booksnpuzzles

Happy Birthday, Tracey.

Please download your card below.

Love from Mum and Dad

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We wondered about whether Snow would be well enough to celebrate his 98th birthday in September. In the weeks before his birthday, his health had been of concern - a tumble resulted in black eye, head gash and numerous bruises. He wasn't able to get around unaided- and refused a walking stick or walker.

Luckily on his birthday he was relatively clear in mind and fit in body, so we drove him to Clem's home for a gathering of all his children . Snow dozed most of the day, but was alert for the cake cutting- a red Kombie van just like the one he drove in the 1960s.

Jayne and Mark, Rob and I are still busy looking after the gardens and clearing the house and Snow's tool collection. Some surprise finds include about 100 drill bits in only 2 sizes, about 500 sheets of sandpaper and emery paper, and millions of rusty bits and bobs.

Rob and I still visit Snow every fortnight and Jean, CLem's wife, visits on Friday afternoons.  Many days Snow is not very aware of our presence, and now wants to doze off a lot, often only awake for 10 minutes at a time.

Some days he talks about the past- travelling in the sulky, the old life in Gayndah and Monto, the hard times in Southern Cross and at Richmond, about the jobs he has had - building a church at Jambin, painting the Richmond Station, Biloela hospital, his sign writing and glass painting.

No blogs for quite some time. In late May we sadly and swiftly lost Joyce, my mother-in-law aged 84, to a virulent, aggressive cancer. She lasted only 40 days from diagnosis to death, and we are so relieved to know she is at peace. An avid gardener, Joyce will love to share her garden with you.

Snow, my father-in-law celebrates his 98th birthday in a few weeks. He is frail in mind with limited mobility, but continues to fire along. Recently we found a new photo of him in his late teens. I have overlaid this with the last one of him (with a moustache- his first ever). View the animated gif I have created (below) as Snow ages before your eyes.

   One of my favourite story books is by American Author Bill Peet. "Big Bad Bruce" is a rollicking tale of a troublesome bear and a wily witch, with magic and trickery and lots of humour and much loved by my year 2 students. Sadly, Bruce is a bully, and even a wily witch cannot make him change his ways.

   In my school library I also have another "Big Bad Bruce" picture book by an Australian author, Dianne Bates. This one tells the story of rough, tough Bruce the bikie and his weekend jaunts with his gang (of bikies) and his gang (family)- softly coloured, flowing illustrations yet with a touch of sharpness plus a surprise ending to this tale. 

Now I have purchased a third "Big Bad Bruce", still by Dianne Bates (author) but a new illustrator, Cheryl Johns - and a very different feel to the illustrations- more modern and edgy, sharp, cluttered and powerful, tied by colour and design elements to the Harley bike image. How wonderful to be able to view two interpretations of the same story - great for visual literacy components of our English program.

Things have been pretty busy and hectic in this part of the world, so I have little to share with the world at large.

In response to my daughter's request for help uploading to You Tube, I now have created a You Tube ID and have uploaded an MP4 video of one of my horses. so Boris this is you:

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oTxvEmCL5eY]

         Calliope, my lovely little hamlet in Central Queensland, has in the past 2 years begun to grow. Once upon a time we had a population of about 1800 people...and it stayed that size or thereabouts for 20 or so years. But not now.  Today I visited several of the new suburbs that are springing up around the outskirts of our two pub-shop-church village, and counted 89 new homes under construction or built in the past 12 months, plus more than 50 allotments for sale and another 60 or so to be developed (announced just this week). Needless to say the school population is also growing, and is in need of more classrooms. Our second prep class has just moved into a new classroom extension (building took from January to April).

The interesting thing is that when we dine at the local pub, we often now remark that we know none of the other diners. And we have lived here more than 26 years. Now more people have discovered the benefits of our small town - pollution free air (away from the prevailing winds which blow the industrial pollution around Gladstone region), a quickish trip to town, handy to beach and rural living, wonderful school.

The plus to this growth is the building of a new shopping centre, with doctor and pharmacy facilities. Until now, these have been 30 kilometres away. The minus is that parking at the newsagents/convenience store is at a premium.

Times and my hometown are a-changing.

Happy Easter to everyone.

Easter is a relaxing time for us, with evening celebrations and a seafood feast with friends planned. Our nearest town, Gladstone, celebrates Easter with a week long festival centred around the off-shore yachting race from Brisbane to Gladstone. The celebrations include a parade of floats, fun-fair, free night time concerts at the Marina, many displays and other activities. The festival culminates with the Yacht Race Prize Presentations- for single hulls and multi hull vessels.  This year, no records were broken although the first monohull covered the 308 nautical miles in well under 24 hours.  Big winds helped the yachts to speed along. Although two boats were capsized, all crew were safe and one member was taken by helicopter to hospital. Ichi Ban won line honours in the monohull section, with a local entry taking fourth place. (photos from Gladstone Yacht Club site         

(Ian Grant) from "Sail World" site tells about one of our local entries, 42 year old sloop "Wistari".

Wistari a four time Gladstone race winner blew out spinnakers was wiped out in a wild sideway broach down a rogue wave and despite finishing with her favoured heavy wind spinnaker in the rag-bag still managed to fill fourth place. 'We had our moments and broaching down the wave with the mast tip wind gear in the water was something that the crew would not like to experience again'. Skipper Scott Patrick said.But there was a nice end to their race with Wistari winning the Noel Patrick Memorial, 4th overall in the Grand Prix IRC class, 3rd in Performance Handicap and 2nd to Saltash II in the Veterans class.

 

With my year 2 students, we have found many similar/parallel stories in the folk stories we have been reading. Notably, lots of different versions of City Mouse - Country Mouse (seven in our school library). Our favourite (girls) was "The Mouse with the Daisy Hat" - with a hint of romance.

An interesting pair was the Russian story "The Magic Gifts" and the Scandinavian folkstory "Peter and the North Wind" with many different features, but enough parallels for the students to predict the next event.

I hope to record (using my ipod) the next storyreading with the students' discussions after, edit using Audacity, then use this as audio for a PhotoStory3 movie (illustrations by the students).

Hummie extended a universal invitation to join her Digi scrappers blog party.

Well, I accept the invitation, and am enjoying visiting other sites to see who is around, and am enjoying peeks at the different lives we all lead. We are all so different but are tightly bound by our interesting hobby. 

I am only a beginner digital scrapbooker using Photoshop 6 and learning to use Photoshop CS 2.3. I have been a paper scrapper - and will still do some paper scrapping when the muse hits- but I find it so much easier to use the computer than scissors and glue (arthritic fingers). I spend a lot of time trying out tutorials for Photoshop activities. This week I read lots about actions, downloaded a few, found tutorials about how to make, then recorded a set of actions to make a stack of cards, similar to the ones in my digital spreads below. These spreads are all basic pages made for my daily visual diary for 2007, in which I am still playing about with colour combinations, simple shapes and techniques.

The 5 actions- stacks of squares, rectangles, circles, ovals, photos are available here for you to try.

(Flower stamp by Gina Cabrera)

Swirls by Tina Williams

Happy scrapping, everyone.

Sandie03

Today, Tracey and Glenn had to sadly farewell their oldest sheltie, Katie, who was almost 18 years of age. She had been part of our family for about 15 years, but had been slowly aging for several years and her arthritis among other things made life very difficult for her.

She will be greatly missed by us all - and especially by Missy and Billy. (Billy's picture is at the  left of this page.

My tribute to Katie - my last photos of her, taken at Christmas time, waiting patiently

(and impatiently) to go home.

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