Fun events!

So lately things have been pretty busy! Fun busy though! ;) On Saturday the 8th, we went to Canberra for a homeschoolers Sports Day organised by the Roberts Family which we all thoroughly enjoyed! We got there at 3:00 p.m., and started the games soon after, which we all enjoyed! I'm really annoyed because I hardly got any photos, and the photos I did get were all really blury or bad quality because it was too dark, so I'll post my best ones up! =) Our family had a wonderful time though! It was soo good to see everyone again! =D So, here are the photos!

Caitlyn and Sophie

Doing Poison Ball
Charis and I

So those are all the photos from the Sports Day!

Yesterday Caitlyn and Myself went to my Friend, Maggie's house for a "Craft and Baking Day" which we both thoroughly enjoyed! Some other girls also came so we were 9 people all up! We had fun doing craft from 9:00 a.m. till 12:00 a.m., where we all just did whatever craft we had brought. Caitlyn and I had brought Card-making equipment so we did that the whole morning. Some other girls did Crosstiching, others did Scrapbooking, while others did Card making! It was a lovely atmosphere!! =) After lunch we cooked the afternoon tea, so we split up into 'teams' of 2. One team made Butterfly Cup-Cakes, and the other team made Chocolate Ripple Biscuits! Both turned our fantastic, and beautiful, but since we had to cut off the tops of our cup cakes for the wings, they sort of fell apart, if you can imagine that! You'll understand when you see the photos below!! Anyway, here are the photos!

Lucy

Maggie and Lucy looking through a scrapbook

Emily, Larissa, and Lucy

Maggie and Hymne

Cate, Larissa, Lucy, Maggie, Hymne, and Abby

Indy

Hymne working on her Beanie

The lovely Magdelene

Emily, hard at work! ;)

The best of the Butterfly Cup-Cakes all finished! =)

The Chocolate Ripple Biscuits
Having fun playing piano

Emily with the cap she'd been putting patterns on!

Ready to eat afternoon tea! =)

All the delicious food!

Some of my finished cards

So that concludes this post! I'll be posting again soon! =)

Christmas

Hey everyone, this is Emma here! This post will be about our Christmas in Sydney with Mum and Dads families. We traveled up to Sydney on Thursday the 23rd of December and arrived home on Monday the 27th. We all had a great time catching up with our Grandparents and relatives! =) Some of the photo's are pretty bad quality though, so sorry about that. I also actually only have one photo of mums family on here, and thats the one of Ken and Brayden, so they're all mostly of Dads family... =) We spent Christmas Eve with Dads side and Christmas Day on Mums side. Cricket is a tradition that we do each year with Dads family, but unfortunetely I didn't get any photo's... =( Oh well! I hope you enjoy looking at these photo's anyway! =)

Caleb doing his crazily energetic smile and myself Joey, very excited to start bowling! =P

Brayden and Ken playing cards

Part of all the food at Grandma's house Judging the Reindeer masks! =)

Tim and Joey!

Well thats all of them! I'll be doing another post of our visitors soon! =)

Happy Birthday Caleb!

Happy 3rd Birthday Caleb! I hope you have a wonderful day! Thanks for being such a cute, sweet, little brother and wonderful blessing to our family! =)

Relatives

Hey there! This is Emma posting again! =) So on Sunday night our Cousins family and wifes sister arrived here to stay till Thursday morning! So this will be about them and what we did with them! We had a great time! Their two kids, Mia (3) and Timmy (4) were SO cute, so we enjoyed playing with them!

Mia and Joey

Joey playing with his 'plastic war men' ready to attack! ;)

Timmy

Ok, on Tuesday morning we went to Thredbo for a BBQ, so here we are at the Thredbo River, and Josh is obviously being himself, having fun, and making a dam! =P

Getting there!

Joey and Caleb decide Josh needs help! =P

Bradley

Checking out the water!

The water was very iccyy, but so beautiful and clear!

Mum and Katherine

Little kids having fun! =)

Time for photos!

Checking to see the other wasn't doing rabbit ears! =P

Mia and Joseph

And of course... Soccer....

