Well, our little family packed up once again this last weekend and headed off to Ridgecrest Christian Convention Centre at Burrendong Dam. We had a great time looking at the Cross of Christ...What God wanted it to mean and what it SHOULD mean to us!
We were reminded of the fact that God doesn't like us rejecting him (and that's what sin is), that this makes him angry. We were also reminded that we are unable to subdue God's wrath by anything that we do or say...only God can thwart God's wrath. This is why Jesus was sent to earth (and I say THANK YOU) so that people could be acceptable to God, and therefore accepted into heaven, not just because of Jesus' death and resurrection but through peoples faith in God and acceptance of this exact event. That's right, Jesus' death wasn't an Amnesty where sins aren't actually paid for but, rather, a substitution of the penalty. How amazing is it that God would take on ALL of EVERYONE's sin so that people could know him???!!!
So that's the amazing stuff I learnt about...
We also had some non-teaching time stuff over the weekend. There was a bushdance on the Saturday night with a dress-up theme of pre-1900's. Most people dressed up which was great seeing that we only had a week & a half's notice. I managed to create a dinasaur costume for Caleb...it was really cute except he didn't want to wear it! Hamish went as Baby Jesus (so easy!!!), Chris went as a golfer from the 1800's and I went as an alien...after all, who knows what Alien's wore before the 20th Century???!!!
If you want to look at some picks you can on my facebook page either here or here.
Although I came home pretty tired, I also came home happy...it's a great time when you can get together with a whole big bunch of people and get to know them better...good times!
Monday, October 27, 2008
Tuesday, October 21, 2008
Encouragement to press on!
I was reminded of Psalm 121 last night and thought I would share it with the mum's out there as an encouragement to get through those times that sometimes we wish we didn't have to deal with. Feel free to share this with the Dad's too or anyone else that may need that little bit of a spur along!!!
Psalm 121
A song of ascents.
1 I lift up my eyes to the hills—
where does my help come from?
2 My help comes from the LORD,
the Maker of heaven and earth.
3 He will not let your foot slip—
he who watches over you will not slumber;
4 indeed, he who watches over Israel
will neither slumber nor sleep.
5 The LORD watches over you—
the LORD is your shade at your right hand;
6 the sun will not harm you by day,
nor the moon by night.
7 The LORD will keep you from all harm—
he will watch over your life;
8 the LORD will watch over your coming and going
both now and forevermore.
Also, these words from Colin Buchanan's song (Do it in Jesus' Name) I found a great encouragement also...
Press on Mum's in all the chaos
Look to Jesus through the tears
Press on Mum's God will guide you
through those precious tender years
And in all you do it for Jesus
One new life and free forgiveness
Yesterday, today he is the same
All you do, do it in Jesus name
(And when all your human energy is gone, Look to Jesus & press on)
I hope this is as much of an encouragement for you as it was for me!
Psalm 121
A song of ascents.
1 I lift up my eyes to the hills—
where does my help come from?
2 My help comes from the LORD,
the Maker of heaven and earth.
3 He will not let your foot slip—
he who watches over you will not slumber;
4 indeed, he who watches over Israel
will neither slumber nor sleep.
5 The LORD watches over you—
the LORD is your shade at your right hand;
6 the sun will not harm you by day,
nor the moon by night.
7 The LORD will keep you from all harm—
he will watch over your life;
8 the LORD will watch over your coming and going
both now and forevermore.
Also, these words from Colin Buchanan's song (Do it in Jesus' Name) I found a great encouragement also...
Press on Mum's in all the chaos
Look to Jesus through the tears
Press on Mum's God will guide you
through those precious tender years
And in all you do it for Jesus
One new life and free forgiveness
Yesterday, today he is the same
All you do, do it in Jesus name
(And when all your human energy is gone, Look to Jesus & press on)
I hope this is as much of an encouragement for you as it was for me!
Sunday, September 21, 2008
Life goes on
So, a month on, life as a mother of 2 has proven to be a time of challenges, laughs, smiles, tears...always interesting!
I love my family of men (I'm starting to wonder what it will be like in 15 years or so time with a testosterone filled house!!!). Caleb is absolutely gorgeous with Hamish and is so cute when he tries to feed, burp and change his teddies nappy.
So, that's really about all that my brain allows me to write...I'll include photos though!!!
Monday, September 1, 2008
It's a boy
Well, it's been a while since I blogged...sorry about that!
My latest blog entry is all about the new man in my life, Hamish Blake Waghorn. Hamish was born Wednesday 20th August, 2008 (for all those numbers people out there, that's 20082008 - 20.08.2008).
