Sunday, 21 December, 2014

It's been a good week and a sad week.....again.  First the good week part..........Dad was discharged from the hospital on Monday.  Dr. Kua came in early that morning and told Dad that since everything was looking good, he could go home - but, he needed to be sure to rest a lot for the first two weeks. I was pleased at how well I did driving home from Brisbane.  I was anxious about driving back home since I am not familiar with doing this drive (Dad always drives when we are going together), but it turned out really well.  We got a taxi from the hospital to Dad's work (where we had left the car) and the drive from there to home was quite easy.  We had to stop every 45 minutes so that Dad could get out and walk a bit to keep the circulation in his legs going.  Dad has been quite tired this week - he has spent a lot of time in his chair - but, we have also been getting out every day so that Dad can get a little walk in.  Dad says that he has been surprised by how much weaker and more tired he is than he thought he would be.

I was thinking this week about how Dad and I really aren't into the Christmas season.  For me, it's mostly about not having children around who get excited about the season and Dad and I don't give gifts to each other (haven't for years) and I really don't like how commercial Christmas is.  BUT, I also started thinking about what this season was really about (or should be about) and I thought that we should maybe get into that part of the Christmas spirit.  That made me think of service and how could we do that at this time of year.  I went onto Pinterest (seriously addicted to it, I am) and found some great ideas.  One of things Dad and I have decided to do is come up with  25 things we can do from December 1st to December 25th which will help us to get into the Christmas spirit - most of which include service to others.  I am pretty pleased with our list, although I can see it changing a little as we begin to put the list into practice.

One of the things that I found on Pinterest was a list of things to give for the '12 Days of Christmas' (the 12 days before Christmas Day is what they meant) - kind of like a Secret Santa.  We didn't have twelve days, but I thought it would be  nice to try and do it for a few days for someone in our ward.  We chose a sister in our ward who is just lovely and would do anything for others and yet she has so little herself.  We made some Christmas goodies for her and also bought her some nail polish, some hand sanitizer and had a photo printed of a beautiful scene about the real reason for the season.  I asked another of our friends to pass this bag of goodies on to her.  When I was speaking to this woman on Sunday, she told me that Christmas is not normally a great time of year for her due to sad things which had happened in her life around that time of year.  Dad and I hope that this bag of goodies and the note we put on it about how wonderful we think she is, will make her feel better.

Here are some of the goodies we made this week for our friend (how they looked in Pinterest and how they looked when we did them):

Pinwheel cookies on Pinterest

 

our pinwheel cookies

Chocolate pretzels on Pinterest

Our chocolate covered pretzels

Christmas crunch on Pinterest

our Christmas crunch

Pretzel kiss candies on Pinterest

our Pretzel kiss candies (believe it or not, you cannot get Hershey's kisses or hugs or anything like them in Australia - so, we used a block of chocolate we thought would work the same - however, it did not :-)

Christmas crack on Pinterest

 
our Christmas crack


The sad part of the week is again about our friend Geoff who passed away last Sunday.  We have been thinking about him all week (and Robyn, too) and it's just been really sad.  I am a bit surprised at how hard it has hit both Dad and me - it's quite heartbreaking.  Robyn's son, Mark, phoned the Bishop and asked him to ask Dad if he would assist in dressing Geoff for the casket.  Although it will be difficult for Dad to do (emotiionally), Dad was honoured to be asked.  He will go with Mark and another member to dress Geoff in his white clothes which he wore when he went to the Temple.  The memorial service will be next Saturday with a private graveside service the following Monday (to which Robyn has invited us to).  So many things have reminded us of Geoff this week - some are just little things - we are going to need time to grieve.