2012 - the year in review.

WARNING - long and photo heavy.

Sick of hearing me moan and whine and groan and complain? Me TOO! So luckily this post will have me easing up a little on the poor me stuff.  One of my steps in the grand plan to GET RICH QUICK by becoming a famous Mummy Blogger, is to link up with the lovely Grace's "Flog Your Blog Friday" linkie on her blog, "With Some Grace".  FYI the get rich quick plan is NOT working out. Lucky I enjoy the blog anyway.

Anyhoo Grace has set us the task of doing a 2012 highlights reel for Friday's linkie, so I have dutifully obliged.  Thanks be to God for Facebook keeping some kind of record of my life because frankly at the moment I can hardly remember what I did yesterday let alone 12 months ago.  The interwebs stole my brain.

FYI I might not be very funny in this post.  In fact you guys I'm probably going to get downright emo.  It's been a big year.

January - My aunt and uncle celebrated their 50th (yes!!) wedding anniversary.  I was great with child.  Baby no. 2 was due on 30 January.  I must have a hell of a comfy uterus because he didn't make an appearance until 11 days after the alotted due date.  Lazy, lazy little bugger.

The last photo of my overdue bump, before they evicted the squatter.

February - Our beautiful baby boy B was born, as I said, 11 days after his due date.  Darling boy we love you so much. I was stupidly worried I couldn't love a baby boy as much as I loved P. Ha! As if. You have us in the palm of your tiny hand.

Squishy faced baby is squishy.

P meets B.

March - I turned 32. I had a picnic in the park but there's no photographic evidence.  Apart from being insanely windy I think it was a nice day.

We learnt that my stepfather D had Stage 4 secondary bone cancer.  His prognosis was not good.  This was a dreadful shock for him, his kids and my mum. And for us.

Baby B and his "Dai".

Baby B getting used to the world.

April -  We traveled to Mum and D's beautiful beach house to spend Easter with them, along with 2 of his 3 children.

We didn't really talk about it, but I think we knew it would be the last time we were all together in that house.

 May - M had his birthday.  P "helped" make the cake.

Oh yeah.  Cake batter.  Nectar of the Gods.

June - We went to my lovely Aunt and Uncle's 40th wedding anniversary shindig.

My uncle is wearing his "formal" volleys.

The girl cousins.  Channeling Cate Blanchett with the out-turned palms for maximum thin-ness

M and I celebrated our 5th wedding anniversary with a rare date night out.

What a pair of lookers.  Well, you can't really tell but take my word for it we are SPUNKS!

Everyone felt that my stepfather D was responding quite well to some palliative chemo.  Unfortunately in June the cancer caused spontaneous fractures in his bones and he was hospitalised. We traveled up to see him.  It was for the last time.

No words are necessary really.

I think it was some time around here we found out M's mum had leukaemia and was going to undergo chemotherapy. Her prognosis is good.

July - On the 22nd July, my stepfather DJG died.  He chose some songs to play at his funeral.  This is one of them.





I could say more but it isn't my story. I wasn't very close to D. He was a quiet man and didn't involve himself much in my life, and anyway I was hard to get along with and very close to my own dad.  The grief for my mum and his children however is overwhelming, he was a devoted husband and father and I'm glad he got the chance to be a grandfather to my kids and to his first baby granddaughter D.

Some time around here I also got a phone call from the CEO of the government agency I work at to let me know my permanent full time position had been made redundant.  Luckily I was still being offered 2 days a week on a contract.  Still.  Upsetting to say the least.  Talk about timing.

August - Our beautiful P turned 3.  We got her a trampoline.  My darling girl, how can it be 3 years since we brought you home from hospital, tiny in the baby capsule, me sitting in the back next to you, Daddy driving at 20 kms/hour in case we crashed, the responsibility of our tiny cargo overwhelming us?  We love you.  You are spirited and creative, you love to dance and run and talk and of course watch telly.  You love drawing and most of all you love dress ups. You are a peach and you have everyone under your spell.

September -  I started the blog.

We traveled up to Mum and D's beach house again, to visit it one last time before Mum made the move back down to her old house on the Sunshine Coast. She and D had decided it would be too lonely for her up there after he had died.

October - We hung out lots with Grandpa G, as usual.

The awl man and the young'un, as my Irish cousin put it.

We did a bit of gardening and it looked good briefly before looking shit again.

November - Urhhhh I'm getting tired but I'm almost done...

Baby B was baptised.

Cute, no?

December - It's not over yet! Don't worry, as you all know through this blog I love oversharing EVERY small detail of my life so I'll keep you ALL updated.

Gawwd that took forever to do.

2012 has been a big year. So much joy, so much change, so much stress and grief.  I feel stretched so thin as to be almost transparent, exhausted, depleted and run down.

Goodbye 2012.  We laughed, we cried.  What more can I say?