He's very much a Simmons which is nice because Caleb is nothing like the Simmons part of the family.
Hamish came into the world 10 days earlier (which is fine by me). He was 7lb 3ozs and 49cm long with a head circumference of 53cms. It was a pretty quick labour (only 4 1/2 hrs!!!).
So far he's been a little treasure!!! No screaming, he just grunts for feeds and can even do 5 hours at night between feeds which is lovely!!!
We love him heaps!!!
Caleb thinks he's pretty special too...he definitely thinks that he is meant to be around, making sure that we always comes with us and that we won't leave him in the car or anything! Very special!
Monday, May 26, 2008
It's all a bit Mudgee!
Well, Chris & I went to Mudgee for the weekend. My sister, Jacqui, babysat Caleb for the weekend. We stayed at a nice place and visited lots of nice things.
The funniest thing was Chris doing his wine tastings! Chris never used to like wine, he's only just recently started to drink it...so you can imagine my angst that I couldn't taste but he could, he with his "unrefined" tongue!!! There was even white port!!! Oh well...only one person can bring the baby to the family and that has to be me!!! He just better make it up to me later!!! hhahahaha
We also did some cheese sampling...all very yummy.
I had heaps of fun taking photos around the place...you can see some of them at http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=37801&id=548836694
We have never been massive fans of Mudgee but it did grow on us by the end of the weekend...I guess your probably wondering why we chose Mudgee if we didn't like it...well, it was close to Dubbo and had some things we could do.
It really was a weekend of food though...mmmm....food....
We ended our weekend with a trip to Gulgong...that was really interesting, such a cute town!!!
So that's about it really...
Wednesday, May 21, 2008
"Do not merely listen to the word, and so deceive yourselves. Do what it says"
Well, this is a verse from James, a book in the new testament of the bible, that I have known for years. It's taken me a long time to actually grasp what it is saying.
What I mean is, for too long I've thought that I was cruising along ok...I listened hard in church, even taking notes so that I would come close to remembering what was taught, I was a diligent bible study member getting involved in the conversation and things like that...but lately, mainly because of an indepth study of the book of James in our church and it's bible study groups, I've come to realise that that isn't good enough. I really need to know the bible for myself...that is, picking up my bible and opening at church, to do bible study prep and, well, to be honest, that's probably about it, just ISN'T good enough for someone that claims to be a follower of Jesus...which I do!
So, a friend & I from church have been meeting regularly for a couple of years now in an accountability type set up but we have both always confessed that we STILL haven't achieved the art of having a personal bible reading time. So we set the challenge to read a chapter a day. When I say read, I mean read and take notes so that we are actually taking notice of what the chapter is saying. Although I still haven't managed to work out the knack of reading every day, I catch up when I haven't so I'm on target...I'm really enjoying the affects it is having. I don't know if my actions are following the thoughts as yet (hopefully they are) but I'm starting to question my priorities and laziness...so it's a start!
One thing that I was challenged by today when I was reading Titus was this...Titus 2:13b-14 says "...Jesus Christ, who gave himself for us to redeem us from all wickedness and to purify for himself a people that are his very own, eager to do what is good."
It made me think...am I allowing Jesus to make me his very own or do I only give him part of me...the conclusion I came up with was "I'm ripping Jesus off". I want to be "eager to do what is good" so I started to try and think about how I could make this an action instead of a thought...and that is where I'm at now, trying to act out my desire to do good for the one who gave his whole self for me, who was and never will be perfect in my own right, even though he was perfect and didn't deserve it, and give him my whole self in return gratitude!
What I mean is, for too long I've thought that I was cruising along ok...I listened hard in church, even taking notes so that I would come close to remembering what was taught, I was a diligent bible study member getting involved in the conversation and things like that...but lately, mainly because of an indepth study of the book of James in our church and it's bible study groups, I've come to realise that that isn't good enough. I really need to know the bible for myself...that is, picking up my bible and opening at church, to do bible study prep and, well, to be honest, that's probably about it, just ISN'T good enough for someone that claims to be a follower of Jesus...which I do!
So, a friend & I from church have been meeting regularly for a couple of years now in an accountability type set up but we have both always confessed that we STILL haven't achieved the art of having a personal bible reading time. So we set the challenge to read a chapter a day. When I say read, I mean read and take notes so that we are actually taking notice of what the chapter is saying. Although I still haven't managed to work out the knack of reading every day, I catch up when I haven't so I'm on target...I'm really enjoying the affects it is having. I don't know if my actions are following the thoughts as yet (hopefully they are) but I'm starting to question my priorities and laziness...so it's a start!
