Black Rock Bombfire

The Hogbens joined the kittos at Orroroo for the Oct Long weekend The Hogbens + Rachael Fergusson stayed with us with us and the Kittos along with three other couples from Whyalla stayed at a B&B house owned by Lisa & Keith Slade (Edna Probert's granddaughter)
We had a bombfire down at Black Rock Sat. night burning up some of the pine trees that we had bulldozed down to stop blocking up the gutters with pine needles A lovely calm night I was a bit worried because they were forcasting strong winds coming up in the night but fortunately they didn't arrive until lunch time on Sun with a few spots of rain. Still no rain turned 900 sheep onto 400 acres of crop Sat morn. Some photos of the bombfire hopefully as the week goes by there will be other entries.
The gathering was to help Stuart celebrate his birthday

Brighton Bits

How do you like shepheard Isaac? This was his main costume for the musical, he also had a smaller roll as the slave that was beaten by the solier that Moses killed!!
He did a good job at both parts. Annie helped out the back with the make up, kinda her thing at the moment:/
Both kids had good reports and are looking forward to the holidays, though having to look after their old mother might make things a bit quiet. :)
Still waiting to see if the Fergies are comming with us to Orroroo for the bonfire to beat all bonfires, mmm must remember to ask someone to feed the presious pussys while we are away.
John & Jessie I guss it must be getting close to schooltime soon,enjoy the last bit of the holidays.
Well take care all
Love Kez xx

Back to the Future

Today Orroroo celebrated its 100th. show. Started off a lovely day but the wind came up in the afternoon that made things a bit uncomfortable. I was to have lunch with the Governor, but she was sick and unable to come. Grahan Gunn our local member of parliament opened the show in her place. Some photos of some of the old vehicles on display. Lindy the Crows have just been beaten in the prelim. final by West Coast by 10 points bit sad as they led for the first 82 mins of the match.

Finally we have broadband

After delays of 3 months last night the fellas rocked up to install our connection 40 mins later we were up and running. This morning I was checking out a couple of our favorites sites when page cannot be displayed kept coming up. After playing around for some time I thought I would check the new tower on the Top Hotel and as I walked towards the street I saw the new 50 foot tower lying across the power lines. So our boadband was short lived.
Fortunately it did not cut the power off but had a few people worried that the hotel was alive.
ETSA arrived about 90 mins later and shut the power off and removed the tower from the wires..
This afternoon we were back on line with a smaller tower but it seems to be working OK.

Masri News

Well, ithought it was about time for some more news from the Masri's. It is not very exciting but it is us at the moment. The dog is Ronja whom I have been looking after for our neighbours/friends while they are back in Sweden. She is very sweet and it has been good for me to have to get out and walk three times a day with her. I am going to miss the evening walks and may even keep doing them, even without the dog!

We now have our very own private road. You can see they have put a huge gate across the road and even though it means we now have to drive all the way around, it is very nice not having cars and trucks driving past our lounge window. They also took away the tall fence around the garden and the plan is to put LAWN!!!!!!!!!! That will be very exciting, and I hope they are going to maintain it as well. Here's hoping.

Lastly is John's Lego creation. He was trying to see how tall he could make his...... link/chain thing. As you can see, he managed to make it pretty tall!

It was great to be able to talk to Mum, Dad and Deb today. Sorry about the bad connections. Still, I think we managed to say all we needed before I went under the road and lost the signal!! Except maybe, "Thanks for the call. I love you."
Heidi, if you are still reading this blog, Wadih would like to be able to contact with you. His e-mail address is wadiham@hotmail.com

Thats all folks!!

a great "non party "birthday

Who are we kidding! It was a party. Nine friends after school with a big sister who oganised some games, mum who provided lots of great food, and lots of lovely cards @ pressies. Zac had breaky in bed and other good things for the day. Thanks for the e-cards from Lebanon.We had an eyeball treasure hunt-see photos, and today a soccer win 5-0 with pizza lunch breakup then a play with a friend who took him bowling, then the Lords and Hoggies Snr for Pizza tea! We will sleep well tonight and dream of pizza!
Take care all. xxxx

Night out at the theatre

Well that might be a bit of an exaggeration. We went to the school arts assembly with items from the primary school classes and choir at 6.30pm. This was followed at 8.00pm by the high school putting 0n their musical production "Back to the eighties." It was well done but did not see any future Australian Idols. It did not finish until 10.40pm so it turned out to be a long night in a gym that was getting colder by the minute.
Managed to get three Merino rams yesterday happy with what we got.
must go god bless.

we got mail

Good news Lindy, your letter arrived in the post today 10 days after you wrote your letter. Will try and get to Jamestown this week and set up the bank account and then we can start winding up Trevor's estate. Nice sunny day, off to buy some merino rams at Hallett and down to Mallala to get a couple of White Suffolk rams on Thursday. Photo of the Pekina reservoir taken on Sat.

