Miller Family

FROM JOHN AND CHRISTINE MILLER

Peter Murphy sent me an electronic Christmas Card. Click on the photo of the Fokkers and have a merry Christmas.

Sorry I got caught up last year and didn't send out a Christmas message. So, to pay for my sins, I've got a double dose for you this year.

2005

In February we sold the gym and I moved in to an office at Coolamen Court, not far from home and concentrated on my speaking business, which is going well. I'm proud to say I'm still a physical educator - there's not many of us left, most having disappeared into the sporting ether.

I'm lucky because I enjoy giving the same talks over and over to different groups of people. With 20m Australians out there there's still a few who haven't heard me so the prospects are good.

In April Christine and I went to a Whyalla Central School reunion. It was great. Doug Marsh my year 6 and 7 teacher was there. The school hasn't changed much, except they've buggered up the best school playground and sandpit in Australia by replacing it with a class room. I learnt a lot more in the playground, and for that matter the oval, the tennis court and the swimming pool than I ever did in a classroom.

But that's nothing compared with what's happened at the beach. The mushroom rock and the cave have been bulldozed out of existence by Council vandals and the breakwater has buggered the beach. It's now so full of sand that at high tide you can now walk out to the diving board without getting your togs wet. So much for progress. I can still remember the hot nights in the 50's when thousands upon thousands of people would go down to the beach for tea and a swim. Now they're all at home in front of the eggnitioner watching Neighbours.

The reunion brought back lots of memories, particularly thinking back over the great sportsmen who attended the school - Don Hewitt, the Dick brothers, Robert Panter, Colin Richens, and, my brother Ted tells me, for a few weeks, Vern Schupan. Graham Galpin was at the reunion, Whyalla's best football umpire, still going strong. The imagination of my heart will always be a Combined Whyalla football match at the Memorial Oval and the Whyalla Gift weekend.

Anyway, the highlight of the year was spending a week in New York for my 60th birthday with Christine and daughters, Jo and her husband Chris who live in San Jose (If you don't know the way to San Jose click here) and Lisa and her husband Ian who at that time were living in London, UK.

The day itself was just great. I wanted to go to the top of the Empire State Building on my 60th birthday, and I did it. In the evening the girls had organised a limo to pick us up and take us to dinner at a restaurant which overlooked the East River and had a fantastic view of lower Manhattan. I felt like Donald Trump and Rupert Murdoch all rolled into one. Here are a few snaps.

Chris and Jo	Ian and Lisa

2006

Highlight of this year has been the return of Lisa to Brisbane with husband, Yorkshire man, Ian, and Jackson, the little fella who arrived at the Middlesex Hospital on July 5th.

Click here to read more about the little fella.   And if you want more click here.

I'm still wandering around Australia giving health seminars to corporate groups. This year I decided to divide my website into two parts, the serious Miller Health part for my corporate clients and the Fit and Healthy Online part - mainly for participants in my seminar programs - and my own indulgence. It took a bit longer than I though it would and it's not as flash as some of the sites around but it means people can have ready access to a lot of stuff that without me having to send it to them. If you're interested, click here and download my ebooks.

Christine retired from her job as group HR manager for CPS credit union. The SA and ACT CPS organisations merged in 2005 and she was run ragged getting all the HR stuff together. She spends a couple of days a week working in a consultancy capacity for the company.

Late in the year I moved my office back home so we've both in the same office and loving it.

Jo is now 35, living with husband Chris in San Jose and very busily running her own women's leadership coaching company. She's doing well; does what she loves and loves what she does, inspiring women to higher levels of success. She's good at it. She told me that the Buddha said 'Find a job that you like doing and you won't have to do another day's work in your life.' Confucius said much the same thing. She reckons she's got that job.

As I write Lisa (33) is at home with the little fella but is planning on going back to work in January as the testing manager in the IT game.

Christine's children, Alison (and husband Andrew) and Cameron are both living in Canberra and doing well. Alison works for the Chubb organisation and Cameron for Acil-Tasman Consulting.

Over the Christmas/New Year break Christine and I plan to travel up to Bourke and beyond to see at first hand what the country-side is like. This will be the 'hot as an Arab's fart and dry as a dead dingo's donger tour'. We want to see what the Darling is like at its driest and want to spend a few days at the spa in Moree.

My Mother Doreen will be celebrating her 92nd birthday in Melbourne on Christmas day. As you can see from the photo above, either she's getting smaller or her boys are all getting bigger!

So that's about it.

Would love to hear from you and love to have to drop in and see us when you're in this neck of the woods.

In the meantime have a happy Christmas, make your spirit bright and here's to a fit, healthy and prosperous 2007.