The Cooks! Hard at work! =)
Everyone eating lunch

Thredbo Village

Cricket!

Timmy

Caleb and Joseph

Mia and Timothy

All together! =P
At Thredbo there are bobsleds, so we went on them, and they were ssoo much fun! =P A couple of my brothers (no names) went mad on them, and decided to scream the whole way down! It was so funny! =P Anyway, this picture is of Matthew,
Brad, Joey, Matt, Josh, and Myself being towed up! =)

Well! Thats what we've been up to! I hope you're all having great holidays!

New blog author

*Drum roll*  "Introducing.. *cymbal clash*  Emma Ventura!" Emma is going to be taking on the role of a co-author of this blog. She'll be able to share her photography with you, hopefully making this blog a little bit more interesting. I'll still be blogging whenever I can, but Emma will be able to help with more frequent blog posts so you get to read more than 1 blog post a month - my current rate of posting...

Enough from me though, you should hear from Emma herself shortly. Happy New Year!

10 things I'm grateful for 2010

As we start a new year, I decided it might be interesting and worthwhile to make a list of some of the things that I'm thankful to have received or done in 2010:

#1 I've finished the last year of not being able to drive. Yep, that's a big thing for me. I can finally start to learn to drive this year! Only 116 days to go now...

#2 I got to learn the bassoon!! I'm still amazed at how everything just came together for that to happen. A week before it happened I would never have dreamed it would have even been possible, but God pulled things together like He does and before I knew what hit me I was enjoying the opportunity of a lifetime.

#3 Snowy Mountains Ensemble. Taking over leadership of an ensemble at the end of 2'nd term this year was a huge learning experience for me, but one for which I am extremely grateful. Not just because I've learnt from it, but because I've finally been able to give something back to the Cooma music community which has given so much to me! With five new members joining in the last term, the ensemble has come a long way from the time when there was only one regular member outside of our family. It has been a huge encouragement to see God bless the ensemble so much.

#4 Friends! We've met a record amount of people this year, some of whom are really nice Christian people. It's always so encouraging to meet like-minded people, and I hope to get to know them a lot better in 2011.

#5 Community. The community here in Cooma is remarkable. I won't go into detail, but suffice it to say that the general attitude of giving so generously is very humbling. I'm also thankful to have received opportunities this year to begin giving back to the community a little of all I've received over the years.

#6 Jesus' sacrifice! Okay, sure this didn't exactly happen in 2010, but I can still be grateful for it! This deserves a place on ANY list of things to be thankful for.

#7 Vella - my new flute. If you're a musician you'll know exactly how I feel. After upgrading from an inferior instrument to a much better, more reliable instrument that is SO much nicer to play, I can't help but be forever thankful for those involved in helping me to get it. Thank you - you know who you are.

#8 Finishing Year 10. What a great feeling! Less than 2 years to go until it's all over for good!! Not that I don't enjoy it; don't get me wrong, I love doing schoolwork a lot more than nearly everybody I know, but I just can't wait until I can study the subjects that I actually want to study at uni - things that will actually help prepare me for a career. Right now I can hardly think of anything more exciting than being able to learn more about music and teaching, so this was a real milestone for me.

#9 We had an extension built! The whole house is so much better with it, and it has immensely benefited all of us.

#10 I got accepted into the MuST program at ANU!! That was probably the highlight of my year, as I'm sure you've all figured out by reading my previous blog posts...


2010 was a really good year for me, but on the other hand I'm really excited about what 2011 might hold. I might even do a post about my goals/resolutions for this year.
What are you thankful about from 2010? Do you have any New Years Resolutions or anything you're looking forward to about this new year?

Community Carols Night

This year I've been asked again to help organize the annual Community Carols Night at our church. The Snowy Mountains Ensemble (which our family plays in) will be playing the music for the evening and our church is doing everything else (including the supper... our congregation is very good at making loads of delicious morsels of delight), so if you live within driving distance of Cooma, you should definitely try and come! It would make me happy beyond imaginability to see a good number of people turn up and make the event a success. So - don't miss this opportunity to enjoy quality worship, fellowship, good food, and singing carols with an orchestra!