Older and Wiser

For what it's worth, I don't intend to blog every day of our trip. I'm meant to be on vacation, not tied to a laptop. That said, having talking about this trip for so damn long, it would be remiss of me to not at least give you the occassional update of how we're doing.

My birthday today was glorious - filled with sunny skies, time spent with the people I love the most, plenty of delicious food (and gummy cherries. We've got snakes still but the cherries are my fave, so I opened the bag early...) and plenty of sight-seeing and being loved. I got a number of birthday wishes via text, phone calls, and facebook posts so I feel loved fron all corners of the globe. I am *much* happier at 36 than I was at 26 (the kids were not yet a year old, I'm pretty sure I slept through my birthday) and much happier again than I was at 16 (good lord, is any 16 year old happy?!). All in all, it's been a great day and tomorrow is our "History of Australia" geek day with tours of Parliament House, the War Memorial, and the Royal Mint. Today's geek activities - the highlight of which was the National Dinosaur Museum - were all suitably geeky and a good time was had by all.

In between all the love and joy I've thought a bit about my word of the year - and the one word which keeps coming back to me is "value." Value works for me on two levels - one, as a reminder to me to value all that I already have and all that I have achieved, and two, to do things which I value or which bring value to my life. Less stressing, more enjoying - less 'busy work', more putting time into those things and people which I value.

I did for a while consider "treasure" and "blossom" and some other ones...but I think VALUE is the one it's going to be. To just stop for a second and ask myself, "What value am I getting out of this?" (and not be referring to monetary value) sounds like a great way to consider all that has come before, and all that is yet to come. I'm going to try this word on for a bit and see how it fits. We'll see.

Other than that bit of thinking, I'm spending my days revelling in the love and affection of my madcap children and my adoring husband, as hurl-worthy as that sounds. This is *exactly* the right way to end 2011, and a fabulous way to start of 2012.

Sending love, humour, sweetness and of course a healthy dose of sarcasm to you and yours on this merriest  of Christmases.

M xx