Fish, Furniture, Fire



Seahorses at Seahorse World

 Hmm, perhaps I should title this Church, Children, Chaos? However, these three “F” words certainly explain these last couple of days in this Hawkins’ household.

To start with my “to do” list is thankfully quite a bit smaller this week but still far too long. Or is this list just another excuse to procrastinate on opening the file to my current writing project? Another hmm! Anyway, just a brief update on what has kept us busy these last few days.

We mind two of our gorgeous grandchildren every Monday during school hours and it was great this week for me to be able to spend more time with them than I’ve been able to recently. That “list” again!

Ray preached at the Church of Christ at Ulverstone last Sunday morning. A lovely time of fellowship and lunch afterwards at the Blue Wren Cafe overlooking that beautiful area of Bass Strait. It was a rare sunny day and we thoroughly enjoyed the hour long drive north-west. At long last the daylight hours are starting to become longer and Tasmania is beginning to announce spring is on the way. After all the rain (note all the rain over this winter!) the land looks fresh with plenty of green grass, faint green shoots on bare branches, golden wattle trees already in full flower in some areas of full sunlight and daffodils and early spring bulbs lining the road and gardens in many places.

The last few weeks have been so busy, my love-of-furniture-rearranging-husband was met with a stern “no” each time these last hectic weeks he mentioned moving our television to a different place in our tiny lounge room. These “no’s” come from well over 40 years of discovering these bouts of moving things around usually mean more chaos to add to the already messy house! It never is just a “simple move of the TV into that corner, darling.” And today proved me right once more! Of course, it took ages to work out why the TV kept telling us “no signal”. I think we now have most books back into that bookcase but those videos, cassettes etc, etc, etc, still have to be sorted out once more – tomorrow. Sigh. But still, as usual Ray is right again. The room does look better and I have more room for more family photos!

And now, those Fish? Well, that is what we call the seahorses as well as the aquarium fish at Seahorse Australia and Seahorse World (click on name to view website) – the businesses of our son and daughter-in-law here at Beauty Point. When orders have to be packed to travel interstate and especially to overseas destinations, it many times mean the orders have to be at the airport in the early hours of the morning which means packing live fish immediately beforehand. My way of helping is to stay with our sleeping (hopefully!) grandchildren while Ray helps Craig & Rachelle with the packing. When we can convince our darlings we can sleep in the next morning while Craig has to still be at work by 7am and Rachelle has five children to care for, Ray and I deliver the boxes to the airport for them. It is usually a rush to drive the hour to the airport to arrive in time by 4am, so Ray drives but I drive home because I’ve usually managed to doze or simply relax and read for a couple of hours. We did manage a few hours before up at 1am and then more later this morning. By the way, for our American readers, the order this morning is on its way to Miami. Do look out for seahorses in aquariums and pet shopsand ask where they have come from. Most likely it will be Tasmania!

But we have been saddened today to hear on the news about a shocking house fire in Queensland that claimed the lives of 11 folk, including small children. These were folk of the Samoan Pacific Island community there. On the news we were told they were very “religious” and the community that gathered obviously have a testimony of faith to share, especially as their beautiful voices rose in harmony as the emergency services are now going about their grim work. We can only join them in prayer that the God of all love, all comfort, all peace will meet each grieving heart’s need at this tragic time.

And now, back to "the list". Oops, guess it's bedtime though and this post is late - once again.