CAJ Staff family

This was last summer when we enjoyed an evening with another staff
family who have kids around the same age as ours. Thankfully they're
still around and I'm looking forward to seeing them this afternoon.

I'm looking forward to an annual event on our calendar this evening, the start-of-year staff family dinner (I want to say BBQ, but I'm not certain it is actually a BBQ today). Four years ago I wrote a couple of posts about what it was like to be a staff wife at CAJ, things have changed a little since then, but not much.

CAJ Staff Wife Part 1: I wrote about what it was like when we first joined CAJ, a lot different to now, because none of our kids were enrolled at the school, in fact our youngest was only three months old! But it is a somewhat sad post, because those early years for me were difficult.

CAJ Staff Wife Part 2: I wrote about some of the other results of being a staff wife. One of those has also changed. I wrote that "I always have to sit alone at graduation." Well last year I didn't. Staff who have students in the graduating class are allowed to sit with their families. I enjoyed that, even if the whole night was rather surreal! This school year I'll be sitting on my own again.

This year is the eleventh time we've attended this dinner and I look forward to it every year. It's short, but a good time to catch up with some friends I haven't seen for a few months. And yes, quite a number of the teachers I count as friends. We've ended up with quite a number of staff families around the same life-stage as us at the moment, so that's really fun. I'm sure we shake them up a little, because we're the only Australian staff family at the moment at the school.

I've got six more years as a CAJ parent. I am not sure that I'm looking forward to how my relationship with the school will change once our youngest has graduated—I'll be back to being just a staff wife. Ah, a bridge I don't need to cross yet.