Getting a supply of rapid antigen tests is part of back to school year prep now, along with the textbooks, stationery, lunch boxes, haircuts, and uniforms – oh and masks.

In New South Wales students need twice-weekly COVID tests and term 1 starts on Monday. I picked up our family’s allocation of 16 from the schools to cover the first two weeks, and it was an oddly poignant reminder that we have one less school student this year, otherwise I would have needed 20. Our eldest, the graduate, is going to Luna Park on Monday as her siblings file in and out of their classes, talk about rubbing it in!

The end of last year was full and crazy and included an unwelcome visit from COVID to our house which stuck around for a couple of weeks. After that a few days at the beach restored us and the last week or so back home has been a mix of work, family stuff and house organising stuff. Case in point: the Christmas tree and decorations came down and with no garage or spare room to speak of we didn’t really have anywhere to put them again. But with a bit of a cull and some Kondo-like packing I managed to end up with one box less to hide under a table in the main living room.

I know many people are happy to have their kids return to school after the holidays, but I’m not one of them. I miss the simplicity of days without school, sport and other timetables, but the younger ones especially are now sitting around at home way too much so it’s much better that they go.

January is always a fairly quiet month in my job, but it will be all systems go come Monday so I’ll be sharing some articles again here very soon. There is a paywall up now at The Catholic Weekly so you will have to subscribe to gain access to most articles, but there will still be a few free reads each week.

I’ve done a little bit of thinking about what I might like to try and do this year. I may take a week-long silent retreat in September, if I do it will be the longest time I’ve spent on retreat since my 20s but I have no fear of being bored. I’d like to do something on the creative front but need to finish off one very slow project first, before Mother’s Day hopefully. I put my name down to be a lector (reader) at Mass at our parish and it will be my turn once a month so that counts as something new I guess, since I haven’t been part of that ministry since before I had kids. We also want to take them on a few more short getaways this year, including one or two with extended family if we can.

Since my last blog post was early December I figure getting this one done will count as one post per month and I’ll be happy with that. Feeling guilty about not blogging regularly seems all so 2019 now….I may check in here again sometime in February!