Christmas Eve with the Family in 2021

It is our tradition, to celebrate Christmas with all the family on Christmas Eve! So, all my family want to come this year to my place again! 🙂 We are usually more than 16 people for this kind of get-togethers! This is including four of my great-grandchildren aged 2, 5, 7 and 9! 🙂 I have two more great-grandchildren in Victoria. Unfortunately I have not seen these for quite a while. – – – Sadly, it is going to be the second Christmas without Peter. – – –

Secret Santa will be coming again this year. So, everyone gets only one present! However, I am sure there is going to be some very special nice food provided once more due to the combined effort of several women. I am probably going to make some potato salad again. A lot of people do like my salad! 🙂 And of course people bring along beer, wine and maybe some liquor as well as a variety of soft drinks. 🙂 (Mark is in the habit of drinking only Coca Cola when he knows, that he has to be driving home again.)

Our other custom at Christmas time is to make ‘Bunte Teller’ with Pfefferkuchen (gingerbread), nuts, special fruit and some sweets like for instance marzipan sweets and chocolates. 🙂

I hope the weather is going to be fine, so that we can stay outside a lot and make good use of the new deck and to be outside in the open a lot of the time. 🙂

Maybe some people are going to stay overnight again, that would mean, we could be able to cheer with plenty of nice drinks! 🙂

All the outside area on the three different sections of the house have been made usable recently. So there is plenty of room for people to spread out a bit. There are even two ramps for my rollator! Colourful electric lights have been installed, and there are also about half a dozen solar lights spread out over the ground as well as some new electric flash lights! 🙂

I hope, my son Martin will be able to come from Victoria, and that this time the borders are going to stay open. Martin told me, that he can stay only for a couple of nights, but that I am welcome to go back with him and his dog Millie to his place in Benalla. 🙂

I am looking forward to spend some great holidays in Benalla! 🙂

Diary, End of October 2021

Well, tomorrow is the last day of October – and then the day after, on Monday, we have the significant first of November when some more restrictions are going to be lifted for the people that are fully vaccinated!

I have an appointment for Specsavers for Monday morning, for I need new reading glasses. Specsavers is in the Dapto Shopping Centre. Summah is going to take me there at 10am and doing some shopping for me at Coles while I am at the optometrist.

Today I went across Fowlers Road to the Bowling Club to get some take away fish and chips with some vegies for lunch. This meal was the best! 🙂 Really, very, very good!

On this coming Thursday Monika is bringing Carter and Evie along around lunch time. I am very much looking forward to this. I haven’t seen the kids in ages. Dear little Carter said the other day that he wants to see great-grandma, that’s me! 🙂 I hope the weather is going to be nice: Then the kids can play outside on the deck! 🙂

Next Friday, early in the morning, I am going to see my two doctors again. I love to talk to them. It is so good, that they have some extra time for me. They make every effort to bring my blood pressure under control. But I still get exhausted very quickly and very often extremely tired – I have to do everything very, very slowly . . . . There is not much I can do in one day, but I can still do something. For instance I can still prepare my own meals and take showers by myself! 🙂 I can take walks with my rollator and enjoy nature. I love eating good, healthy meals. However, I cannot consume meals that are too large for me. I like very small meals, but I like to eat often. I always have a very good appetite! 🙂 I try never to throw away any food. I don’t mind eating left-overs. 🙂 I like to prepare vegies and fruit. What has to be cut off, goes into the council’s FOGO bin and gets recycled. These FOGO bins are a very good idea.

I really wanted to mention today my first love. I met him in the spring of 1952. We had to cut it short, but it was beautiful while it lasted! 🙂 One year later, in the spring of 1953, I did fall in love again. But for some reason he never loved me back the way I would have liked him to. Maybe he thought, he was not quite the right young man for me – I can still remember, what he used to humorously quote to me in a singing voice: ‘Der Mann, der vor mir war, der war so wunderbar!’

In the spring of 1955, when I was twenty and seven months I finally realized that it was no use waiting for Karl-Heinz to change his mind about a togetherness with me. I started going out with a girl-friend. The two of us were looking to meet nice, young men by out on dance floors! At the same time a colleague of mine introduced me to her older brother and for a few weeks we went boating together on one of Berlin’s lakes. This was the only time that I dated an ‘older’ man. He was already 30, and his girl friend had moved to West-Germany! When I met Peter, who was only 20, I preferred him, and we stayed together for over 65 years! 🙂

I know, last year, when Peter knew already that he had to leave me quite soon, he was not afraid of dying, but he did not like the idea, that I would be very lonely . . . .

Well, I do have my memories, don’t I?

My doctors tell me, I should socialize more. Maybe I should . . . .

How do I do this? Well, I can only keep an open mind. That bit of time, that perhaps is still left to me, might become more and more precious!

Diary

Yesterday, on Thursday, I had some real quality time with some of my family too: We went for three hours to a beautiful park at Lake Illawarra with four children of our family! 🙂

There were heaps of other children there too, since the kids were still on their Easter holidays. Granddaughter Natasha was great in watching her nephews, aged 4 – 6 – and 8 years, as well as 18 months old niece. My daughter Monika had picked me up from home with my rollator. The two older kids are the kids of one of Monika’s sons, the two younger kids are the kids of one of her daughters. So all of them are my great-grandchildren! I enjoyed watching all of them playing to their heart’s content in this beautiful park area with lots of other children and lots and lots of playground equipment on a perfectly beautiful sunny autumn day. For lunch we had fish and chips from a nearby shop. We had brought our own drinks. I was so grateful to Monika that she had asked me to come along with them! 🙂

There was opportunity for some interesting conversations with granddaughter Natasha. She is a care worker. To be able to have some longer talks with her was very interesting! 🙂