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I'm growing older and so is my family.  We register the landmarks in our children's lives, but the adults face just as many significant landmarks.  Geoff and I are both, we hope, only at the half way point of our lives, but we can't take that for granted.  My darling brother and brother in law were both taken too young at 53 and 51 respectively.

My father in law's next landmark birthday is 80, my mother and mother in law a few years behind that but 80 is the next milestone for them.  My father a little behind, next year a landmark 70 approaches.  My nephew has just turned 20, my other two nephews both just celebrated 17.

I celebrate a birthday soon and I'm not quite halfway through my 40's, but that's approaching too.  Life flashes by, it doesn't seem to slow as I get older, but in fact runs away from me even more.

On the weekend we celebrated two of our October birthdays, Ella's 10th and Dan's 17th.  Not all the family were together, but Geoff's parents, his sister and her children joined us for afternoon tea.  We had cinnamon teacake and lemon yoghurt & raspberry muffins.  We sat at the table for 3 hours and chatted.  We didn't put any wrongs right, we didn't discuss the hugest issues in life, we were just together and it was so nice.

My father in law was in high spirits yesterday.  He has Parkinsons and it is a depressive condition which challenges even the most resilient of individuals.  Yesterday he had us in stitches with stories of his time - pre my mother in law - working for NAB in Winton in western Queensland.  He reminded us of stories from his years growing up in Byron, paddling on boards out to the prawn trawlers, tossing up canvas bags to have them filled and tossed back, gratis.

It was a memorable afternoon, and yet the most simple of times.  The best memories don't always come from the huge moments, but from connecting over the small ones.