Request

It has been on my heart a lot lately to pr@y for this family. I am posting them here and asking for others to join me. I am not listing their name or the country they are in so that it can not be searched and therefore highlight them. (look closely at the photos). They have been working in this country for almost a year now. It is almost time to decide whether to come home or extend their time there and if to extend in the same or a different direction. Please pr@y for wisdom, safety and opportunity plus the education of the children.

Vanuatu Reminiscing

Love these cloud shots taken from the plane.




Local ladies run these market stalls for the tourists and The main street of Port Vila.

Jeffrey our "bus" driver. Local market In Port Vila

Wish I had turned this one around but you get the idea - the water is beautiful.
One of my favourite photos, the whole culture is so relaxed.


Sarumbulu Church of Christ and Patrick and Nick with the Pastor's children and the ball Patrick bought for them with his own money because they were kicking around a flat busted old one.

We went fishing in this little boat that you would not have gone out in in Australia. We jumped over the side and went snorkelling over a coral reef and went out around the point into this rolling open ocean (very quickly decided that we wanted to head back). It was an amazing afternoon.

I had over 340 photos to choose from so it was hard to choose just a few to put here. Hope that you enjoy them.

Weekly Ramble

Well we have had a pretty calm week this last week. Both boys managed to behave themselves at school. (Praise the Lord). Dave had a good week of mowing. We had a wonderful barbeque on Friday night with Michelle, Michael and the girls (Dave's sister and family). We were on pretty strict rashons (not sure if that is how you spell it) as we were waiting for the end of month cheques to come in and to go and have a big cook up barbeque with potato bake was fabulous. I held my first Nutrimetics party on Saturday afternoon and it went very well. I have another one booked for next month. So hopefully if the Coles job doesn't work out I can get some income from the Nutrimetics. On the Coles front I still haven't had a shift yet. Maybe it is not meant to be. We've had a few problems with our tenants in our house in Victoria (namely not having paid rent since they had moved in 6 weeks ago) but we were able to list it with a real estate who is lovely to talk to and seems to know her job very well and they have started to pay rent so that is great. Have been looking through some old photos lately and thought I would share these ones from Vanuatu. We had a fantastic holiday there 2 years ago and would love to go back there. Dave even thought about moving there but it is way to hot and humid for me. Chat with you all again soon.

Vicki and Lovella's Blogs

If you want to have a look at Vicki or Lovella's blog (Lovella's has links to other graduation photos) let me know and I'll send you the addresses. If you want to post your own graduation photos let me know and I'll link them to Lovella's.

Graduation

That is me in the blue on the right.


I was over at Vicki's blog having a look and she had taken up the challenge on Lovella's blog to post pictures of her graduation dress. It is the 20th reunion later this year for my high school graduation and when I was unpacking I found a graduation/prom photo of myself and 3 friends that I scanned and sent to one of those friends. We had a combined graduation and prom night. I too had grown up mostly with home made clothes made by my maternal grandmother. It was often a source of embarrassment especially on uniform free days at school as there were very few people still making their own clothes. I thought that I was extremely blessed to have been able to get a store bought dress for my graduation (looking at Lovella's and knowing the love that would have gone into making her dress now I'm not so sure). We had the ceremony and meal in the high school hall. Some of the students came in special cars. I went to the hair dresser and had my hair done and my aunt did my make up. Last time I saw it the dress was still in the back of mum's wardrobe but there is no hope of me fitting into it now as I am about 50kg heavier than I was then. It is the second most expensive dress I have ever owned (not sure of the exact price but I am positive that it was over $100 an absolute fortune in those days. The most expensive was my wedding dress that was about $250). Schoolies (basically schoolies is where school leavers meet on the coast and drink excessively and party wildly) was just starting then but my friends and I went in the opposite direction and had a week at Hervey Bay with my grandmother as chaperone and it was wonderful. I'll have to dig out the high school photos and do some more reminiscing.