One thing that I was challenged by today when I was reading Titus was this...Titus 2:13b-14 says "...Jesus Christ, who gave himself for us to redeem us from all wickedness and to purify for himself a people that are his very own, eager to do what is good."
It made me think...am I allowing Jesus to make me his very own or do I only give him part of me...the conclusion I came up with was "I'm ripping Jesus off". I want to be "eager to do what is good" so I started to try and think about how I could make this an action instead of a thought...and that is where I'm at now, trying to act out my desire to do good for the one who gave his whole self for me, who was and never will be perfect in my own right, even though he was perfect and didn't deserve it, and give him my whole self in return gratitude!
Tuesday, March 25, 2008
Church, Yabbies, Ants, Puppies and eating...my Easter Long Weekend
Well, another Easter has passed again. We had a wonderful weekend reflecting on and rejoicing in the wonder of the cross. We made it to our first "event" church service at Dubbo Presbyterian Church in the 2.5 years of us being here. We went to the Good Friday service which was a combined service which saw a very full building and a great time of fellowship and worship.
After this we had some friends over for lunch and to watch "The Christ Files". This was a great opportunity to learn that about the facts that do actually exist to prove the existence and death of Jesus Christ of Nazareth. It was a lovely lunch spent with lovely friends.
Friday afternoon Chris' parents arrived from Sydney. They used Dubbo as a launching pad for a 3 week holiday (yay for them). We spent the weekend talking, playing with Caleb, shopping, eating hot cross buns (both Choc chip & normal) and just some hanging about. Sunday morning we all ventured out to Narromine and went to church with my fam at Narromine Baptist, it was an encouraging service and was really nice to see mum, dad, Phillip & Ruth's new church family. We then proceeded to go out to the new farm.
It was funny, by the end of Sunday we had managed to scare Karen ( Chris' mum) enough to not leave the house. We were telling her just general (and what seemed harmless) stories of events that had happened on the new property in the last 7 weeks...these included stories of large carpet snakes eating chooks, massive echidna's which fill a whole milk crate, many many little frogs that inhabit the garden, mice, rats and geckos. She & Charlie were sleeping outside in the caravan so it was interesting because she wouldn't let Charlie go to bed until she was ready because there was no way she was going to walk out there by herself! Poor lady.
At one stage on Sunday we went down to check the yabby traps and couldn't stand still beside the dam because the banks were literally crawling with massive sugar ants!!! But we got the yabbies required for fishing the next day with the kids and all was well!
Fishing failed...no bites...oh well.
So all in all it was a lovely weekend. We farewelled Karen & Charlie this morning. Chris' comment as we waved goodbye was "I wish we were going on a holiday"...they sound like they are going to have fun campervan in tow, no set plans of where they will stay just hitting the road.
We hope everyone else had a wonderful Easter too!
After this we had some friends over for lunch and to watch "The Christ Files". This was a great opportunity to learn that about the facts that do actually exist to prove the existence and death of Jesus Christ of Nazareth. It was a lovely lunch spent with lovely friends.
Friday afternoon Chris' parents arrived from Sydney. They used Dubbo as a launching pad for a 3 week holiday (yay for them). We spent the weekend talking, playing with Caleb, shopping, eating hot cross buns (both Choc chip & normal) and just some hanging about. Sunday morning we all ventured out to Narromine and went to church with my fam at Narromine Baptist, it was an encouraging service and was really nice to see mum, dad, Phillip & Ruth's new church family. We then proceeded to go out to the new farm.
It was funny, by the end of Sunday we had managed to scare Karen ( Chris' mum) enough to not leave the house. We were telling her just general (and what seemed harmless) stories of events that had happened on the new property in the last 7 weeks...these included stories of large carpet snakes eating chooks, massive echidna's which fill a whole milk crate, many many little frogs that inhabit the garden, mice, rats and geckos. She & Charlie were sleeping outside in the caravan so it was interesting because she wouldn't let Charlie go to bed until she was ready because there was no way she was going to walk out there by herself! Poor lady.
At one stage on Sunday we went down to check the yabby traps and couldn't stand still beside the dam because the banks were literally crawling with massive sugar ants!!! But we got the yabbies required for fishing the next day with the kids and all was well!
Fishing failed...no bites...oh well.
So all in all it was a lovely weekend. We farewelled Karen & Charlie this morning. Chris' comment as we waved goodbye was "I wish we were going on a holiday"...they sound like they are going to have fun campervan in tow, no set plans of where they will stay just hitting the road.
We hope everyone else had a wonderful Easter too!
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