Hey guys! It's co-host Bryce here. If you're taking the time to read this, I really appreciate it as it explains our inactivity over the past month.

I'm first and foremost going to apologise as during this time it has been a cause of mine that the podcast has been inactive. I was unable to get in a particular mindset for the month and if you read below you will know why. Now, I owe you guys as listeners an explanation.

I love the podcast immensely, it's one of the true highlights of my week and it takes up a good portion of my thought process every week. I want this podcast to succeed. Drew and I try hard every week to fit a frame, working around work and my family life in order to get it done.

An unfortunate circumstance had arisen early last month where my mother was told she required an urgent surgery. Not having surgery would lead to eventual quadriplegia, and having the surgery also had a risk of quadriplegia.

This was a big hit in the heart to us all, mainly because over the past year in my little community of people I call friends and family has hit a rough patch. A good friends father had died from a tumor, I almost lost a grandmother to a stroke, and Mum's boss who we are
also pretty close to had developed a brain tumor not long after having treatment for bowel cancer. Safe to say, it's been an incredible streak of bad luck.

My mother had developed a spur in one of her upper discs in her spine, which required a surgery that realistically had A TON of low risk consequences and some high risk ones, including but not limited to speech impairment, aforementioned quadriplegia and in the
worst case both.

For now though, they are saying the surgery was a success and that she has been one of the better examples they have ever had, which is a huge sigh of relief. She is out of hospital for now and home safe, but we will have to see how it holds up over the next 6 weeks before we can be absolutely sure that her body takes to the changes in her spine correctly.

I want to thank Flinders Hospital in Adelaide for pulling out their big guns to make sure that her surgery went flawlessly. She is doing very well and I'm very very glad that she was in the best of hands.

In TL;DR sense, I needed time off the podcast as I had to look towards the future a little for a while and trying to fit the podcast within my train of thought was really doing my head in. In the end, at least for now, the podcast is a hobby and not a 100% serious thing. In saying that, I would love to push this podcast to the moon and stars and make our quality top-notch one day. In future, I'll give more warning on the situation, I promise. It kinda just came at a really shitty time for me as an individual, and by extension Drew who I've had to let
down which I absolutely hate doing. This show is our baby in a sense, and we went through a bunch of hoops trying internet content creation before finally settling on the podcast and knowing that we were happy with The House of Mario. I never intend to stop doing it,
even if I end up on the other side of the country and we have to start using Skype. I love it too damn much.

If you've read this far, I thank you from the bottom of my heart. It genuinely means a lot to me that you've taken the time to read what has been going on, and hopefully understand why I needed the time off.

I intend to be back for Episode 18 or 19, depending on the timing, and with so much coming out for the Switch at the end of this year I want to make a bang with it. I hope you continue to tune in and grow with us.

-Bryce.