The Latest

Time has flown along. I didn't realise that it has almost been 2 months since I have posted. I will have some more photos of Benjamin soon for all the family, but thought I better write some things down about what has been happening.

This weekend we will be having our mini-muster in Broken Hill, celebrating 20 years of being in Broken Hill. Many people will be coming to remember over the weekend. Unfortunately the petrol prices have scared some away. It will make our holidays expensive.

The kids have enjoyed soccer with Lachlan, Isaac and Grace all playing. Lach has scored a couple of goals lately, which he has been quite happy about. Isaac's team is doing very well beating their rival team 1-nil.

Last weekend I was in Katoomba for our Cornerstone Directors retreat. I really appreciated the time to get away and reflect on things. I have found the last month quite stressful and I needed to get some head space. I really enjoyed being up in the mountains again, looking at familiar places. I also had the opportunity to take Mum out to dinner which was a rare treat and should put me in the good books for a while :-)

A couple of weeks ago we headed out to a property to have our desert camp. This is something we do annually with the students. We camp at a dry creekbed, near a gorge and help the students develop leadership and group skills. I really enjoyed setting up some orienteering challenges and walking up some of the ridges in the area. I always enjoy going there, sitting around the campfire at night, cooking in a hungi and seeing if we can catch a goat. We actually caught one this year and later it turned into roast and curry. Goat curry is the best kind by the way. Isaac and Lachlan participated in the goat hunt, but were a little bit nervous by the horns.

The weather has been very good lately. Cold nights, but not freezing yet, with beautiful days. Full winter will be here soon. We could do with some rain though.

Benjamin Smiles

I thought it was about time that I put some more things up about Benjamin. He has really started to smile a lot more lately, so I captured this video which I thought that you might like.

Rain!

Last week we had a downpour. Water flooded through the streets as it often does in Broken Hill when it rains as there are very few underground drains. Some of the water ended up in my shed, which is a usual sign of a decent fall. The kids though had a ball, as can be seen in the photos.

Effectiveness

As life goes on you find that you have more and more responsibilities. It does seem that in some ways your capacity to do things grows over time, but there are also ways to effectively increase the amount of time that you have in the day. It is important to see that in some situations it is possible to achieve more than one goal at a time. At first this would seem a bit insincere, because you are not giving yourself wholly to one thing by focussing on too many things at once. That is not what I am talking about here. Many things do not need to be done in isolation. Take going to the shops for example. This could easily be done with someone else that you have been meaning to catch up with anyway and therefore you could do both things are once. You could also have used the time to talk through things with God if what you were doing didn't demand your whole attention.
Recently I started up a jogging program to gradually ease back into it. I realised though that although that was a good goal I had very little time in my week to be able to fit it in, even though I really needed to do it to prepare for the soccer season. I realised that I could easily begin the program with Lachlan and Isaac. Thus I was able to achieve a number of important goals through the one activity. I was able to increase my fitness, as well as help my boys to increase theirs, and I could spend quality time with my boys. These have become quite rich times, which both my boys and I really look forward to.
It is important to understand that I am not talking from a paradigm of efficiency here. Rather I am talking about effectiveness, which is vastly different when it comes to people. You cannot really be thinking of people's best and talking about efficiency as relationships are rarely that way. You do however need to choose between many good things. Not only do we need to think about choosing the best, but also the best way of doing them.

Ethan's birthday

Ethan is 4 today. He has been looking forward to turning 4 for a while now. When told this morning that it was his birthday he said "is it now?".
It has seemed that Ethan has grown up a lot this year. Having a new baby makes him seem so big and no longer the baby of the family. He has strated to go to pre-school a couple of days a week and has become more independant, although he will always be a bit shy.
We had a bit of a celebration at home with the family. Millie made a cake and we sang for him (which made him a bit self-conscious). His highlights out of his presents so far were the cheap sword and his transformer. He also got his first bike. Here are some photos.