Life in the country

Uni has finished for the year. I am happy with this semesters results, 3 High Distinctions and a Distinction. Seeing as USQ’s cut offs for grade levels are higher than Curtin, it would have been 4 HD’s had I been at Curtin.

So what is life like living in the country?

Well firstly we have dodgy internet, and finally after 3 months we have found a spot for the modem that gets a stable connection. Stable enough that we might even be able to use it for VoIP! This is a good thing, as it also means I can finally work on the hotspot project without having internet problems. As uni is over, I’m making good progress on the hotspot.

Next, we have the chooks. We have 2 sitting chooks, sitting on what we can only presume to be fertilised eggs. We have a crow problem stealing our eggs, so thankfully these 2 chooks are doing a good job protecting their eggs. We have 2 other chooks laying eggs too, which means the egg count in the fridge is finally going up! Hardy the Rooster has been a little overprotective too, but seems to have calmed down in time to avoid the chop.

Molly our goat has lost her winter coat and looks a lot skinnier now! I’m sure the other day she wished she still had her winter coat as we had lots of rain. She still needs to be chained up all the time as she is an escape artist. Fences mean nothing to her, and the horses next door don’t like her. That means though that I have to keep finding new places I can attach a chain to, that are far enough away from a fence that she won’t go through the fence. And of course, she is always getting the chain tangled up. I’m glad it’s not a rope! She broke her collar the other day, which was lots of fun trying to catch her, she thought it was a great game running all over the paddock with me chasing her. Finally I called for Sara to help, and she walks out carrying Nathan, and Molly goes under the fence and walks right up to them like she had done nothing wrong!

Our water tank has overflowed again. Sara had a shower under the overflow pipe yesterday, it was pouring out! At least that means the downpipes aren’t blocked, and we don’t have to worry too much about water this summer.

Nathan is pulling himself up to standing using the couch, and then walking himself along the couch. He still refuses to sit though. Today he sat, but only long enough that he could put some piece of dirt in his mouth before he was off again in search for more things to put in his mouth. It won’t be too long before he’s walking outside with me to feed the animals, instead of being carried.

Christmas is coming, so the (small) Christmas tree is up along with some lights. We’d love to have some large durable nativity pieces, as we want to make an outdoor nativity scene near the front gate. Then some solar charged spotlights on it, and when people drive past they’ll see our nativity. So if you have some large nativity pieces you don’t use, or would love to make us some, then feel free!

Anyway, that is just a short update of life out here. Enjoy the festive season, but don’t forget the real reason for the season.

Tim

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Videos of Nathan

Here are some videos of Nathan taken recently.

Nathans first trip to the beach. Initially he wasn’t sure what to think of the water but he decided against it.

Nathan has a play on Grampas new bike. He absolutely loved it, he’s a boy through and through and will be riding bikes as soon as we let him.

p.s. If the videos don’t show up in the email version, goto http://vimeo.com/purewhite/videos

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Uni End

It has been a very long week or two and I’m glad that it is behind us.  The two weeks just gone were exam weeks.  Tim had one the first week, and three this week.  It’s the first time he has been to the campus in Toowoomba.  He really liked it.  If the need to study on campus comes up, I don’t think he will mind.  There’s even free parking!

Jessica’s wedding is fast approaching.  Two weeks from today I believe.  There is a lot of last minute planning going on, and I’m seeing a fair bit of them.  There was an industrial accident in the local area yesterday and the wife and daughter of the man who died were our caterers and hairdressers, so we are having to find others to replace them.  Not fun for us, but a billion times worse for them.

Her fiance is from Cambodia and he arrived about two weeks ago.  It’s been great to catch up with him, and others from Cambodia are slowly starting to arrive.  It’s been incredible to catch up with really great friends of mine from years ago.  To introduce them to my husband and my son!

Nathan is growing more and more every day.  He has become a real mummy’s boy in the last few weeks.  Tim and I play a game; He starts to cry with Tim, upon which he gets handed to me and he zips up.  Then I immediately pass him back to Tim and he starts crying again.  It’s like an automatic on/off switch.  🙂

He is a lot of fun to be around.  He is interacting with everything and giggling a lot.  The other day we had our first experience of him doing something for laughs.  He had reached up to pull a toy from an activity mat that his Grammy (my mum) bought him, and he let it go and it bopped him on the head.  We laughed and he laughed, and then when he realised we had stopped laughing, he turned around, pulled and released again, and looked back to check if we were laughing again.  This game continued for about five minutes, becoming increasingly funny by the fact that he was so amused.

Another milestone this week,  first tooth is coming through.  He hasn’t been that fussy about it either.  He’s been a bit grumpy, but I’m pretty certain that has more to do with the late nights that we’ve had.  The little guy is down to two sleeps a day.

Anyway, there is a lot coming up in the next few weeks, all of it kind of building up to this Nov 27th wedding.  It’s very good having Tim home again.