Hogben happenings

Well a not too busy weekend is over and now its not long till Isaacs b.day & he reminds us everyday.This year is a non party year but somehow we have ended up with 10 boys comming for an afternoon tea "play" after school. Not too bad realy.
Cheese still featurs prominatly on his birthday wish list!!?!
I survived Annie going to the show without us and she did too, Zac and I had a nice day seeing Hoodwinked and getting him new shoes and a hair cut.
The jelly beans were from Todd and Tammy when they got back from the States. Annie sorted them out so we could sellect our choice of flavor and ....Todd and Tammy are growing their own Jelly bean Cleek!!!!:)I'm not sure if this means they are more or less likely to stay, we still have to wait and see.
The photo of us shows our ann. breakfast from the kids.
Murphy didnt go to the vet. She was fine the next day. Must have just been nerves or something. Hope Kat is ok.
Well John and Jessie enjoy the last bit of your holidays.
Hope everyone keeps safe and well.
Love Kez xx :)

Who'd have thought so many famous Australians could die in one week.!

Howdy Lindy, I just thought you might be interested to hear that in addition to Steve Irwin getting killed by a sting ray, this week has also seen Peter Brock wrap a car around a tree in a rally (causing his death) and Colin Thiele die a peaceful death at home. (You might have heard about Irwin, but I didn't think Peter Brock or Colin Thiele were likely to make the Lebanese or British news.)

Self Indulgence Weekend

Last weekend we were able to spend a few days just doing the things we wanted and didn't have to worry about being there for somebody else. it was very nice. Tiffan on the Park was very good. We enjoyed a great meal at a window table and was able to watch the world go by on Greenhill road. A relaxing spa helped us enjoy a restful sleep. We had a good day at the show with Aunty Kaye and enjoyed the evenings entertainment on the main show ring including the fireworks. Sunday we went to West Beach for church and were able to catch up with some people we hadn't seen for some time and then as you all know we had an enjoyable night at the Hogbens catching up with everyone. Monday after some shopping in Marion and Koorong it was home and back into routine with Ambulance training. 20 points of rain Tuesday night, has freshened up the crops a bit so there is still some hope of a harvest. A couple of photos of our room which included chocolates and after a bit of a wait we were able to get a bottle of non Alcoholic wine to go with our meal.

Busy Bakers

Thought it might be nice to see what my kids are doing to occupy their time. Cooking is one of John's current hobbies and he is quite good at it. Jessie enjoys taking over and doing the fun bits. She even managed to make tuna salad for all of us for lunch today. Aren't they clever beans!! And the cake was very yummy!

(Sorry the photo's are a bit fuzzy. I'm not sure why that is.)

Tyre part 2

I was very relieved to see that Tyre itself was not as damaged as I had feared. There has already been a big effort to clear away alot and some places where there had been buildings brought down have already been bulldozed and are just neat piles of rubble now. Isn't that sad? It was great to see some of the staff at school. They were a bit surprised to see me still here, but I think it made an impression that we had stayed. Lou and I enjoyed a walk along the corniche this morning with the girls and it was lovely just being back there. I felt I just needed to see for myself how things really were and to take on, or own, some of what has happened. These photo's are all of the road home, the road that we should have been driving on to get back to Beirut. As you can imagine it will take time and money to get this all sorted. I am hoping to start going back every week when school starts, but we will have to see how it works out time wise on the road.

Back from Tyre

Well we managed to make it to Tyre and back. It was interesting. To begin with the trip there took us just under four hours!!! This is what I used to do in 1hr 20mins. There was a huge traffic jam whilst trying to get around Sidon. That was the main problem. We had to go around rather than through because of the main overpass being blown up. (Last Picture) Coming home was much better, about 2hrs. I went down with two friends and their two little girls. It was amazing going down the highway, and even before that in Beirut, just trying to get as far as the airport. It took ages because you have to detour around the bridges that are down. I will put a couple of photo's up. These are mine Deb, but not as impressive I'm afraid. They were taken from a moving vehicle, often through the window. Maybe if I go down on my own I can stop and get some better ones. Anyway, the destruction is massive on the highway but they have done huge amounts of clearing away already. Most of the bridges are now just half bridges as they have already removed the damaged sections. (Picture No2) Also the craters in the road are mostly filled in with gravel. There was one unfixed that we drove right past (First Picture) and there are a few places on the highway where you suddenly come across a pile of old tyres in the middle of the road to warn you there is a crater. More to follow.

Look at us now!

Well I may not be physicly able to party hard on the long weekend, but I will certanly be celebrating the casting out of my tonsills!!! They should be gone by the end of the day on the 27th of Sep. Hazah!Then we shall never speak of them again.
The rest of the fam are well and getting on with things.
Lindy I have to tell you that your letter was read out on Life FM. The story goes.......One of the dj's was invited to join in with the sunday school kids a few weeks back and was in church when I got up and shared where things where at for you guys,then, so I was told,the following day she read the letter and metioned our names, the prayer points and talked about the situation for about 5 mns and asked for everyone to pray!So there you go!
Iain should be back from Dubi on Fri ( with some perfume!) :)I hear all has gone well. So we will see some of you on the weekend and others another day! Take care all.
Love you. Kez. xx

Back to normal??!!

