Tag: favourite places

Categories
#blogjune Blogging challenges Christianity family anecdotes places to visit Work

Sipping from the saucer #8

I work at a Christian school. The pastor of the church which established our school has a saying: “The LORD has blessed me so much, my cup is overflowing (taken from Psalm 23) and I’m sipping from the saucer.”

I like the visual, so I’m using it here, in this month-long blogging challenge focusing on the blessings God has poured out on me.

Today: blessing #8… and it’s the reason why this post is late! Check it out:

Not one, not two, but FIVE tickets to SeaWorld, courtesy Hubby’s work and his colleagues. So that’s where we were yesterday – and a BRILLIANT day was had by all 🙂

Here’s wishing you a blessed day too, dear Reader!

– KRidwyn

Categories
Random thoughts Writing

Writing view

I’m so proud of how well my garden’s growing. There’s a low windowsill in my bedroom on which I sit and write, admiring and being inspired by, my view.

This is it as I pen this post.

It makes me smile. I’m a very blessed girl 🙂

Here’s hoping you have a blessed week too, dear Reader!

KRidwyn

Categories
family anecdotes Life momentous events places to visit Uncategorized

Of beachworms and psychology

Fraser Island, in Queensland. One of my favouritest spots in the world.

Hubby and I have visited dozens of times, and explored pretty much everywhere, however we’ve never managed to get past Ngkala Rocks, and so have missed out on the view from the northernmost tip of the largest sand island in the world.

Not so on our most recent holiday. There with close friends, we made it past Ngkala Rocks, and kept on driving.

And made it! Photo below as proof!


On the return journey, we stopped to catch some beachworms for bait. Miss12, who’d been snarky all day because she’d wanted to go south to Eli Creek, instead of north to Sandy Cape, was surprised to see the length of the first worm Hubby caught – 80cm, at least.

She and I were sitting in the car, with everyone else outside, when I thought I’d try a psychological trick.

“I reckon you’d be good at that,” says I. “You’re good at catching lizards – catching beachworms is kinda the same thing.”

Cogs whirred. The arguments poured out ‘they’ll bite me instead of the pipi’ ‘it’s cold’ ‘I don’t want to get my feet wet’ but meanwhile we watched Hubby catching more – all a similar size. The focus of the arguments changed. ‘There’s no point now; there’s not much time left’ ‘I don’t have a pipi’ and then I let loose with the clincher.

“I’ve only ever caught maybe one or two beachworms in my life. I’m not very good at it. Oh well.”

I know my kid well. There was nothing for it but Miss12 was out of the car and into it. She even let me teach her how to get a pipi out of its shell!

Close on an hour later, the beachworm hunters returned; Miss12’s face wreathed with smiles.

Clever Mummy, says I. Perfect day indeed.

Have a great week yourself, dear Reader!

– KRidwyn

Categories
#blogjune Blogging challenges family anecdotes

Once Upon A…

I’ve managed to get Miss12 and Miss9 hooked on the TV series Once Upon A Time.

Yeah, I feel a little bit guilty about that.

But only a little. Deep down, I really like how they want to watch the story unfold, along with me. We talk through character motivations, discuss plot twists, and to tell you the truth, they’re better at finding plot holes than I am!

For Mother’s Day, *they* bought me Seasons 2 to 5 of the series. We’re just gone halfway through Season 4 now. Frankly, that’s a lot of episodes. A lot of time, snuggled on the lounge, with my girls.

And I love that.

Have a great day, dear Reader!

— KRidwyn

Categories
Life momentous events Random thoughts teaching Work

I’m still smiling…

So the first day of school came, and went, and I’m still smiling. No, not everything went to plan, but that’s okay. Tomorrow’s a new day.

And yes, I’m planning on being smiling at the end of tomorrow as well 🙂

Have a great week, dear reader!

— KRidwyn

Categories
#blog12daysxmas Blogging challenges family anecdotes momentous events Writing

Six years on

It’s the beginning of a New Year. An auspicious time to make new resolutions and new commitments; to gently blow the burgeoning flame of new hopes until they become habits… well, that’s the general idea, anyway.

This time of year also reminds me of the time I started blogging.

December 25, 2010.

It was for a blogging challenge started by @FiFYI -#blog12daysxmas – and I’d thought, “Well, why not?!”

And that was that.

Day 1. I’d decided to be literal and write a post a day on the Christmas carol ‘The 12 days of Christmas’.

Day 2. Two turtle doves and questions of ‘devotion’…

Day 3. And I’m stumped as to why we have mundane hens on the list. French ones, at that.

Day 4. My humble thoughts on the differences between blackbirds and crows, and how many blackbirds might comfortably fit into a pie…

Day 5. And I bet you thought that the ‘five gold rings’ meant jewellery, didn’t you!

Day 6. Six geese a-laying. That’s a lot of eggs between now and the end of the song. And a lot of ankle-biting, too!

Day 7. Swimming swans are given by the True Love to the singer… and several hundred years later, the family and I escape floodwaters and arrive home to relish the feeling of dry clothes and mud-free sheets 😀

Day 8. The singer is given eight maids a-milking, and I ruminate on what it is that defines a person.

Day 9. Nine ladies dancing – and a quick tally of what the singer now has at her house. It’s getting crowded in there!

Day 10, and I’m in awe of the sheer organisational ability of this ‘True Love’. Honestly, it’s incredible!

Day 11. In which bagpipes enter the cacophony, and I speculate on what the ‘True Love’ may actually have been devoted to… and

Day 12. The inevitable conclusion to the challenge; and one in which I find my opinions of the carol quite at variance to what I thought I would be thinking!

