The last of the autumn colours

I have started making lists. This time next week we will be on a plane on the very long flight to Hanoi in Vietnam but before that I have a very busy week. It is a strange time to be going away on holiday and I find it a bit unsettling to be going away now, but this timing suited Gavin who has had a very busy few months at work and could not go away before this time.

In addition to planning what to pack etc, the day before we fly I am having a sort-of-Christmas-lunch at home for all the boys and all the girlfriends. As Tommy and Inca will be in Australia for Christmas (she has a vet placement there and Tommy is joining her after that and they will go travelling around Australia for 2 weeks) I decided to have this lunch for him as he won't be with his family for Christmas. It is also the last time all eight of us will be together for a very long and unknown amount of time, as with Adam moving to the USA in January and Tommy in German these precious family gatherings will be few and far between. 

So today I was planning my menu for Sunday, bought a few things that I could get ahead of time, tried to sort Christmas presents, and did some other errands. We discovered that although I am booked on the flight and my booking was confirmed ages ago, I don't have a seat allocated to me as it says the plane is full! The travel agent assured us that Singapore Airlines will change the plane to accommodate the number of passengers and I am definitely booked on - I hope so!

I think this may be the last of the autumn colour - the birch, beech and oak trees are all still colourful but the leaves are dropping rapidly, so today Xena was very patient on our walk in the woods while I took many photos. This is the view of our local woods, and after the rain the colour seems to be enhanced in the wet leaves.

Tonight I have another camera club competition, one of my entries is an image that was awarded a judge's medal at the Surrey Photographic Association competition last month, so it will be interesting to see what another judge thinks of it. Amusingly another club member who was also at that same SPA competition scored very highly with an image that had previously got a very low score at a club competition - you never know with judges so no guarantee that my medal winning image will do well tonight!

It was grey and raining today, such a dull day.