Well, just so there is something new to look at on the blog, I thought I should do another update. Things have been reletively quiet and uneventful over the past week or so. With the agreement by the UN and the EU to send a significant number of troops, people are a bit more optimistic about the ceasefire holding. Having said that, it seems we still have issues with fuel, with queues and some petrol stations closing. I'm not really sure why.
We managed to have our church service downtown today and it was nice to be back in our own building. We managed to get nearly 50 people and had communion together. Sadly, a few of our church members have told us that they will not be coming back for at least four or five months. This is mostly due to schooling issues or mission policies. On the positive side, in the next few weeks there should be at least a few folk returning and we are waiting for them with baited breath. I will be more than happy to hand over a few responsibilities to the 'newly returned'.
As far as I know the kids school will open sometime early October. I don't know yet what will happen with the school in Tyre, but I hope to go down some time this week to see the state of things.
That is about it for now.

4th floor please.

We were busy loading 448 sheep at Black Rock this morning. On their way to market at Dublin tomorrow. Feeling a bit worried as the truckie thought it was going to be another very big sale. One photo shows Spider man the truckie hanging on the side of the truck, he was putting sheep from economy into business class. At one stage he was walking on a 10 cm. wide rail on the top of the load. You may recognise that it is the same B_Double that came and loaded sheep out at Haynes yards a few weeks ago.
We had 200 lambs and 248 old ewes, they all loaded very well and we finished up with sheep on all four levels. About 730 head all up. Will let you know how they sell. Had a good wool sale last thurs. all but one line of wool sold for above valuation, that line will be offered next sale.

Life in Lebanon now

Well, to try and answer Debbie's question, there are many different opinions around at the moment about the future of Lebanon. Some are optimistic that it is all going to be calm and quiet now, and Israel are withdrawing without incident. The Lebanese army will take up their positions and Unifil will fill in the gaps. One problem with this scenario is the fact that no-one is willing to take on disarming Hezbollah. Not the Lebanese army or members of the new UN force. So that brings us to another opinion.
Some people are worried that now will start a time of civil unrest. Many Lebanese are very upset with Hezb for what has happened to this summer's tourist season. It was projected that this would be a very profitable year for hotels, shops and the country in general and many people went into debt to buy goods and prepare for the tourist season. So, the idea is that certain groups will want to hold them accountable for 'starting' this war, contrary to the government's policies and the wishes of most Lebanese.
I have doubts about that as people are so sick of war, they don't want more unrest. So we will just have to wait and see.
One thing I did want to comment on was the amazing speed with which the displaced have returned to their villages and homes. Most of us thought they would be here in the schools for at least a month or so, but within a couple of hours literally of the ceasefire, people were loading up cars and trucks and moving out. The roads south have been clogged with hundred of vehicles trying to cross temporary bridges and get around huge craters in the roads. I will put some photos up that I got from the BBC web site.

Girls Day Out!

Well, the Lebanese are truly amazing. We have had two quiet days in Beirut and already people are getting back to getting on with life. After spending around three hours bagging rice, sugar, tea and burghul, (my back and arms are so sore!!!!), Jessie and I had our 'date', which she has been asking for, for the past three weeks. Wadih was able to fill some petrol this morning with only a half hour wait and so we were able to go down to the mall. We just did girlie things like window shop, have lunch at McDonalds and we also got a new book each for John and Jessie. It was very nice to just be out and about and I was amazed at how many people were there. Things are still a bit uncertain and people are now worried about the civil state of affairs. More about that later.

One concern at the moment is lack of work. I have an opportunity to do some proof reading for a local librarie. I have to call the guy this week to get details, but it sounds good. I should be able to do most of the work at home. Please pray for work for Wadih. As you can imagine there are not many concerts or festivals happening at the moment and it is very hard for him just being at home. I am hoping that this is an opportunity to find something new, but we would appreciate your prayers. Love and blessings to you all.

Brighton news

We are alive and kicking,Annie has finished her netball for the year and continues to have a busy social life and growth spurts. Zac is also growing out of his clothes, hight wise anyway. They both enjoyed a worship disco at the church last sat night. Mike stayed home and had a Matrix night with Jo and a friend of his who turned out to have gone to the computer camp that Mike ran with S.U.( same one that you were on Deb, we had photos of him. Adelaide is so small sometimes.Mike is traveling again this week.
We are haveing Mel & George and Jenny ( the lady who looked after the cats) for tea tonight. Jenny is going back to Israel next week and wanted to see the babies one more time.
A designer guy is comming in the morning hopefully to make a start on the Uncle Trev memorial pergola. It would be nice to have it done by the end of Nov :) but Christmas would be ok too!
Many prayers and enquiries are made for you Lebanon mob and friends are still asking how you are going too Deb.
Annie wanted to know if anyone needed the answers to her puzzles.
I'll see if I can find any photos to add.
Thanks again for all of your news.
Love you all.. Kez....xxxx