Slack

One word. Slack. I suppose not a lot has been happening since the last post. Well, not in our immediate world. There has been the Queensland floods, the Brisbane floods, Cyclone Yasi, Japan's earthquake & tsunami's....

Sonja got a job as a "Foster Care Case Worker" with TRACC Logan (Spiritus). She now supports Foster Carers and communicates/advocates for them with Child Safety. So, anyone interested in being a Foster Carer? ;o) Jokes aside, TRACC Logan is only agency in the Brisbane Region, and up to 20 children a day can be referred for placements. Sadly, Foster Carers are few-and-far-between. Many only want to take on babies, as they seem to think that they will have no 'behaviours' or no 'trauma'. Foster Carers are amazing people, they are not raising 'normal' children. These kids are in care for a reason, and have suffered varying degrees of trauma. Yes, they are only human, and will make mistakes, but what a job those Foster Carers do!

Noah has been a member of this household for a year now! He is really well behaved now - we never thought it would happen! He comes out the front with us, and as long as there are no distractions (dogs, cats, birds, invisible foes) we'll stay in the yard with us or come back if he is called. He loves walks and will leap into the air, nearly doing somersaults in excitement. He is also quite vocal when we arrive home. He will 'squawk' and bark and tell us all sorts of stories about his ad

ventures of protecting the yard for the day. He is still extremely independent and will claim he doesn't like to be fussed over, yet will lean into you if an ear rub is on offer. We find ourselves daily shaking our heads and laughing at his antics.

We managed to get our 4wd off the road for around 3 months around Christmas time. It had an unfortunate encounter with a cement barrier on the motorway. Recently, we decided to go exploring. After finding the National Park that we were going to had been closed, we headed up to Beerburrum State Forest near the Glasshouse Mountains. Everything was going great, until we encountered this.

The tree on the left was blocking the road, and when Clinton stepped in the water, he sank up to his knees. After several failed attempt of moving the tree, or breaking the branches off, Clinton decided he would just go for it. Needless to say, we ended up very much stuck, on an angle, with the car taking in water. After quite a while of madly collecting branches, sticks and anything else we could see it got dark. Only the back left wheel was spinning, and it was only digging itself in deeper. About then panic set in. 1. Who would we call?? 2. How on earth would they find us?? 3. AARGH! We called every person we could think of that lived, or had lived, on the Northside of Brisbane. Fortunately, we were able to contact someone (eventually!) who had a 4wd and was willing to come and tow us out. Clinton arranged to walk out to meet them, to (try) to guide them back to the car. Sonja stayed in the car, clinging on the the door (the angle was very awkward) staring out into the dark. Thankfully we had taken our new Navman, so Clinton was able to work out approximately where we were in relation to roads and was able to follow his 'exit track' back in with our rescuers! After a little while, the car was free! After many thanks, we set off home. While putting along the freeway, Sonja menti ons to Clinton that she can hear a hissing sounds. Clinton looks down at the temperature gauge and suddenly pulls over the side of the motorway. The car had overheated! After a call to RACQ, we were picked up by a tow-truck and driven home. The drama of the bogged car started around 5pm, and we finally arrived home at 10:30pm! What a day!

Two Weddings

This month we've been to two weddings.

First was Carla and Justin. It was a lovely day (despite the rain).






































Next was Susan & Kent's wedding. A lovely afternoon at Maleny.

Discovery time!

Our latest 'addition' to the family is a 1994 Landrover Discovery.

Clinton decided that he wanted one, so we finally found one. It's a diesel and manual. Noah isn't too sure of the noise yet, but likes being able to see out the windows easily (Sonja likes this too, as it means he doesn't try to climb up her to see out!).

In the next week we'll be taking it down to our property to give it a good test. We'll see how we go across 2 creek crossings. As it is Big Camp this weekend, and we're not staying we've decided that for Sabbath we'll go for a nice drive. Clinton has been pouring over the 4wd tracks around, which has got Sonja rather worried as to what he is up to... He did suggest at one time going up the O'Reilly's 4wd track, but seeing Sonja can barely handle the 'normal' road that was very quickly ruled out!

Pictures will come of our Sabbath adventure.

It Is Written Medisonship

It Is Written Medisonship from It Is Written Oceania on Vimeo.

Many things have happened since our last post (again!).

Firstly, we took another BAC/DDCS group to the Solomon Islands. Once again, we did kids clubs during the morning and painted the Girls dorm in the evenings.

We had a team of 13 students and 7 adults.






This is Nusatupe airstrip at Gizo. Yes, it is just long enough for a (small!) plane to land on. Seeing the kids expressions as it came into view was quite worth it.










This is the girls 'bathroom' at Kukudu Adventist College.










After what can only be described as a miracle, the paint gun finally worked and we were able to paint the walls of the Girls dorm.

It took us around 3 days to clean the dorms, even before we could start cutting in the edges.











Next, we have bought a lovely little (460 acres) property between Armidale and Kempsey. We've got to buy a 4WD to get onto the property, we've also got to 'make' roads. Very exciting.


























Out little Noah is going well. We've discovered the dog friendly beach at The Spit-Gold Coast. It's Noah's favourite! He's not too sure of the water though.









He's also been enjoying coming in at night for a while during these colder months.

What is important for Sonja and Clinton?

A cool new tool on the web is Wordle. It creates images of words. More frequently occurring words are bigger. We ran our blog through this tool and found that our friends must have been getting married a lot, we work at a school and we have a puppy! I guess that will just increase the count of those words....

Fast Forward

Much has happened since our last post.
1. We got a dog
2. We went to a wedding
3. We had our first wedding anniversary

Let's start with the most important thing first - puppy! I had been bugging Clinton for ages about getting a puppy. I had my heart set on a Miniature Pinscher. They are gorgeous and have some wonderful qualities, and would suit our medium-sized backyard. Unfortunatley, there aren't many up in QLD... and the few that are around were around $700-800! After many weeks of searching the internet, I found a little red male for $400 in Tamworth.

Enter Noah.

This is the little face that was posted on the internet, how could I resist??


After much growing, here are some recent photos:



Noah is quite a happy puppy (now 4.5 months old). His favourite things to do are tear apart any toys, particularly if they squeak, chase the ball, be chased, go on skink-patrol, go on moth-patrol, and eat! He particularly loves going down to the dog park to play with the other dogs, but likes to keep near Sonja or Clinton incase any of them scare him!


The day before our wedding anniversary, two of our great friends, Braden & Mandi got married! It was a lovely wedding. It was held at the Toowoomba church, with the reception in the hall. Here are some photos.




It was a lovely wedding, even more special because it was our first wedding anniversary the day after. Unfortunately, school started for Clinton and I came down with a cold, so our anniversary was a bit of a low key event. Clinton did get me some beautiful flowers though!