Friday Musings

Well it has been a couple of weeks since I blogged.
Patrick has settled in fairly well to his new school. He has been there 2 weeks now. I got 14 texts from him the first day. He was lonely and lost most of the day and someone took his bag instead of their own. I've spoken to most of his teachers and they seem to think that he is going okay. He was in a fight in class the other day. The guy had squirted him with water earlier and Patrick had told him to get over himself. The guy then decided to invite himself into Patrick's maths class (apparently this is an ongoing problem with the teacher having to spend the first part of every lesson finding out who shouldn't be there and sending them on their way to their own classes) and starting carrying on and Patrick retaliated. Kids from another class had to come and break it up. Patrick had to write a report of the incident but nothing else has been said or done.
Nicholas has been wonderful at home but his teacher has pretty much had enough of him. He talks in class and he has to have the last word on everything. She is at a loss of what to do with him and wants us to take away his privileges at home (we'd already taken away all his computer time). I had an interview a couple of weeks ago where she said that he had started to answer back like his mates did (and yes Nicholas chose to be friends with the 2 worst behaved kids in his class). So when she gave him instructions he would answer her with yeh and ok instead of just doing them. He was also talking a lot in class. I said to her that I had spoken to Nicholas and he said that the other kids were talking to him and he was answering them or telling them to be quiet and he was getting in trouble. She agreed that this was the case but she had spoken to him about ignoring them. Well apparently this did settle down for a while but has escalated in the last week to the stage where she can't take it anymore and has exited him 3 times for what she calls rudeness. When she says Nick get on with your work he is not supposed to say yes or ok he is supposed to just get on with his work. Nick believes that she picks on him and his 2 mates (how many times have I heard that while I was teaching). The next step as far as the teacher is concerned is suspension. So we've had a long chat with Nicholas and hope to see some improvement.
Applied at Coles Supermarket for casual work (6 to 8 hours a week) and got it about 3 weeks ago but have been waiting for everyone else to finish their online inductions (all others were school kids except 1 lady) so that we could go to our store induction. Went for 3 hours on Wednesday night. Typical of all the garbage that has to go on legally now. Union Rep spoke and got us all to join up. Joined the super fund and discussed the staff club. Watched videos on the use of chemicals (as checkout operators we only use one of them), what to do in a fire and in hold ups and all the ways the store can find out if we are stealing from them and filled out work sheets on each of them. Ran out of time to do the ones on the sale of tobacco products and how to pack the customers bags. Also didn't have time to do the store walk to show us where all the departments were and the emergency exits and where to enter the store if we are on opening. Hopefully we will get some training on how to use the registers before we are unleashed on the public.
Dave's mowing is going well. He is continuing to receive new clients from the Government Housing group that he mows for and some new private ones as well. The regularity of mowing properties is slowing down as we head into winter but with the introduction of new clients our income isn't decreasing. He pinched a nerve or something in his back (in the shower not at work) last week but it coincided with heavy rain so he did not miss any work.
Gotta go just got a phone call to say that Patrick has been suspended for 2 days for the fight and I have to go pick him up.

Toorbul and Bribie Island

Had 2 fishing trips the last 2 weekends. Went to Toorbul around lunch time as the tide was coming in. Didn't catch any fish but it was a lovely day.

Went to Bribie Island last weekend with some friends who had come down for the Greek Festival. It was amazing how peaceful and quiet it was beside the water, especially as it was Friday evening.

Went to the Panyiri Greek Festival on Saturday. It was fantastic. We really had a great time. We tried all sorts of food. The first picture if of Fried Baby Octopus - wasn't overly excited about them. But we also ate Souvlaki (chicken and lamb on a stick), Cabbage Rolls (filled with mince and rice), Mousaka (like a lasagne with mince, eggplant and potato layers), Honey Puffs (pastry puffs swimming in honey), Greek Meatballs (bit spicy for me but the others loved them), Houlimi (Fried Cheese), Greek Yoghurt and ice cream, Dutch profitteroles, Baklava (puff pastry with a nutty filling), Greek Shortbread, Turkish Delight, some sort of biscuit that was cooked and then soaked in honey and rolled in a nutty mixture and then cooked again. Now it sounds like we ate a lot but we just bought a serve of each thing and then shared it so that we could all get a taste of lots of things. Steve (our mate), Patrick and Nicholas took Steve's 3 girls on the dodgems and they had a blast. I video taped it as well which turned out really well. I don't have any luck putting it on the blog though. To watch the face of Tara, in with Nick, through the tape is hilarious. She starts all smiles and then has one hand up on her head and ends up with her head in both her hands.

We then got caught in a storm and ended up all soaked. We decided not to stay for the evening entertainment and fireworks and headed home for hot showers, dry clothes and hot milos. Perfect way to finish a great day.