DECEMBER ROUND UP

The month started beautifully with a trip to Maitland Art Gallery. It is my favourite gallery to visit and always has amazing exhibitions. The main exhibit by Rosemary Valadon, Textures of Desire featured lush tables of fruit and vege and flowers. There was also a great exhibit of Aboriginal Art called Finding Country. Such beauty and colour. Also a great display of JFK photos, from childhood to assassination and beyond.

I then met Jenny for lunch at Morpeth Pub, we always have a great meal there, but they had changed the menu and really upped the ante.

The following day I had lunch with the gals at Foghorn and then farewelled The Towers by seeing Bohemian Rhapsody again. It was a bittersweet day. You can read about The Towers here.

The following week was incredibly stressful and all about my health...again. I had a small procedure to biopsy my kidney. Not painful but uncomfortable, but things ended up ok. I only had a secondary infection, my kidneys were a-ok, and the infection would disappear in time! What a relief!!

The family celebrated Dad's birthday at the local pub and had a lovely meal and time as always.

I finally returned to choir and we celebrated Christmas with yummy food and drinks, and sang Happy Christmas by John Lennon.

Work finished on a high, with one project finished and highly praised, and another well on the go.  We had Christmas drinks at LM Art Gallery which was most enjoyable.

I celebrated Christmas and birthdays with Vince, Nole, and Kathy. We had a lovely long afternoon tea of laughter and chatter.

I bought an electric keyboard, and whilst I really cannot play properly, I can fiddle a little and it will be fun to play with. Maybe I will get some lessons in the new year!

The first week of my holidays had a lot of rest and napping. I ate out at the Mary Ellen, went to the beauticians, finished my Christmas shopping, visited the Newcastle Art Gallery, drove around the beach, and saw Fantastic Beasts at the movies.

Mary dropped by for drinks, and Cathy and I had brunch at Awaba House, followed by a trip to LM Art Gallery.

My lovely sister returned home for Christmas and we had a BBQ to celebrate.

Jayne and I caught up with Mark for drinks at The Wicko and we enjoyed the joy and charm of Fish Fry and our company and chatter of course.

Christmas Eve and Day were spent on my sister's property with my family. We had a great time. My brother in law's Christmas present was a proper pool table so a lot of challenges were had. We ate, drank, laughed, and just chilled out. My sister Amanda came home with me for Christmas night and we sat and watched The Bruce Springsteen on Broadway show. 

Boxing Day is my birthday so she took me to Espresso 1 to brunch after a lovely sleep in, and we spent the afternoon chilling and watching The Marvelous Mrs Maisel, easily my favourite show of the year. In the evening we went for a drive into the beach before meeting the family at The Mary Ellen for dinner.

Between my birthday and New Years I was pretty chilled, I slept, watched tele, worked on my end of year blogs, caught up with friends for my birthday, worked on the Saturday, and had a farewell dinner for Amanda at Newcastle Yacht Club before she headed back to Melbourne.

New Years isn't as fabulous as last year, on the beach in Hawaii, it is much more low key. I have a lot to be grateful for, a lot to reflect on, and I am keen to get this year behind me. I'll stay at home and potter about, it is just another night. I am still not 100% recovered and I will celebrate accordingly when that happens.

Here are my reviews for the month.

And some extra pics...