again so it will be worth it in the long run.

Meanwhile the wildlife continues to parade through our yard.  The curlews have a new chick & there is a stray egg laying about that no~one seems to want to claim. The little wallabies & paddymelons are continually being spotted foraging along the foreshore & one week our bible study were astonished witnesses to sharks herding mullet into shallow water then partially beaching themselves to feed before wriggling back into deep water.  I knew killer whales did this but had no idea about sharks. It was astonishing, terrifying & totally mesmerizing.

As usual CG abandoned anything that would not fit in her suitcases so I have a mishmash of her things lying about. She barely made her weight restrictions as it was so obviously nothing else was returning with her. As I dislike housework it will be some weeks before I have pulled my house back into some semblance of order. This is not helped by running 2 messy businesses out of our home & preparing to instal the new kitchen ~ obviously none of this will take precedence this week as this is my preaching week & that takes priority ~ not something it is hard to convince me of.  Research I do like.  Writing is tolerable.  Housework makes me want to curl up in a ball & go to bed.  Sometimes I do. Happy New Year!