...family wedding...

so my brother-in-law and his fiancee got married on friday...it was wet, wet, wet...but i did my best with the photos, all things considered. if you want to see more just click on the link to my photography blog.

Opportunities...

photography: unkown source

So by now I'm gathering most of you have heard about Victoria's bushfires...181 people so far have lost their lives and approximately 5000 have been left homeless. My family and I have been watching the news religiously to see the developments...for more reasons than one. My sister is in the midst of it...she lives right smack in the middle of the two worst effected areas and for the last week has been staying at her MIL's since Healesville (where she lives) is continually being put on high alert. Two fires are threatening to become one HUGE fire like the ones you see above...since my sister and her daughter are bad asthmatics the smoke and embers are wreaking havoc with them...plus not to mention she is 38 weeks pregnant...so we've been watching and checking in with her every day to make sure everything is ok.

Amidst this tv watching my kids have been taking a keen interest in what's happening. We talked with them about it and discussed with them how much people had lost and how it was an opportunity for us to help in any way we could. The kids started going through their toys and deciding which ones they wanted to give away to the kids who had nothing left...we went shopping for lots of colouring pencils and books, undies and pj's. There are distibution centres set up throughout sydney that we could drop the items off at...but just as we were doing this...Jake brought home a note from school - there were some parents driving down to Victoria this weekend to donate stuff - Jake was incredibly excited that his school was helping and so we took all the things we had collected down to the school....

I guess why I mention this - because it's not the usual stuff I like to blog about...(I don't like blogging about my personal epiphany's - they're mine to ponder over:) - but I was amazed at the toys that Jake and Layne were choosing to give away...they weren't the old toys they don't play with anymore...they were new toys...some were ones they had just received this past christmas! My first thought was...'you just got that...you can't give that away'...but I stopped myself from saying it because I realised that if I did say that to them I would be in effect telling my kids that it was alright to feel compassion and want to help - as long as they didn't have to go without as a result...!! They reminded me that 'giving' pretty much always requires some form of 'self-sacrifice'. They even went so far as to pay for some of the pj's and undies out of their own pocket money...

what can i say??? I LOVE my kids...

note: please note that from here on there are bound to be grammatical errors, spelling mistakes, etc in my posts...I'm pregnant...and there is no promise that it will get better once the baby arrives! :)

Where did I go?

I'll tell you where...absolutely no where...I was here at home with my head over a toilet bowl for the last 2 mths...I'm hoping the next 3 weeks will see me start doing the following though! :)

yes, in case you didn't guess from the above - I'm expecting our 3rd