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!

The Big Wet

Well, after a few days of really high humidity and little sleep at night, today the land turned to water! When the rain fell, it really fell! The joy of my room at school is that there is no covering to reach the main school buildings, so the kids didn't want to go out. For that matter, neither did I! So I didn't! I stayed hiding in my room, doing all my paperwork.

Well, I did that for as long as that lasted. Suddenly, the power went out. Lights, computers, all of it. I discovered that water had been pouring into the art room next door. As our building is lower than most of the school the water flowed down the pipes and out into the teacher's room! There was a good 5cms of water lying on the floor! As if that wasn't enough, the water started flowing out of the power box! It was this that brought the maintenance guys and the Principal running, which resulted in the power being turned off ASAP!

Then I turned around and caught a glimpse of the creek! I did a double take! It was flowing like a river! The Principal told me that it was flowing over the road-bridge! Insane! The new foot-bridge was still standing tall.

Brisbane city was underwater. Cars were stacked on top of each other, with water up to the windows! Apparently it was the heaviest rainfall in 9 years!

Norman Hotel car park

Eating out....

There is a restaurant called the Loving Hut in Mount Gravatt. I have been wanting to try it for some time. Sonja had visited this place with work a year ago and didn't really appreciate the soy iced chocolate. As such it had been on the back-burner for awhile. Needing to get out, we decided to give a go tonight.

It is a vegetarian restaurant complete with Eastern save-the-animals ideology. There was this brochure about vegetarianism which included an interview with some grand master. On the brochure was a list of famous vegetarians which included Jesus Christ. I might be mistaken, but I thought Christ ate fish.

For entrée we had soy chicken nuggets - kind of like the nuggets that Sanitarium used to make. They were quite good. For main, I ordered a Singapore noodle dish (for about $10) and Sonja a meat-and-veges dish (also for about $10). Sonja's vegetable's had a gravy type sauce of which pepper seemed to be the principle ingredient. It was way too much for either of us. Her meat type thing was okay. My Singapore noodles were good. They had a bit too much coriander and could have benefited from a greater variety of flavours.

We would go again. We would both get different dishes. One of the main attractions of the shop is a freezer full of different soy meats. Perhaps this will provide opportunity for many creations of our own!

School starts again....

So we're back on the 'rollercoaster'. Second week of school. Kids are sounding out the teachers, teachers are trying to convince the students they're not to be messed with... Meanwhile we're getting some lovely rain. Hmmm....

Garden is growing well, would put up some photos if we had a camera... Yep, we've lost it. *insert sad face* It's either somewhere on the property, or in amongst luggage that hasn't been sorted through yet. Or lost in the depths of someone's car.

Property? Yes, we're planning on buying 460 acres of bush. We'll have to clear the road into the property, make the driveway which includes clearing a patch through the river, and slash waist high grass and growth. Yep, sounds fun. More to come soon.

Polar Bears, Weddings and Gardens!

Last weekend turned out to be quite a fun-fulled weekend! Nat and Andre's wedding was on Sunday, and Clinton was a groomsman so we had to travel down for the practise on Friday.

Seeing we have a QLD pass to Seaworld we thought we'd drop by on the way. The Polar Bears are our favourite as is the Dolphin Show. It always amazes me just how willing the Dolphins are. Last time we went we watched the show twice. I love the Dolphins!!

Jumping High!

Swimming backwards!

Surfing on a Dolphin!

But the Polar Bears, well... they are just soo amazing! This guy had to be coaxed out, and also coaxed into the water but then he seemed to enjoy it. The underwater viewing was amazing.

Why should I wake up?Going for a dip!

Just keep swimming, swimming, swimming!

The other amazing part was being able to touch a stingray! They had a touch tank! I touched quite a few, and also a sovel-nose shark too! Clinton had to be talked into it, and freaked himself out! I loved the weird feel of it!

Shovel nose shark!

Trying to reach a stingray to pat.Clinton's friend.

Sunday was the grand-event! I forgot my camera, and ended up being in charge of the video camera! Was a truly beautiful wedding down at the Gold Coast. Here is a picture that I have "stolen" from Imogen!




