Monday 10th January, 2011

Happy New Year to everyone.

We had a lovely Christmas Day lunch at Natalie's place (Murray's sister)with all the family. I think we all ate and drank too much as usual. However we had great fun and a lot of laughs playing charades later that evening.
Stephen (my brother), Beverley, Matt & Susie came down a few days after Christmas to spend some time with us. It's actually Stephen's 50th birthday today. They are currently on a cruise from Sydney to Melbourne to Tasmania and return on a Royal Carribean cruise liner. Hopefully the weather is good for them.

It has been weird weather, hot one day, raining the next. We also had a freak hail storm that hit our suburb and the neighbouring one's last Wednesday. It just seemed to come from no where and was a small concentrated storm cell. The hail stones were as big as golf balls and were bouncing in all directions. It was really loud and went for about 15 minutes or longer. We put a car cover and 2 blankets on my Honda Jazz but unfortunately it still has about 100 dents all over it. I've got to take it to the repairers to get assessed for insurance on Thursday. We also had damage to our verandah as the hail turned into ice in all the valleys on the roof and water was flowing over the internal side of the gutters and into the verandah roofing. All our neighbours have been affected in one way or another and will be putting insurance claims in.
Queensland has terrible floods happening at the moment. It must be devastating for everyone affected.

Luke has been feeling the effects of chemo and steroids again. He gets really out of it in the afternoon and has to have a rest. He's had a fuzzy headache which he always gets when he is on Dexamethazone (a steroid). Today was his last day taking these for a short while, so he'll no doubt have withdrawal symptoms in the next few days. Unfortunately he has another stint of these coming up. His blood levels have been okay other than his sugar levels being up. This is probably due to the steroids as well as the amount of lollies and rubbish that he ate when he went camping with friends on Friday night. I was a bit anxious as there was no mobile reception where they went(Hunnysuckle Creek) but I knew they were only 30 minutes away and someone could drive him home if he had any problems. They all survived - and he turned up around 11am Saturday morning as they came back for McDonald's for breakfast as it had been drizzling a bit and they couldn't be bothered cooking. They all had a good time though.
Saturday was Murray's birthday so we had a family dinner out at APK (Australia's Pizza Kitchen) at Woden. Everyone had a nice meal.

Amy wants to go to the beach during the holidays. Unfortunately Luke has chemo and with his central line he can't go swimming so he has no interest in going down the coast. So Murray and Amy will go this weekend for a few days and stay with his uncle at Mogo. Luke and I will catch up on movies and TV shows that we have recorded.

Mum had another trial run taking the catheter out but unfortunately it still didn't work. She can feel a bit of pressure and she needs to get this investigated. It could be a prolapsed uterus or diverticulosis. She goes in for exploratory surgery on her bladder at the beginning of February, so hopefully they can get to the bottom of what is causing the problem.

That's all our news for now. I'll touch base in a few weeks time.