Amanda’s Musings

If you go to this page : http://www.usp.com.au/fpss/news-indonesia/news-indo-schapelle109.html (for some reason my link button isn’t showing on my ‘create post’ tab) there is a very interesting article about Schapelle Corby’s favourite chapter in the Bible.

Here’s an excerpt (by Paul Toohey): “Paul, in his epistles to the Romans, set down some of the Bible’s most powerful and lasting exhortations. Schapelle Corby’s favourite is Chapter XII, Verse 2. She recites: “Be not conformed to this world but be transformed by the renewing of your mind.” What does it mean? “It means you can be born again,” says Corby. “That’s how I read it.” Romans XII is a short chapter made up of 21 sentence-long verses. It is not surprising that Corby has honed in on this part of the Bible during her ordeal, which last week passed the 12-month marker. It is the home of the familiar “Vengeance is mine, saith the Lord” line. It is also a call for brotherly love, and argues that judgment is not a right of humans. Those who would judge bring ruin and condemnation upon themselves.”

Whenever my family is on holiday together there is a tradition of playing certain games together. When I was a kid it was Monopoly and we even kept a record of who scored the highest on the inside of the lid. We’ve still got that particular set of Monopoly and it’s fun to look back (we were crazy I think as we used to have Monopoly championships!!). Over the years different games have come along. For quite a few years now it’s been a great version of scrabble called Take Two or the card game Hand and Foot. We all have a great time trying to beat each other. What holiday games are traditional in your house?

I’m writing this from Dunsborough in the south west of WA where we are enjoying a much needed break. It was all going fine and dandy until at 7pm last night the power went out. Whenever this happens at our place in the ‘burbs’ it’s only ever off for one or two hrs at the most. Not so here. We had no power for close to 17 hrs! Normally this wouldn’t have been a problem except that we needed the microwave to heat the bubby’s bottles! We had to use hot tap water to sit the bottles in but the milk went cold fast so she drank less which meant she slept for less between feeds etc… etc…We tried lighting the fire to boil hot water on but it set off the smoke alarm (which we could’nt get the cover off it to take out the batteries). What a relief when the power came on just before lunch. Hopefully tonight will go better.

It’s official. Our daughter has been born. Well, according the the Registry of Births, Deaths and Marriages anyway. Her birth certificate finally arrived in the mail, that is, her second birth certificate. They got the first one wrong. They spelled her name ‘Eziah’ instead of ‘Keziah’. It was a bit annoying to recieve the first one in the post and her name was wrong. When I phoned about it they said that they’d left off one side of the form when scanning it in so my records showed that I was born in ‘Ewcastle’ instead of Newcastle!

I’m glad they fixed it and reissued it because we had to pay $50 to register her name and get the certificate in the first place (but it’s illegal not to, strange system).

Now I just gotta buy a nice frame for it. We got a nice floral version of her birth certificate as well as the normal one on govt paper. I don’t think she will want her BC on the wall for her whole childhood though so I’m in two minds about framing it.
Anyway. It’s here now and her name is right which is always a bonus.

I think I might be addicted to chocoloate licorice bullets.

It seems that this week we’re removing more traces left by our sausage dog. We had to put her down in June but there are plenty of reminders of her around the place. Last night a friend came around and replastered some large areas of our kitchen wall where the little dog had scratched it back to the render (she also pulled up the lino). We’re finally getting the carpets cleaned this week too so that will be another reminder gone (sounds awful but it’s expensive so it had to wait!!). There’s still plenty of other reminders of her around but these are the ones I’m quite happy to get rid of!

Our poor little one had to have her first lot of injections yesterday. I hated doing it but of course it’s a few moments pain for a lot of protection. I made sure my hubby was holding her while the doctor jabbed the needles and I could see her face. Poor little thing, I felt so sorry for her as this is first real pain she’s felt (apart from wind pain of course). I suppose this is just the start of a lifetime of things that I’ll have to do as a parent that I hate doing!

This is why I love spring. These are all from our front garden!

This article in the Daily Telegraph tells of the current conditions in Schapelle Corby’s prison cell. Journalist Tony Wilson writes:

“When she was first transferred from the stinking cell at Polda police station earlier this year, the cell had eight inmates…Corby’s sister Mercedes said the number had risen to 13 – crammed into the cell measuring just 4m x 3m. Corby’s allotted space is just 920sq cm and Mercedes said when inmates tried to sleep on their mattresses, they were touching shoulder to shoulder.”

The article points out that this is the size of a child’s bedroom. Imagine living in those conditions day in and day out.

Rodney Olsen tagged me (because I volunteered for it!!) so here goes. This is the list of 20 things you don’t know about me:

1.I’ve been married for 9 and a half years but we’ve been a couple for close to 14 years now. We were ‘high school sweethearts’ and Michael even went to my school ball.

2. I was a Girl’s Brigade girl for 6 years and an officer for 5 years. I earn’t my Queen’s Award during year 12.

3. My favourite lollies are Chico Babies.

4. I’ve lived on three continents, Australia, Europe and Africa.

5. My parents were founding members of the Christian newspaper Challenge which is now distributed around the world. The first drawing rooms for the newspaper were in my bedroom and had pink walls!

6. I have a Bachelor of Arts (visual arts, specifically painting) which I completed at the end of 2004.

7. I’ve only been to one concert - Newsboys (I’d love to go to more but they’re sooooo expensive!).

8. I was voted in as a prefect at my school in year 12. At the time I was new to the school and didn’t even know what a prefect was.

9. I’ve been to 14 countries including, Australia (it counts!), England, Scotland, France, Italy, Germany, Austria, Switzerland, America, New Zealand (it still counts even if I was only there for an hour!), Singapore, Niger, Papua New Guinea and Benin.

10. I’m an obsessed Tom Hanks fan and have been ever since Forrest Gump came out in 1994. I’ve seen 27 out of 40 of his films and am still working my way through the list.

11.My middle name starts with ‘H’. That’s all I have to say about that.

12. I went to Expo ‘88 in Brisbane.

13. I’m a trained secretary but prefer being an artist.

14. My brother calls me Mole (I call him Wart) and my Dad is the only one who calls me Molly. I’ve been known as Mandy or Manda but prefer Amanda.

15. I’m a bit of an opshopper. I grew up with my parents living as missionaries so we had to buy our clothes from Good Sammies etc…which was fine because we saved a fortune and it’s fun bargain hunting!

16. I had the poodle (spiral) perm in high school (twice!).

17. I’ve had the same best friend for 18 years now.

18. As a teenager I had two things on my wall. Posters of the Wildcats (WA’s basketball team) and posters of Michael J Fox.

19. I left home when I was 18 (straight out of high school)and went to live in Sydney and attended New Tribes Mission Bible College. My then boyfriend is now my husband and he did the exact same thing. We had applied for and been accepted to the same college separately and when we tried to tell each other we couldn’t believe it! Of course, our parents didn’t believe us and thought we’d hatched the plan together but we hadn’t.

20. I’ve been to every state in Australia. NSW many times and to live. WA - live. SA - visited family there many times. ACT - went there with the NTM Bible Colege Choir when we toured. Qld - Expo 88 and NTM BC Choir tour mainly. VIC - visited friends and family there. TAS - went there for a holiday in 2004. NT - saddest visit, went there for 3 wks to look after my best friend’s other 3 kids when her son was run over and almost died (he’s fine now).