I always find it fun, going back and re-reading stuff I’d written years before. Remembering what it was like: Hubby and I stranded in our caravan at 1770 with three very young ones, no bread, little milk, and no spare petrol, in the middle of the craziest floods so far this century. Remembering how my opinions of the song changed dramatically, but my desire to blog, and my love for writing, deepened.

Well, that was a look back. Now it’s January 2nd, 2017, and it’s time to look ahead. Here’s hoping that the coming week is a brilliant one, for you and me both, dear reader!

Yours,

KRidwyn

Categories
Blogging challenges Life momentous events teaching Work Writing

Where I’ve been…

So my last post on this blog was over a month ago. It feels like longer.

I’d posted just prior to a weekend away with Hubby on Moreton Island. I was hoping it would be fantastic; it was. The snorkelling; the dolphin feeding; the quad-biking; the all-you-can-eat buffet meals; the amazing weather and luxurious accomodation; the 3.23am evacuation due to another hotel resident setting off a fire alarm because he attempted to cook food inside his kettle… it was all memorable.

And that marked the beginning of November.

November is the worst month of the year for music teachers, did you know? It’s end of the school year here in Australia, which means the usual end-of-year marking / reporting chaos. Add to that, the same end-of-year ‘let’s showcase what your children have learned to play on their instruments’ performance chaos, and – of course – all of the instrumental marking / reporting deadlines to co-ordinate. Don’t forget, there’s a class of graduating students who – naturally – get their own set of dedicated performances to prepare for etc. And then, just for fun and because It’s November and because the music teacher doesn’t have enough to do, let’s add in a Christmas carols event or several.

And then we all sit back and watch the poor music teacher’s head explode.

Because that’s – generally speaking – what happens.

Hence my taking a month hiatus from this blog. But this year, there was another reason as well; and this other reason meant that instead of just the month off, I needed an extra two weeks on top of that: I changed jobs.

Yay!

Yes, I am no longer the Music co-ordinator at St. Paul’s Lutheran Primary School. Instead, I have returned to the world of Prep to Year 12 education, with the role of Head of Middle School at Caloundra Christian College.

And boy! Am I stoked about that!

(Just in case you hadn’t picked up on that, from the excessive use of exclamation points in this blog post… sorry about that, by the way…)

Anyway, I’m back blogging again. Yes, the plan is to blog weekly, every Monday morning, my time.

And who knows, but that perhaps I shan’t need the month’s blog hiatus next November?!

See you next week!

KRidwyn

PS And have yourselves a very merry Christmas too! 😀

Categories
Life More about me places to visit Work

It’s almost here…

Hubby is a Business Manager. Each year, all the BM’s in his organisation have a end-of-year event, a mini-conference somewhere nice. Last year, it was the Gold Coast. Jet boating was more fun (and wetter) than I’d imagined. And that night, thirty floors up, we could hear the Surfers Paradise revellers as if they were right outside the door. Their cacophony finally settled down at around 4.30am.

This coming weekend, the BM’s end-of-year event is on Moreton Island. I’m ecstatic! Hubby and I have never, in twenty years of marriage, been there together before; in spite of my regular, and strong suggestion, that we go and snorkel around the Tangalooma Wrecks – something I did once on a staff retreat and have wanted to do, with Hubby, ever since.

But this weekend, we’re going! Grandma will be collected Thursday evening; both work and school have been notified of absences, and the weekend is ours! (Well, mine, anyway. Hubby will be attending conferency-type things while I’m sure there will be a pool there I’ll be able to sun myself next to…)

It should be absolute bliss. I cannot wait. Now, all I need to do is pray for fine weather!

Have a wonderful week 🙂

— KRidwyn

Categories
my novel-in-progress places to visit Writing

My favourite #writingplace

This is my favourite spot in the whole world at the moment. It’s on the beach, the very northern tip of Bribie Island, in Queensland (Australia) looking across the passage to Caloundra.

Just now, the weather’s warm enough to be perfect too!

img_2439

The cherubs play happily and I get to sit and write.

Bliss!

Do you have a favourite #writingplace? What do you love about it?

 

 

Categories
Christianity family anecdotes places to visit

The importance of air

Hubby took the kids and I camping on Fraser Island last week. Yes, in a tent. Yes, it’s barely just out of winter, and we all know how cold temperatures and I don’t see eye to eye.

But he wanted me to come (and lets’s face it, looking after three excited cherubs is always easier when there are two adults instead of one) and so I did.

screen-shot-2016-10-02-at-6-11-20-pmIt was a better holiday than I had expected it would be. It was warmer, for a start! I was mentally preparing for ‘freezing’ and so to not reach below zero was rather pleasant. Yes, the nights were chilly but only one of them was decidedly uncomfortable. One is manageable.

But the title of this post is ‘the importance of air’ and that’s exactly what we had too much of.

In the tyres, that is.

You see, driving up the western beach on high tide, on the world’s largest sand island, towing a VERY heavy trailer, isn’t easy at the best of times.

And Hubby decided to test how well our Pajero could do it with 30 PSI in the tyres.

Needless to say, the soft sand got the better of us. We bogged. Up to the axles, with the incoming tide lapping at the tyres.

There was LOTS of praying happening, let me tell you!

Within a minute, good Samaritans were there to help. Giving advice, helping lower the air pressure, and even snatch-strapping us out of the soft stuff before the tide could get us any more than it already was.

Praise God for answered prayer!

Moral of the story: don’t try running the beach at anything less than low tide, and if you have to (as we did) for goodness’ sake, LOWER THE TYRE PRESSURE TO 15 PSI!!!