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Casual Saturday

We took Nathan for his very first swim today.  Our friends have a pool and so we took advantage of the very humid day to take him for a dip.  We don’t have a swim nappy yet, so we just used one of his old cloth nappies and put a fairly tight pilcher over it, and that worked fine.  He enjoyed the water.  He wasn’t all happy and giggly, or upset.  Just very tame.  It’s pretty hard to phase this little guy.

We went for a drive this afternoon to relieve Tim of his assignment stress (the two due this week) and checked out some of the back roads.  In other words 4wding.  It was pretty rough terrain and we got to a point where we couldn’t go any further and had to reverse out.  We were following the railway line road.  On our way home Tim said the brakes felt strange.  Upon closer inspection it looks like we’ve killed a brake line.  It looks like there’s been a slow leak for a while, and this just finished it off.  So mum and dad have lent us a car to get to church tomorrow and we shall get it fixed asap.

Vanity, one of mum and dads kids, turned 14 today so they had a BBQ party over at their place tonight.  Just their kids alone is a pretty mad party most days so the extra crew were fairly loud.  My ears were completely blocked from the swimming so the noise was reduced for me.  🙂

Mum and Dad are discussing how to bury Morry, our cockatoo.  Dad has suggested putting her in the freezer until future technology provides alternatives.  Fine until the freezer accidentally gets turned off.

Anyway, I really am trying to keep this more up to date, even with useless information that I am sure you don’t really care about.  If it bothers you, get Tim to take you off the mailing list and you can just check back when you want to.

XX  Sara

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Nathan 6 months

Well Despite our best efforts, this blog has gone to the wayside again. But I will try and update you on all that is happening.

Obviously what everybody is most interested in would be Nathan. He is now six months old. My Mum (Grammy) seems to think that that time has gone quite quickly, but it feels like forever to me. I can’t really remember not having him. It’s been less than three years since I left high school, but it feels like years more. He is in his room right now playing on an activity mat, which is a rare moment. He is always moving, always needing to be walked or jumped or thrown in the air. He refuses to sit still on your lap or give you cuddles unless he is a few breaths away from sleep. So now that he can get around by himself it has made our lives a little bit easier. He’s not conventional crawling, but he can drag himself across the ground commando style, and if he wants something, bygosh he can get there quickly.

He’s not sitting unsupported yet. He’s getting there. I’m sure he would if I actually left him to, but I don’t trust him just yet so I’m always right behind him. He LOVES food. For at least the last two months he has wanted to down everything that he sees. We tried keeping him until six months before starting him on solids and we succeeded fairly well. Up until now he’s only had some mashed banana. He gets so cranky when he can see you eating and not sharing it with him.

He had his first taste of Ice-Cream last week. Tim and I went to Cold Rock to celebrate me getting my P’s and as I was eating mine, Nathan whipped his hand out, stuck it into my icecream and then back into his mouth pronto. It was like a lizards tongue. Needless to say, he was moved and didn’t have that opportunity again.

Tim has a lot of uni to do at the moment. We are about two weeks away from block exams, and so the assignments are coming on hard and fast. So far he’s done really well with his assignments. He’s gotten 100% on two now, so I’m very proud of him for that. Once the exams are over we can relax a bit I guess.

One of our good friends is getting married at the end of November so we are eagerly awaiting that event. Some of my friends from Cambodia are coming over, and it will be the first time I’ve seen them since I left, so I’m quite excited. I am helping with the planning and everything. I love planning weddings!

We are going to a great church in Toowoomba. It’s a bit of a drive, but totally worth it. We’ve been going up to music practice during the week as well and just having a jam with them. It’s been great to get hooked in with a church family so quickly. Just what we needed. Although it’s not a big church, there are lots and lots of little babies. It’s great to meet up with other parents and chat.

On the not so cheery side of things, we have been in to Brisbane recently to see my cousin Adriel who is in the Royal Children’s Hospital. He is two years old, and lives in North QLD. While him and his dad were helping clean out someones house, he fell over in the Kitchen and injured his head. It turns out he had a stroke. I believe they’re not sure whether the stroke caused the fall or the fall caused the stroke, but it has turned out to be quite serious. Initially he was paralysed, and they thought it would be a temporary thing and full movement would return, but it turns out its not as straigh forward as that. So he’s been flown down to Brisbane to start therapy and rehab. Because he’s young they have high hopes that he will be able to recover most of his ability, but its too early to say just yet.

This has affected me more than I thought it would. Seeing him in hospital was quite a shock. They’re a very healthy family. His mum is down with him, and as you would expect is very stressed out. If you could keep them in your prayers, we would appreciate it. His name is Adriel.

On another sad note, though not quite comparable, my parents cocaktoo died this morning. We’ve had her for 10 years, and she used to belong to a very close friend of ours that died, so she’s an important part of the family. Though she was 75 years old, we expected another couple of decades with her. I’ve always said I was going to take her when Mum and Dad died. 🙂

So that’s an update from us. Hopefully we’ll be back soon, but you won’t believe that because we have such a bad track record. Love to you all. We are really missing you guys over in Perth. Too bad we can’t be everywhere all at once.

Xx Sara

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