Red Moon Rising

Last night there was a total eclipse of the moon. It was really amazing to watch. At first, it was hard to tell if anything was happening, but ever so slowly, a shadow started to creep over the surface of the moon.
After about and hour and a half, all that was left was a little slither of glowing light and soon after that it was completly in the earth's shadow. I thought it would have been totally dark at this point, but it actaully took on a red\organge glow.
John tried to take some photos of it while it looked like that, but it was just too dark and they did not turn out. These other photos turned out pretty good, considering they were taken with just my normal digital camera!

Happy Birthday

It was Wendy's birthday yesterday and she had organised to drop in at Mum and Dad's place, so, on the way home from the airport we dropped in to wish her a happy birthday. Dad sent me these pictures today, so thought I would add them to my blog along with another big HAPPY BIRTHDAY wish! Hope you had a great day Wendy!!!

A Sad Goodbye

Hollie and Bonnie left this morning to return to the USA. It has been great to see them again and we all enjoyed having them stay. It was just like old times here on Saturday with both the girls here as well as Mindy (who flew down from Rocky on Thursday) and Arlie came home for a visit too. We had quite a housefull, but it was great fun and brought back many fond memories.




We had a big roast dinner the night before the girls left which was quite a laugh with so many of us at the table.
Everyone had the day off school to go to the airport and say goodbye. We all hope that it's not too long before we see them again.

From one extreme .....

It's finally stopped raining here but the Stanley River is still in flood. We went for a drive around town again yesterday and took a few more photos. The Stanley River peaked at 5.7m on Sunday and the level of Someret dam has risen by nearly 12% and is still going up!

In Loving Memory

When someone you love becomes a memory, The memory becomes a treasure.

Five years ago today John's father lost his battle with cancer. There is not a day that goes by that he is not in our thoughts.

We will always miss you Kevin!

It's Raining!!

That probably doesn't seem like a big deal to most people, but for us its HUGE! When I say it's raining, I mean it's really raining!! We have had nearly 128mm of rain since Monday morning and it has been a very long time since we have had anything like that.
We have been on level 5 water restrictions here for months and level 6 was going to start in early October, but now with this rain and the runoff that is going in to the dams, they are saying that level 6 may not kick in till early December. It has been an amazing few days of weather, with some parts of the Sunshine Coast just north of us receiving up to 718mm of rain in just one day and almost 1000mm in the past four days!
The Stanley River just out side of town is flowing strongly for the first time in ages. It rose from 1.85m at 7.30pm on Tuesday to 5.4m at 11.30pm on Friday and all this water is flowing directly into Somerset Dam.
We went for a bit of a drive today to take a look at the river and took a few pictures of the flooding.
On seeing some of the flooding around here today I was reminded of a saying that I heard years ago.
Australia - a land of drought broken only by intermittent floods!

A Big Day!

What a big day we've had around here! After dropping Morgan and Lucy off at school, Lacey and I popped in to see Mum and Dad on the way to the Airport. It was a quick visit as they had to go out, but it was great to see them. We arrived at the airport at about 10.30 and discovered that Hollie and Bonnie's plane had been delayed and wouldn't be arriving until 11.45 so we decided to go for a walk and grab something to eat. It was wonderful to see the girls when they finally arrived! They really haven't changed at all, just grown taller!LOL I forgot to get a photo of them both at the airport, but here is a lovely one of Hollie. Hopefully I will get a chance to take a few of them together later in the week.
After we got home, Renee rang to say that they were going to visit Mum and Dad and asked if we could come down to see them so after John finished work, we headed off back down to Dohles Rocks! Two visits in one day, that would have to be a record! Mum looks great, but Dad had a fall last week and it looks like he may have damaged his rotor cuff. As usual, Mum was able to get a meal for 14 people together at a minutes notice with food to spare!
Here are a few more photos taken at Mum and Dad's.

A Quiet Saturday

A fairly quiet day at home today. Lacey isn't very well and spent most of the day in bed as did Sarah. Morgan spent time either drawing or on the computer and Kaydon helped John work on the car and to tidy the shed.
I did the normal house work stuff and also started a scrapbook page! The first one I have done since April. I also spent some time mucking around with photoshop trying to fix up couple of photos. The results of my efforts are below.

More on Victoria

We spent the next few days of our trip relxaing and taking in the sights around Tatura. We had intended to visit Melbourne on the Friday, but the weather had turned bad so we decided to give it a miss. Here are few general pictures taken in Tatura.

They call Tatura Water Wheel Country and they've certainly got that right. There are water channels and wheels everywhere!

A Day in the Snow

Pretty quiet day around here today, Lacey has been home with a cold but that's about it really, so I will keep going with our trip to Victoria.

These pictures are from our day in the snow at Mount Buller on Wednesday the 4th of July.
We started out from Tatura at about 6am as we knew we had about a two hour drive ahead of us. We stopped very briefly in Benalla, then continued on to Mansfield where we fueled up again and hired some snow chains for the car before heading up the mountain range. The drive up the mountain wasn't as scary as I thought it would be and the excitment in the car started to really build as we got higher and started to see snow on the sides of the road. We parked the car and jumped on one of the shuttle buses that takes you right into the village and while we waited for the bus to fill up, it started to snow!!

