I have been recording a “sentence a day” for three and a half years, as part of a long term journal.

It is fun to look back …
… to routine days,
… to unusual days,
… to special days,
… to family days,
… to days that unknown at the time, changed our life journey.

20th July 2012
We were living in the UK, working full time, in Maastrich, Netherlands for a family wedding. Relatives from Australia were also there.

20th July 2013
We were in Australia on a four week trip to celebrate our silver wedding anniversary.

We’d had a wonderful three weeks in Sydney, renting an apartment in Narrabeen overlooking the ocean. We had watch dolphins from our balcony. We’d been on a whale watching trip. We’d caught up with all the family.

Our eldest daughter, S~E, who already lived in Sydney, got engaged while we were there. We were part of that celebration, meeting her in-laws for the first time.

We were at a cross roads in our life. Our younger daughter, C~M, had finished college and was preparing to travel to Argentina for six months volunteer programme. We were about to be “empty nesters”.

On occasion, Aussie Mate and I had wondered about living in Australia. Sydney is expensive and too hot for us. Canberra is cooler but we wanted to be on the coast. Melbourne? Not for a Sydneysider. Adelaide? Maybe. Neither of us had been to Tasmania before, so we planned the final week of our holiday there, just the two of us, to see if it could be somewhere we could potentially move to.

On this day in 2013, we spent our first day in Tasmania, in Hobart.

20th July 2014
In the UK, working my redundancy notice with six weeks to go. Planning to sell our house, have an adult gap year in Tasmania. After lunch with my Mum the previous day, on this day we were packing up some of our belongings, sorting CD’s, DVD’s and books to sell.

Eleven months ago I started the photo a day challenge and have completed each day since.

Ten months ago we put up decorations in preparation for C~M’s twenty first birthday weekend.

Four months ago there was a solar eclipse in the UK but too cloudy for us to see it in London.

Three months ago we had been in Hobart for nine days and we moved into our rental waterfront apartment.

This date two years ago was one of those days that did change the course of our lives.