After the huge weekend, we came back to work on our garden. We've been having lots of problems with crows eating everything, so we had to crow-proof the garden, as well as give it some shade. Here's the results of today:



We've got corn, silver beet and lettuce so far, as well as a few tomatoes that are coming up. Our herbs are doing really well too!

Here are my Carrots!

Gardens and Owls

We've been working on our garden since returning from holidays. We needed to put more soil into our garden box, dose it up with nutrients and get some seedlings. Generally, the yard needed a really good clean up too. Why? Rain. It seems that while we were away it actually rained, and rained enough to make things green and grow. Unfortunately this also included the weeds.

While doing our stock up on soil at Bunnings, Clinton hurt his back. So he's been out of action, which has left me to do a good bit of the gardening. I mowed for the first time yesterday. Yep, just as I thought, I hate mowing. I hate mowers even more though. They throw things at you, like rocks! Not nice.

With all the soil in, we've so far planted lettuce, silverbeet, carrots, some more herbs (seems our potplant family of herbs is growing rapidly), and some tomato seedlings. We've also got some snowpeas which will go in soon too.

Today is a rather overcast day, and perhaps this is the reason for our visitor. We've had one of his kind before, it may even be the same one! An Owl has decided the edge of our window makes a very good perch! The only problem is, it's the window right beside the kitchen table, and he look at you if you sit there! He's a big Tawny Frogmouth, seemingly very well fed.



We're currently working on trying to Crow-proof the garden. Rotten crows keep pulling up things, eating things, or just generally destroying things for the sake of it! Any ideas on crow-proofing a garden box???

A New Year!

Well, isn't it exciting, it's a new year. Welcome 2010 - i hope you'll be a good one!

We've had a lovely holiday so far. First of all, we went up to Agnes Waters for a few days. It was lovely. Poor Clinton was a little unsure when he first saw how small Agnes Waters/1770 is, but he soon warmed up to having a slower pace... We stayed at the Agnes Waters Beach Club which was amazing. We had a self-contained unit, which had an amazing little kitchen, as well as a huge balcony. To make things better, we were at the back, which meant we had a view of the bush and to our left the salt water pool. Mmm, that pool was lovely too, and it had a spa!!

We had a choice of either going on a LARC tour, or out to Lady Musgrave Island. Clinton choose Lady Musgrave, which was a lovely day out. The boat trip took a while to get there, and it was rather rough, but when we got there it was great. There was the pontoon where you could just sit and relax, a guided tour of the Island which included some local history, snorkeling (we saw a small ray, turtles, reef sharks and soo many fish!), lunch, semi-submersible, and coral viewing. It was really worth the sunburn! If you've ever up that way, it is really worthwhile going (http://www.lmcruises.com.au).

We then headed back down to Hervey Bay. Not as keen on this place. I thought we'd go all fancy and stay at the Mantra. Bad move. Our "King Size Bed" was two single beds pushed together... our "View of the Marina" consisted of a very smelly view of only half the marina and our balcony was the smallest possible size... our room was above the cafe downstairs which had live music until VERY late at night.... I wasn't impressed!! As for Hervey Bay itself, when it isn't whale watching season, there is actually very little to do!

We then drove down to Cooranbong to stay with Sonja's parents. Was a lovely Christmas. Got to see a couple of friends while we were down, which was really great! While down there we bought a really cool coffee table!

Our lovely "gift" waiting for us when we got home was a power outage... which resulted in a fridge full of off food that was putrid!!! Wasn't nice. We spend Friday evening cleaning it out, trying not to gag the entire time. Sadly we lost the top tier of our wedding cake, which made me rather sad. I know it's a rather silly little tradition, but still.... Second lovely gift was no hot water. The switch is broken. I do not like cold showers! Hopefully that will be fixed tomorrow!!!!

We're now working on the garden. Lots of rain while we were away, which has made everything green. Amazing! Going to have to put up a "crow barrier" of some description, because they're eating/pulling up everything we plant so far. We went to Bunnings to get some plants, and Clinton hurt his back trying to pick up some soil for our garden. So he's now flat on his back. Looks like it'll be up to me to get in and do some gardening!