Its all coming together -
 but it'll be a cold day in hell before I do this again - and where did all this STUFF come from?
Finally have the computer set up properly and a keyboard i can see to hit the keys on - my youngest is moving in about two weeks so we are helping each other - she did all the tech stuff here and that was a real Godsend.

I move in on Monday!
Its been a long haul...but I can't wait. Its been lovely spending time with the kids, but you need your own spot...and so do they. I am about to do the final inspection. No doubt by this time next week there will be heaps of photos and hopefully all will go well - that is the truck with my almost 80 photo albums won't crash!!!

A really lovely New Years Night
The first one spent with others since 2006/2007. Don and I were usually well asleep before but then seemed to wake up minutes before to take it in together and then phone calls from the girls would come from whichever venue in Sydney or wherever they were. I was happy like that anyway as when we were kids our parents and the whole town was asleep and New Years Night was no big deal at all.
Last night I was with my youngest and her husband and at about 9.30 we walked to few blocks to a spot at Saltwater Coast at Point Cook where you could see across Port Philip Bay to the fireworks...a long way away but still really good. It had been a hot day but the breeze was cool. Then again we went at midnight the same for the midnight ones...it was amazing, out of the darkness came small groups of people, most who were not here the year before as is a new housing area...was sort of good to be amongst such a small crowd (thirty or so) a few drunks, a few dogs , a few kids. What I like about the area I am moving to is that in summer the evenings are so long people are walking about well after tea time...whereas at home as lovely as it was it got dark and was really hard to go out and then come back to the empty place by myself. I was fine if I was there but coming back was getting harder and harder.
Sure I will miss the place and when I imagine it I am brought to tears...but were someone to say "you have to go back to live there" I think I would lose the plot as two of my "loving brothers in law" (ex as far as I am concerned...claimed I had after Don was killed. Funny how they knew seeing as I hadn't seen one for decades and the other had all the sensitivity of a bull in a china shop when Don was alive and when he was dying.


Today its really hot, tomorrow will be over 40...but its NOT HUMID!!! and that is excellent.
Have a happy new Year and hopefully this year will be the best you can hope for.

Some Chrissie Photos

Some photos from Christmas...
Plenty going on but will have to wait till I move in...sorting this even out for a technomoron such as i has been a feat. I move in16th Jan - a all over the shop till then 

Melissa and Alison with their new Knuckle duster purses!!! Tough as!

My sister and me

Melissa and Me

Ali and me

Ali and Melissa

I am reading posts and keeping up but not easily able to post much myself here as not great access to computer while I am travelling down to Melbourne. Of course had car trouble so am staying longer now in Sydney till I get tyres and oil sorted. I should be down there by Thursday now  having a lovely peaceful time with my eldest daughter at her place - its a cold lazy Sunday and I need it as am sore physically and emotionally from the move - felt so tired afterwards I thought I would never move again - but gradually am recovering.

These are some of the rooms and outside and on either side and across the road are the most amazing gardens of roses and other

It looks old but has modern plumbing etc and a small yard with plants grass and an out door area

This is the house in Victoria that I am buying. It is not huge, much smaller than what I am used to but it is just right

I got the house I wanted

Found the house and after haggling a bit and back and forth its mine (as soon as I pay for it) The removalists are coming Monday and am going flat strap now trying to sort the mountain of possessions we have accrued over the past 39 years my second skip bin is just about full and am exhausted . Next week I drive down to Sydney then on to Point Cook (Melbourne). I don't get to move in till 16th Jan so will spend a week at each of the girls places, maybe visit two of my sisters (those who still talk to me!) and have a little look about  before I have to get back into it. Not able to post a lot of late as there seem to be people coming out of the woodwork now I am going and with organising the legal stuff for the other house and coping with this place  - I am just exhausted. Will lose my computer for a month but have a notebook so will keep up. Hopefully by Sunday evening I can show a photo of the house. Its perfect - small but just what i wanted.

Off tomorrow to Melbourne to choose a place to live in

Off tomorrow to Melbourne to choose a place to live in...will be back 19th and will do a big catch up then - have not been the most prolific bloger of late but shifting 25 years of nostalgia and love and stuff takes it out of you. Hope all are well and will check back here before I move 1st Dec

Moving down Melbourne way

.The sold sign went up on my house finally yesterday. I hand over the keys 2nd November - was a bit bitter sweet coming home after being at the solicitor's office - went past our old house where we raised the girls and there is nothing there but a vacant block - the old cattle grid is all that remains. We had the best of times even after Don broke his neck in '82 -moved into that house in '85 - we all just seem to put one foot ahead of the other and after a lot of initial heartache it just worked so well. The girls had a different childhood than their friends and they tell me how lucky they were to have had the dad they did. Every single Christmas we would all dress up and enjoy our own "Mackay" Christmas - something that nothing seems to match - but each family has their own depending on the nature of that family - usually meaning if the parents have remembered how it felt to be a child...ie to be childlike and not childish in their love of fun. After 35 years here - the places remain in your head but its the people always who made those places special.

I am not doing so well lately just when I thought grief would lessen it seems to become more intense - grief so much different from "depression" - but then I never really took took time out to just cry and go with it as the fight to get justice for the death of my husband became paramount - now am only weeks away from moving away from where we spent our whole adult lives - its hit with a slam dunk and apart from crying I don't know how to deal with it - a normal death like - I was going to say my Mother's but then hers as well was not normal, not my fathers - think the family may be jinxed that way - no one dies in their PJ's -

So poor Melbournites here I come  - I am a real bastard when i get involved with things I believe in - but that's how it is and for some time i hope to stay below the radar...to do some healing - am looking for a home close to my youngest near Point Cook. Sanctuary Lakes and Werribee/Hooeprs crossing but as yet don't know which way is up down there..