The last day of twenty eleven

Wow, it's New Years Eve 2011. How did that happen?
What happened to February? What happened to September?

Bubba's 1st bday

I'd like to say that my 2011 completely sucked, but I can't because amongst all the bad things that happened, my lil boy was there. Bubba grew from being a newborn to a baby and is now sitting in the bath looking at me and I'm looking at a toddler. Wow, my lil baby is growing!

January saw us a brand new parents, we learnt how to burp babies, how to breastfeed, how to quickly change nappies so there was no fire hydrant (!!), we learnt that he loves the pram and loves to be cuddled whilst Dadda sits on the fit ball & bounces.  We learnt that baby vomit goes everywhere & poo explosions really do happen.
We learnt what it was that makes a family, we learnt that love is universal when it comes to babies. We learnt that having babies is NOT selfish & they bring joy other people whether it is our 70yo Greek neighbour or the 15yo checkout chick at the supermarket - the joy is widespread!

May saw us deciding to move, the 2 bedroom flat that we had rented for 12yrs was now too small. So, we thought, where should we move too?  I didn't care if we moved to the next suburb or to the other end of the Australia.  Hubby came across a great job in Hobart, he applied for it, interviewed for it & then we all visited Hobart to see if we liked it. We did. Well, it kind of helped that when we were trying to decide to move there, we were sitting at the waters edge in a town called Margate and a group of dolphins swam past - yep, we thought, we'll move down here.

So then we packed everything up & moved across to a short-term rental until we found a proper place to live.
BUT... that is when the s@#t hit the fan.... All of a sudden bad things started to happen, all coinciding with the move to Hobart. We thought we must have triggered it all. We are bad luck. But then it turned out, our move to Hobart actually helped people that were really down on their luck, we could offer them a bed to sleep in, hot food in their stomach, a person to chat too and of course, a gorgeous little boy to cheer them up.
What happened?
In a nutshell... out of the blue, I rang my mum & ask her how she is, she tells me she has turned yellow. Huh. Turns out that doctors think she has cancer. On other side of the family, my hubby's sister in law has fallen really ill.  She keeps going in & out of hospital.  Then my mum ends up in hospital for tests, they want to confirm if it is cancer. The day we were to drive up to Launceston (3hr drive each way) to find out the test results, hubby's brother is waiting in the Hobart hospital, ICU waiting room as his partner has just been admitted to the ICU.
So we have to leave hubby's brother, sitting there all alone in the ICU waiting room to find out more about his partner.  We've never felt more terrible in our life, leaving him sitting there, but we couldn't stay, mum was finding out today if she had cancer, we had to drive the 3hrs to go see her.  I'll never forget the look on hubby's brother's face, as he was sitting there, it breaks my heart to think that we had to leave him there.
Turns out my mum had cancer. Pancreatic cancer & was told she had about a year to live.
Tears. Lots of tears. Thank goodness for bubba, he got me thru that bit.
We then had to drive back to Hobart & could then sit with brother in law & occasionally visit his partner.
Mum then had to be sent to Hobart for more tests. But..
They stuffed the test up, they cut a hole in mum's esophagus, she was put in ICU too. Yep, 2 reli's in the same ICU.  
So then we end up with 2 extra people staying at our house, my brother in law & my mum's partner. It was a full house, lots of stress but bubba kept us all going.

BUT there is good news ... mum decided to have major surgery to remove tumor... turns out that the tumor was so big that it was mimicking cancer!  So yay!! No cancer for mum!  
And my sister in law? Well, she's better too!  She's at home now, walking around & even has the strength to hold bubba too! Amazing!

And not to mention that we were also looking for a house to buy, which meant we had to investigate the suburbs as we were completely new to the area, arrange to view houses etc etc.
We eventually purchased our house, we moved in over the first two weeks of December, then it was bubba's 1st birthday on the 15th December and then it was arranging & baking Xmas presents, then it was Xmas and now it is the New Year. Phew, maybe we'll get to unpack some boxes now!!  Except for the fact that I had really bad hayfever that has turned into the flu, so now I'm just sitting around feeling sorry for myself!!

So what was a crappy year, turned out good in the end!
I have great plans for next year, I'm going to destash my entire craft supplies, I'm going to try to read/use every book that we own & of course, I'm going to blog all about it too!!

How was your year?  

Bubba 'helping' to unpack!