The snow balls started to fly as soon as we got off the bus, and even though it was snowing quite hard, no one was really minding the cold. We decided to take a walk through the village for a while and then the kids decided to make a snowman (in between throwing snow balls at each other!!).

We then decided to hire a couple of tobboggans which kept the kids busy for qutie some time.
The fun ended after Sarah failed to stop her tobbogan at the bottom of the hill and ran straigt into a fence.
Once everyone had stopped moving while we made sure Sarah was ok, they all of a sudden realised just how wet and cold they were and we decided it was time to return to the car and try to warm up bit!

The weather had put on quite a show for us and the snow had not stopped falling the entire time we were there and when we got back to the car, we found it covered in snow!

I'd like to end this post with a big congratulations to Di and David on the birth of their Grandaughter Lacey! Can't wait to see some photos of the new arrival.

Echuca Continued

I have a few more photos of our day in Echuca to share.
These ones show the old docks taken from the park on the bank of the Murry River, and also a shot of the river itself.

The level of the river was very low, but there was a message saying that it was qutie normal for it to look like this at this time of the year.

The third one is of one of the many different paddle boats that make their way up and down this stretch of the river.

This last one is of a Harley Davidson that Kaydon spotted in the main street of Echuca. He fell in love with it and thought that the paint job was pretty cool!

Wednesday!

We had a pretty quiet day today. Morgan was the only one who went out (she went to the big family day in Caboolture with Lucy) while the rest of us took advantage of the day off, except for John of course, who had to go to work!!
The most exciting part of the day was talking to Dianne. She rang to let us know Hollie and Bonnie's travel plans. They will be arriving in Brisbane on Monday and then fly out back to America on the next Monday. We are very much looking forward to seeing them all, it's just a shame that Di won't be with them. It was great to talk to her on the phone though, she really doesn't sound any different!
I also heard from Renee today. She is home now and Amelia is doing well. Hannah and Sharlette are very happy to have her home and she was telling me that they enjoyed helping her give Amelia a bath.
I actually took some time out today and watched a movie with the kids. It was the Robin Williams film, RV. What a funny movie!! I have always loved Robin Williams and he did not disappoint in this movie. It did get me thinking about our future traveling plans again and I decided to start working out what we will need to do to the caravan to make it work for our needs. It's going to be a big job, but one both John and I are looking forward to. It is going to be great when it's finished, but I can see it's going to take a long time to get to ready for taking the sort of trips we would like to go on. But that doesn't really matter because it's probably going to be long long time before we can go on the trips anyway!!LOL

Tuesday News

I have been quite busy over the past few days and haven't had a chance to write so will do a bit of a catchup before continuing on with our Victorian trip.
Yesterday was quite a busy day. Lacey had to work so we dropped her off in Morayfield on the way up to the coast where we had lunch with Di. It was great to catch up with her as it seems we haven't seen either of them for such a long time. She is very patiently waiting for the birth of her daughter Anna's first baby.
After Di's, we went on to Mountain Creek for Sarah's doctors appointment. It went on a little longer than usual, but I think it went really well.
We decided to come home through Beerwah so we could pick up some fruit and veggies in Peachester and at the last minute I decided it would be a good time to try and catchup with Shari, who I also haven't seen for ages! We had a great visit, she was really surprised to us! Marnie was there too, so we were able to let her know all about how well Sarah is going and all the news regarding the court case.
We left Shari's at about 5pm and went to Peachester. I am always impressed by the prices at this place!! I don't know how they manage to sell their stuff as cheaply as they do, but the quality is always good and they are always much cheaper than the supermarkets!
We finally made it home at about 6.15pm and we were all pretty buggered. I took some time out to give Arlie a ring to see how the first day at her new job had gone. It was really good to hear that it had gone well. I feel so much more at ease now that she is working again and I know that she is going to be able to pay her rent!LOL
John left to pick Lacey up from work at about 8pm and was home agian by 9pm. He went to bed not long after getting back, but since the kids didn't have to go to school today, they were up later than they would normally be on a Tuesday night. I spent some time at the computer just paying bills and catching up on some book work.

More Photos of Amelia

We all went to visit Renee and Amelia at the hospital on Friday night, but sadly the kids were not able to see Amelia as she is having some trouble keeping her glucose levels up and has therefor been placed in the Special Care Nursery for observation. It all sounds a little scary, but Renee seems very calm about it and is coping very well under the circumstances.

Because there has been such a bad flu epidemic going on in Brisbane at the present time, Renee thought it best not to let too many people into the nursery, as there were 19 other babies in there and she didn't want to risk making any of them sick. Even Renee herself had to wear a mask to visit the nursery as she still has a nasty cough.

After our visit with Renee, we bought some take away and went to visit Sandra while we ate our dinner.

Welcome Amelia Paige!!

On Thursday last week (9/8/07) I was given the amazing privilege of being present at the birth of my Great Niece Amelia Paige Johnson!! What an amazing experience it was!! I want to thank both Renee and Troy so much for allowing me to be part of this absolute miracle!!

Amelia was born at 12noon and weighed in at 6lbs 1oz which is a pretty good weight considering she was born four weeks early! She is an absolute little doll and I am sure both Hannah and Sharlette will be thrilled to bits with their brand new sister.

It was also Sharlette's 2nd birthday, so it will certainly be a big day on the 9th of August in the Johnson house from now on!! Here are a few more photos of the new arrival with her very proud Mum and Dad.