Cairns Crew Christmas 2016
Hi Everyone
Merry Christmas to you all,
It’s been an enjoyable year overall and we are looking forward to catching up with Clare, Marco and Josh for Christmas. We started the year with a major household renovation – tiling the house and rendering and painting the walls/ceiling/new skirting.
Fortunately we were able to housesit at a friend’s house while the reno’s were going on. We were very happy with the outcome, and the new doors have been progressively installed and finally fished last week. It has made the place look much more spacious and modern.
Connor has continued to play cricket for North’s Cricket Club and competed in local enduro and downhill mountain bike races. He & John competed in the popular ‘Triple R’ race from Mount Molloy to Port Douglas (35km). He has had some great trips away with school this year. One of his school subjects is Outdoor Rec and in 2016 he has had a whitewater rafting & swiftwater rescue camp on the Tully river, a 4 day hike on Hinchinbrook Island and a mountain bike camp in Atherton.
He had a ball in NZ in July with a school group on a skiing holiday (Mt Hutt, Cardrona, Remarkables). He’s been working and saving hard at his part time job at KFC. Next year he heads off to Nepal in November as part of the Redlynch State College World Challenge group. This is a 3 week trip, with one week spent working on a project to assist local people. So there is lots of fundraising to be done to make his final target.
Aidan has had a year that has been largely dominated by running/sport. He competed at the State Youth Surf Championships in March and ended up with a bronze for the 1km run and silver for the beach flags. He travelled to Maryborough for the State Cross Country and finished 8th in the 3km run and their Peninsula team won the gold in the Cross Country relay. He continued his success on the track with wins locally in the 1500m (broke the Peninsula record) and the 800m.
He managed 3rd in the 800m and 4th in the 1500m at the QLD State Championships. It was a nice surprise to be selected in the QLD Heat team and in November he & Marilyn travelled to Canberra for the All Schools Athletic Championships. It was a real eye opener for him but a great experience. He was named Senior Sportsman at RSC for 2016.
Bryce has had a lovely year at school, making some good friends and he celebrated reaching double figures by having a sleepover party at our place in June. He continues to play the violin and this year played at the RSC concert as part of the Junior string ensemble. He was RSC Cross Country Champion, and went on to race at the Peninsula Cross Country Trials. He enjoys doing athletics, swimming and surf and this year in October, he travelled with John and the Cairns Surf Lifesaving Club to Mackay for his first North Aussies SLS Championships. He had some great results in the Ironman (3rd) and board (2nd) races as well as being very competitive in the pool rescue.
Marilyn has spent a lot of time eyeballing the teenagers – literally! Connor and Aidan take great pleasure in saying they are taller than Mum, but it is not quite official yet. Wrestling with Connor has become a bit more extreme, & she thinks she may have to retire due to fear of injury. She is still working as the administrator for the Cairns Surf Club, in between ferrying the children to various training & work locations.
John enjoyed his age manager role for Bryce’s U11 age group at Cairns SLS Club as the boys and girls are all lovely to coach and developed well this year. He will be the U11 age manager for the Nth QLD Branch team when he and Bryce travel to the junior State Champs in February next year. Workwise he had another enjoyable year at Cairns Regional Council an completed the Tobruk Pool public swimming pool project in early May.
The project won best project at the local Engineers Australia awards and John received an award from Council for Outstanding team Member: Above and Beyond for his work on the project. He has more interesting projects to work on next year.
We will be in Melbourne early in the New Year and looking forward to spending time with Kevin, Teresa and the girls and seeing the sights.
We hope you all have a safe and happy year in 2017.
Lots of Love
John, Maz, Connor, Aidan & Bryce