Proud Mommy Moment

We spent last evening at the Calamvale Community College awards evening. It was the main award ceremony for the school for 2009. Slade was one of two children in his pod as it is known (total of about 50 children) to get a merit award.
He was extremely anxious before the ceremony. He did know a bit about what to expect as they had a rehearsel during the day, but was nervous about all the parents who would be watching.
However, he did very well, went up on to the stage and shook hands with the person handing over the award. Then stood very proudly with his group to have photos taken.
He got a certificate and a medal that he put next to his bed when he went to sleep. He walked through holding on to it after waking up this morning.
I'm a very, very proud Mom this morning!

Operation Uganda

In my quest to find Christmas gift ideas for the December issue of Sabona, I happened across Operation Uganda. What an awesome organisation. It was started by a family (a couple and their four children) who went to Uganda in 2004 after their house in Brisbane burned down (resulting in them taking reassessing what was important in their lives, and they saw a DVD about Uganda. They now help 200 children, some orphans who are in full-time care in a facility run by the organisation, and others who receive medical assistance, food etc.
They are selling awesome handmade jewellery and arts and crafts made by people in Uganda. There are wonderful clay and paperbead necklaces and bracelets as well as other handmade crafts. There are pieces of cow horn used in some of the items which is something that I don't think I've seen before.
The products are so reasonably priced and they are also recruiting sales people to sell the jewellery at home parties, fetes etc. Sales people earn 30% on their sales and there's no cost to start up.
It's really a wonderful opportunity to help people in Africa.

What We've Been Up To: In Pictures

The River Fire -- we sat at South Bank near to the river to watch this amazing annual firework display.



The Ipswich Rail Workshops Museum -- We're definitely making the most of our annual passes here!






The Coolum Beach Kite Festival




My beautiful daughter at Wellington Point



The Ipswich Rail Workshops Museum held a model train display recently. On display was the biggest Lego train display in Queensland.




Visited by Edna the Echidna: Slade recently brought an echidna (not real!) home from school for the evening. He took pictures of what he did with the echidna while she stayed with us. He put these in Edna's book of travels and wrote a story about what she did at our house.