Schools out!

It's that strange time of year again in Australia (at least for those of us who went to school in the northern hemisphere) where we are heading into the summer holidays and the Christmas holidays simultaneously. If you've been conditioned into feeling that these are two separate holidays it feels very odd when they merge. Clearly it's not wrong, it's just different, but there's a lot to get through when you have to celebrate the end of the school year and Christmas things at the same time.

Joshua returned to school on Friday for the last day of term. He is quite bemused as to why, when he is fine, everybody keeps asking how he is feeling. There is now a two month summer/Christmas holiday before school starts again at the end of January - happy days!!!!

An uneventful week medically. We got the dates of Joshua's next five scans at the hospital and a letter summarising everything he has been through.The words I liked the most were, 'complete remission', 'excellent prognosis' and 'complications nil.' Much nicer than bilateral bone marrow biopsy and intrathecal chemotherapy.

Two exciting things happened this week, or at least they were for the individuals concerned. Ruben visited the prep class where he will start next year full time. Most excitingly for him, he was given a little joey (not a real one, that would have actually been exciting and possibly illegal) wearing it's own school uniform and a book telling the story of joey's first day in prep.

Very excitingly for Joshua he took and passed his driving theory test, which enabled him to get his provisional driving license. He now has to drive for 100 hours (not all at once) before he is allowed to take his practical test. The good thing about Australia is that it is so big, if you have the time it is easy to clock up the hours. Road trip here we come! It's a 32 hour drive to Melbourne, so there and back would help the hours in the log book. I am also going to have to learn to drive properly again - sigh! I started driving an automatic in Nairobi and haven't looked back. Most of the larger cars here are automatic, so that's what we have. I'm definitely a little rusty when it comes to using the old gear stick.