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Saturday, November 30, 2013

Happy New (Church) Year!

Advent feeling rushed? Photo by Tank or Joybug
Ever since we got married, way back in April 2002, I have diligently written a Christmas Newsletter.  Each year since having moved to Toowoomba this has become more and more difficult to do.

Advent, the beginning of the Church year, is a most busy time of the year! We have Christmas concerts, end of year performances, numerous Christmas parties and that's before you consider the extra weekly service, the travel to outlying congregations in Stanthorpe and Glenarbon, and of course the fact that we know we will have extra people at Christmas Eve and Christmas Day services so preparation for these are heightened so that the Gospel can ring out!

Come for a ride through our year!
On the hedge Thomas train at Laurel Bank Park
Photo by the wonderful Kirsty Humphrey
So this year we have written a number of posts on our blog to tell you our news of this year. Each of our beautiful children will give you their news from the year (Tiger was quite disappointed with me that I wasn't going to do a newsletter). We adults share our take on the year too. Look under Family Updates.

We pray that you will find time to slow down this Advent and make the time to appreciate what God has done for us in sending Jesus, His only son, to rescue us from our sin, and the sin of others. Maybe, this Advent, you and your family can make some New Year resolutions regarding your spiritual life.

For we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them" Ephesians 2:10

Thursday, November 28, 2013

Tiger's Ungodly Shoes

Tiger couldn't find his shoes a few Sunday's ago.

I looked in his cupboard and there were a pair that he was given by parishioners.

"What's wrong with these? Wear them." said I

"I can't wear those, Mum!!" He said in shocked reply..."They're Nikes"

I didn't get it. In my day these were pretty fashionable shoes. In fact I think I remember a cousin who nearly had a toe cut off by an auger (farming equipment) and he was more upset that he was wearing his Nikes at the time.

"What's wrong with Nikes??" Thinking of course, that I was just behind the times.

"Nike is a greek god, Mum! It's ungodly!!!" said as if I should have known all along.

This boy knows a lot for a 10.5 year old. We actually refer to him whenever a greek god is mentioned in the New Testament, as he usually knows who it is and what they stood for. Having this information adds a lot to the reading of the New Testament. Those reading it closer to the time would have known all of these gods and understood the background better of what Paul or Luke or any of the other writers were expressing.

Tiger tells me: "Nike is the greek god of Victory, normally you see her with Athena, the greek god of war and wisdom."


Thursday, November 14, 2013

Green Ants

This is a Green Ant that I caught. (The Man)
I can see the shiny green colour, the beaded eyes, his pincers
and the antenna
Yep...it's the latest toy...the digital microscope.

The Man and Tank enjoyed finding out some more about ants today, and really loved being able to see them up close. It's really hard to make them be still!! But The Man managed to do it.

We do not like Green Ant bites, so it was great to see them in a different light.

All captions by The Man


The ant thinks he is fighting with a piece of wire. We could
see his pincers open.
The Green Ant eggs look like rice, or paper coated.

Garlic Harvest

A few weeks ago, we harvested the garlic that The Man planted much earlier in the year. The Man's story on planting garlic.

We knew it was time to get them out because the stems were dying. We dug around to the end of the garlic and then we pulled them up. We washed a few and ate them in cooked in our dinner. Mummy plaited the stems of the garlic together so they can stay together and store well. We store the garlic in the garage. When we want some in our dinner we cut some garlic off from the braid.

I'm planning to plant my best garlic bulbs next year.


The braid was nearly as tall as The Man!
Science Report by The Man


Microscopes are FUN!!!

This is the head of the bug we found. We looked at both ends
and determined that this end had beaded eyes.
I ordered a digital microscope for our homeschool a few weeks back...and when it came this week I decided to put it away, maybe for Christmas, maybe for when we come back from our holiday.

But the kids caught a bug in the house...it was time!

The kids were SO impressed...they ran around finding heaps of things to put under it.








This is Tank's finger...on our screen we could see heaps of
dirt on what looked to the eye to be clean fingers.



We also took video of a garden lizard that The Man found. Finally I was able to show the answer to one of the kids questions regarding how does a lizard hear. We could clearly see the holes on the sides of it's head for hearing...and the claws were very cool!


P.S. If you double click on the photos you can see them bigger and with some of the details we were talking about.






This is the centre of dying rose that Tank picked. You can
still see a piece of yellow pollen in there.

This is a spiderweb we found. The beading is not dew,
we think it is how the web is made...area for further research!