At last

We finally know!

We're moving to Lavington, New South Wales.

And pretty pleased about it.

Although we are still adjusting to the news, still finding out about the place. For now we know about as much as you can find on the internet. So check it out and be as up-to-date on our new town as we are!

always on my mind

.....still don't know where we're going to be living next year.....

And I've decided not to change my blog for a little while yet.  Thanks for voting though!  I think I really just can't bring myself to change one more thing when everything else is changing.  I like pink. I like this tan colour thing I've got going on.

So maybe later.  Maybe when I'm feeling a little more settled.  I promise to remember that you all voted for green to win.  

Hope you can all live with that!

It's just something I have to do

Not much going on at school today. Just running our student leaders through the handover ceremony for this Friday, setting up for chapel, catching up on emails... the usual.

Oh. And I'm going on an excursion with some students this afternoon. It'll be ok. We're going to a factory. I'll let you know if I pick up anything. You can check it out if you want - but be warned - you might not like me for doing this as part of my job.

I just didn't know how to say no when they asked if I could help out. I'm that kind of girl.

Sorry. That you can't come with!

Edit: It was yummy!  You can just about eat the air in there!  Next time you have half an hour to spare in Adelaide do yourself a favour and book yourself in for a free tour.

Cute Models at Dinner

On Sunday Joel and his class mates met for some class time with Bob, their lecturer, at his beautiful home.  Bob and his wife Rae invited the wives and families to join them for dinner once they had finished their hard work.  And what a dinner!  Such wonderful summer food, such gentle and enjoyable company.  Bob and Rae were wonderful hosts who made each of us feel welcomed and relaxed.

Anna, Mary Ann and I were the only wives who were able to make it but we sure had a lovely time sharing stories, hopes and excitement for the coming days.  Mostly though we were completely distracted by Mary Ann's two gorgeous girls: Theresa and Esther.  Theresa enjoyed the dress ups (especially the glasses!) and empty make up bottles while little Esther was happy dancing to the musical toys, investigating the plastic animals and watching her big sister.  See how much Esther has grown since last time I shared a picture of her!

Could theresa look any more like an old lady in the picture on the right?!

If I ever get seriously into children's photography I will be able to give credit to the wonderful little models I practiced on! 

Two sides

In 8 weeks we'll be leaving Adelaide to spend some time in QLD with my family before travelling back to Adelaide via Sydney to visit a friend, Horsham to visit Joel's family and maybe stopping by our new house.  The crazy thing is this: we don't know yet where our new house is.  

You heard me.  We're moving out of this house in 8 weeks and we don't yet know where to.  It could be any where in Australia.  Or New Zealand for that matter.  Wherever the presidents of the Lutheran Church of Australia decide is best for Joel to be the pastor - that's where our house is.  I'm imagining it will have a bathroom, a kitchen, a bedroom or two, some lounge room space, maybe bit of a garden and a laundry.  But I don't know and the not knowing is so many words: frustrating, stressful, crazy, draining and just plain hard.  

Comments like - 'you'll know soon enough' and 'a few weeks isn't that long in the scheme of things' are well intentioned and received with some gratitude but I really prefer to hear 'wow, that must suck!'  Because it really does.  On one hand.

On the other hand - not knowing is, not quite fantastic, but ok.  I don't want to leave Adelaide.  I love it here.  This is my home.  My friends are here.  I know people who work in shops, who catch my buses, who live near by.  This is my patch of the world.  The place I met and married my husband.  The place I finally finished a degree.  The place I established relationships.  Where I learnt to drive, finally.  Where I learnt to love Mocha's and Thai and Indian and wine and wineries and wine tours and cheese that smells funny but tastes ok.  It's taken me 5 years  to establish that.  Now we have to go.  

So not knowing where we have to go makes staying and enjoying my last 2 months that much easier, that much more relaxed because if I don't know where I'm going how can I possibly stop being here?  For a while longer I don't have a new home so this can't be my old home.  For a while longer I don't have to worry about where it is I'll have to make new friends so I don't have to think about saying goodbye to my precious tribe here.

For a little while longer - until we know where will live next year - I can be here wholly, in joy, in peace and just a little insane with wondering.

And so continues waiting....

Biker Baby

Look how my Daddy loves me!

I found this photo a few days ago.  How great are the outfits, colours, safety precautions?!

Just priceless.  There will surely be photo's from 'the old days' posted over the next few weeks.

And guess what?!  Joel has been approved as a candidate for ordination in 8 weeks! 

One

Joel was away most of last week.  Monday to Saturday night.  I didn't miss him too much - I was having way too much fun with all my girlfriends, projects, books and movies.  At least I didn't mope and feel sad so I didn't miss him in that sense.

Now he's back though and, well - I did miss him!  Not in in that sad way but in the way that I feel more content, at peace, together and something indescribable now he's home.  

When we said our vows both of us firmly believed that God would make us one.  What we didn't realise, and probably still don't fully grasp, is that our oneness is a process.  God did make us one our wedding day but every day, and through every conflict we resolve, secret we share, moment we create He is making us more one.  Our times apart are becoming easier in the sense that we are able to enjoy that as separate time without feeling sad but harder too because were are one and being apart makes us each a little bit less than what we are as a whole.

What a wonderful experience: to be one whole part of one whole marriage.

Welcome home my love!

Voting Closed

Green and yellow it is folks!  

Being Australian but not overly patriotic this one will be a challenge - especially since bottle green makes me cringe on many levels - so that will be out of the mix...  

