Hi All,

Firstly a few thankyous are in order … the lovely Jacquie for organising the food for yesterday; Kate for shopping for the plates, cups and drinks; the companies who kindly donated food (I will have to provide a comprehensive list in the next post); to the Forbes clan for making, cooking and cleaning; Michelle and Daina who arrived with emergency strawberry supplies and all who attending for bringing good cheer and lots of happy thoughts. A huge thankyou to Mike for being ever positive and strong over what was I know a very, very tough day for him.

We have been staying out in the flat for the last couple of  nights which has been lovely. Mike thinks that we should move out here! Has been really nice to have some time together — I think we had a chat for the first time in 9 weeks and last night was definitely the first night we have both had a proper sleep for more than 3 hours at a stretch! It makes us more and more keen to get the house mods done enough to get home on weekends. Hopefully the home mods list will be available Wednesday so look out for some “working bee” days at the blue house!

Mike was so excited about getting another go at the FES bike today – but alas murphy was out and about in the gym and we couldn’t get the damn thing working. After about 30 minutes Mike gave up in disgust (all this after he sat up on his own and got his left leg to do a fairly decent party trick so shouldn’t have been too disappointed) and came back to the flat where he demanded a bit of Forbesiotherapy .. this started with lots of chocolate, chased by some fruit (he obviously felt guilty) and ended with trying to stand up himself out of the chair (with the help of Bruce and Pete for support)! He is managing to take a bit of weight thru this legs which is awesome, especially as he can’t feel them and has no idea where they are. Needless to say, I turned a blind eye to this outrageous behaviour!

Another couple of days out here – we are in unit 1 if you arrive at mike’s room and see a poor sod – Nathan – who has drawn the short straw and gets to share a room with all of us!

Will post Mike’s program shortly. We are going to try to set up some quiet times during each day for Mike to have a bit of a rest.

Again, thankyou to everyone who came to make Mike’s birthday such a special occassion. Was great to see you all.

Finally a massive thankyou to Sparky (Mark Mathews) for his work on this site during what has been a really busy time for himself and MTC. Mark, I hope yesterday was a huge success for the club – you certainly deserve it. Hopefully next year we will be down to at least watch the event — we were a bit cut it wasn’t at kew boulie …. we would have been down to cheer everyone on for sure.

Cheers
Mon and Mike