Well that sucks!

What a shocker!
What a day to have a bad one. If only they put up a bit of a whimper? So many things to have a whinge about. You have to wonder whether it would've been better to bow out (pardon the pun) against West Coast with some sort of fight (although they still would've had a second chance) than to go out like this. All I can hope in, is that this will cause them to fight real hard next year and I guess it certainly has the potential to cause this team to want to prove something so . . . . look out in 08 . . . . please.

Love and the Church

The Dave Andrews awesome read of 'Not Religion but Love' really echo's some of my sentiments towards the local Christian church in huge amounts. I think my difficulty over the years with the church has been because the local church has been more interested in doing the church thing rather than simply being the people that Jesus wants them to be and loving others unconditionally. I wrote this a while ago about this very fact:

"For so long now I believe the church (generally speaking) has given God’s true love a fair bit of lip service that hasn’t dropped to the heart or feet.

For whatever reason, often I have seen local churches chase the easy options, chasing those who can come into the life of church the quickest with the least amount of effort. Unfortunately it doesn’t take much love for this to happen.
What we see in Christ though is far greater than this. Jesus came to love as God loved - with a whole gamut of self sacrifice.

It is this sacrificial unconditional love, that caused grown men to drop their nets and follow, that caused sinners to weep at his feet, that sent self righteous accusers who pointed the finger to take a good look at themselves and men in high positions give up the right to their riches and fame."

I'd be interested in anyone's thoughts on that.

BRING IT ON!!!

C'mon the Power! Tame those Cats!!!

Church and Discipleship

Been commenting at a previous lecturer's (one of my fav's and a good bloke) blog site. There's been some interesting conversation going on about community and understanding Jesus outside the normal Christian format. So I thought I'd post this as it prompted me to think of some stuff I have written in the past:
"The problem is, I believe, that because of our (churches across the world) fleshly desire to create something that ‘looks good’, in building our own church empires and making sure there are plenty of people, we have let go of the very thing that is good, simply growing passionate disciples of Jesus. We’ve replaced what God designed to be good - getting alongside of an individual, loving them, leading them to Christ, helping them grow in their understanding and their position as a child of God, and leading them to do the same, into - come to church, get involved in what we do, become a part of the crowd and follow the religion. No wonder they don’t want to follow Jesus actively, just look at what we’ve served them! An empty fulfilment of rules and rituals, legalities and burnout, high, unrealistic expectations and a love for the things of church, not necessarily a love for God and each other, the primary commandments of the one who we say we follow".

Sports all round!

Well I'm kinda a sports freak in many ways, have been from a young age. Played footy and basketball until my knee decided to go in a different direction to where I wanted to go. Needless to say .. the end of competitive sport. It just so happened that at the young age of 21 I married a very zippy point guard and netballer. So you'd think that if we had some children they'd be loving sport. Well you'd be right! This is as good a bragging place as any so here goes.
Footy. . . . as a coach and Dad of player was very hot this year. The mighty Christies Beach Primary 4/5's were unbeaten! Not only that, they kicked an everage of 107 points per game, with a total of 1395 points for the 13 games played. Brody Kicked 30:10 for the season from playing primarily on the ball and no I didn't tank it so he kicked more. :)

Glenno in the middle - the big one - Brody's on my left arm (with the boofy hair!).










Gymnastics . . . . seems we have a new State champ in the fam! State championships for Shannon, Kirrily and Hannah was last weekend and they all did well!
Kirrily had a ball and came 8th overall with a 3rd on the bars in her Grade. Her team won the overall grade.










Shannon had a great weekend also and her team won the grade overall as well. Shannon also came a personal fourth overall.


















Hannah had an awesome championships! In under 6 in her grade Hannah came first on the vault, 2nd on the beam and 4th on floor and took out the Grade as State champ, what a little trooper!

















So we're very proud of our kids and their efforts, they have tried so hard and it's been awesome to watch them develop and we look forward to that more into the future. It's been a big year in sport! Go 'the Power' and bring on the cricket!

Sustainable House Construction #1

Ok, so, starting a new line of Blog that will be a journal to building a new, Energy Efficient Home.
We have a block of land at Aldinga Beach that we want to build on. It is approx 1200m2, 51m deep and 24m across, it's flat and north facing.
We want to build it as energy efficient as we possibly can and the least amount of impaction on our environment. That means on gases into the air, co2 etc, amount of electricity, lpg etc used for living and most importantly that we are doing our best to save water.
So, hopefully this can be a reference point for us as we research and maybe for others as they also consider building or renovating their homes.
I'll be gathering information off the web and hopefully linking to other like minded blogs and resources that are doing the same. If anyone can help or wants to join in, it would be most appreciated.