And yellow brings to mind the colour of my sports team at my first high school - Go Yowgara! (I know I'm not spelling that right but I should get points for even remember since that was in 1990...something!)  And we know how I feel about athletics - could there be a more tormenting way to spend a day?  I think not.

Neither of those options inspire me so I'll have to expand my view of the colours, widen my vision and expand my appreciation for yellow and green.

It's a very good thing I like most other shades of green!

Stick around and see what happens next.

Thanks for your input!

Mirror, mirror.

People, you know the ones, often tell me I look like my dad.  He's a good looking man so that's sort of ok - except that I'm a 26 year old girl and he's, let's just say for the sake of keeping the peace and because he can never remember anyway and I wouldn't want to upset you dad (!!), older than that by a chunk.  Oh - and a man!

What I've taken to saying is this:  Thanks, but you know I actually think I look a lot like his mother when she was my age.  Mind you, I look like my mum too (genetics- they really do show) but wouldn't you rather look like a woman when she used to be 26 than a man who has never been a woman at 26?!!

In the weeks following grandma's death last year we were sorting through her house and discovered a suitcase full of drawings that she had done while studying and working as a graphic designer - in the 1940's!  Can you even believe they had graphic designers back then?  And she was super good.  Everything had to be drawn and hand painted.  She was meticulous.  All her work was marked higher than 85% (maybe because she threw out the others but I think she was just that good).  I found this one where she had done a study of expressions.  She's drawn herself six different ways.  I can imagine her sitting in front of a mirror with her eyes flicking between it and her paper while her pencil careful etches each line of her own face.

This barely touches the surface of what she could do.  She was one seriously talented lady.  I don't mind inheriting some of her passions and skills.

I certainly inherited some of her looks.

{Get your final votes for the new look of my blog in.  24 hours to go!}

Anna's Revamp

Voting for a change of colour scheme hasn't closed yet so i haven't done much about my blog - and wont until the final results are in.  

As a side issue - whoever it is with another suggestions - come one!  let's hear it - I can't take it into consideration if it's not put forward.

Back on track - I haven't done anything about mine but go and check out the lovely Anna's 'new' blog.  She had mentioned she wanted a whole new look so I had a few thoughts and she let me go through with one of them.  My friends are incredibly trusting (or scared!) of me and my ideas.   Anyway - I'm a little proud of myself as her header was drawn using my mouse and I think it's pretty cute.

make sure you introduce yourself to her - if she doesn't already know you and check back often as she's interesting, funny, wise, smart and super creative and will be sure to have some stuff along those lines to share with us all.

Welcome back Anna!

Healing

Two weeks ago today I had all four wisdom teeth out in hospital.  The pain was incredible - in a bad, bad way.

But right now I have been painkiller free for 48 hours! Oh yeah.  Quite the achievement.  Not entirely pain free I might add - just toughing out the last bit.

In other words - I'm nearly all better.  I think the stitches lasted all of 4 days before I swallowed them - didn't see a single one but felt one of them one night and then never again.  The bruise is gone and I don't look puffy.  Although one rude, nameless person did say, after I was feeling particularly good, "you still look quite swollen..."  That has got to rate up there with asking a large, un-pregnant lady when her baby is due.  I think I look fine!  

My chin is still numb though - weird.  Not liking that at all and will be quizzing the surgeon about it in my follow up visit in two weeks.  Will let you know how much permanent damage I gave him permission to inflict by signing the disclaimer.  I am getting strangely used to it though...?!

Thanks for all your thoughts and prayers.  I made it!

{don't forget to vote on the colour scheme!  the numbers are ridiculously even at this stage.  if you think your vote wont make a difference... you're wrong!}

They have arrived!

Each year at the graduation ceremony we present our year 12's with crosses to remind that them that while they are leaving our community Christ still goes with them.  It's a quite a special moment as the principal and chaplain place the necklaces over the head s of each student and you see that they know - this is the last thing they get from us - the promise of Emmanuel - God with us.

For my first three years the selecting and purchasing of crosses was the realm of the chaplain.  And not really a major job as we had no more than 45 students graduate in a year.  Last year though our chaplain was unwell and unable to organise the crosses.  So it fell to me.  Which is ok I guess.  I didn't have as much notice as I would've liked and the company that we had previously bought the crosses from didn't let me know that they didn't have enough in stock which meant I was waiting for crosses that would never arrive.  The short of it is that I spent a lot of time on the phone getting cranky at managers, calling every christian bookstore in SA and Australia, and plowing through the internet to unearth every cross in a similar style to the ones we already had.  I bought out Australia of one entire line of necklace.  And some only turned up days before I needed them because they were expressed posted.

And I nearly had a nervous breakdown.

However, in my searching I discovered something new.   A different type of necklace from the surfy type we'd been buying.  It was perfect.  I bought one.  Just one.  And I took it to our principal and to our new chaplain at the start of the year and said - "these are what I want our year 12's to have".  I got the go ahead.   They were hardly going to say no - they're completely perfect for our school!  They're in the shape of a shield - like our school logo, they have a cross engraved on the front and they have Joshua 1 v 9b engraved on the back which is our official verse for the leaders in our school - well, we used it a few times and then I found these crosses and made it the official verse!!

I bought 250 of them.

And they have all arrived already.  2 months early.

We have 60 something students graduating this year and about 80 next year.  I have bought enough crosses that who ever needs to do it next year doesn't have to think about it - and the year after and the year after!

A little overkill - but no one should go through that stress!