Hi there everyone and welcome back to Good Morning Mondays.

Have you had a good week??? Ours was good and cold.

The weather has really turned this past few days and it almost snowed on Thursday and that is very rare. We do get some snow on one of the mountains in the Grampians and this happens most years but for us to get it down here is amazing.

This was on the day that we headed down to the Warrnambool Eisteddfod on Thursday. We had to take it very slow on the roads as they were covered in ice. I was so glad that we were in a heated auditorium for the sessions.  It also poured with rain most of the day and at times it was hard to hear the young pianists playing.

Our children had a great day and received placings in all their sections. Overall the standard was very good and quite a few of the children playing were homeschooled.

Our son-in-law, daughter and their children came down for the day also and it was great to have them there. We had a lovely day and then we all spent the evening with our good friends who live down that way. They are a beautiful family and have 10 children so there are always plenty of people to play with.

It was so great to enjoy a meal together and talk the evening away. The children, including the older ones, played spoons which is a lively, and somewhat noisy game.  We came away encouraged and blessed with our time spent together.

Do you have friends that you just sit and talk about God and what He is doing in your lives??? It is a wonderful thing. I encourage you to find a friend like that.

We had to go to Warrnambool again on Friday for one final session and then we came home. Our music teacher gave us Saturday off so we got to have a sleep in and a relaxing day. We will have a lesson during the coming week sometime.

Sunday we headed back to our friends church to hear him preach on Prayer and Fasting.
I took the above photo from our front veranda during a break from the rain. I love seeing rainbows as it reminds me of how God keeps His promises. What a blessing.

Okay onto our link up…

Our top three posts this week…When You Clean The Critter Shed and Find by Mindie at The (mis)Adventures of a “Born Again” Farm Girl
Name Above All Names — Word of Life by Beth Willis Miller What Secrets Are You Hiding? by Ifeoma at Purposeful and Meaningful

Thank you everyone for stopping by and linking up, I hope you were blessed by it.

This coming week is going to be mainly spent at home. We will have a music lesson but apart from that we will be staying inside and keeping warm.

My husband is going to be running a Good to Great Father’s Course over the next 10 weeks and it starts this Thursday night, so if you have time your prayers would be appreciated for the men in the course.  There are going to be 5 of them including my husband.

Because we went to church elsewhere we swapped our soup making with another lady so we will need to make soup this week. I have to deal with some pumpkins that are starting to go rotten so if you have any advice about how you keep your pumpkins I would love to hear it.

I have a younger friend (she is 24), and she has been challenging me with scriptures and what they mean to me over the past couple of weeks. I am really enjoying this with her and digging into scriptures together.

Don’t forget about our new monthly link up…Remember that this is a once a month link up with a different topic each month.

This month’s topic is WORSHIP and what that means to you and how you live it.

Also you don’t need to link up if you don’t have a post on the topic, but you can leave your thoughts in the comments section.  I would love to hear from you.

Have a blessed week my friends and may God lead and guide you in your everyday life.

Numbers 6:24-26 “The Lord bless you and keep you; The Lord make His face shine upon you, And be gracious to you; The Lord lift up His countenance upon you, And give you peace.”

Blessings to you all my dear friends xxxx

You will find me linked up at some of these great blogs

Hi there everyone and welcome back to Good Morning Mondays.

What a week!! The weather has varied between cold and sunny and wet. The first couple days of the week contained frosty mornings but lovely sunny days, although still cold. Then by the latter half of the week it was back to wet and cold.

I have been hibernating inside with the children as much as possible but I did manage to walk most mornings this week.  Thursday I even managed to meet our postie and have a nice chat to him. He is a family friend and I don’t often get out there at the exact time that he drives up, so it was nice to see how he is going.

My husband had his last Good to Great night on Monday and hence he graduated with the other gentlemen on Friday night. We had a lovely meal together, each of us bringing something to share. Across the 5 families there were 22 children there, and most of them have known each other for quite a while.

We had a lovely older man who is a father, grandfather and great grandfather come and give us a short message on fatherhood and then he presented the certificates and then blessed each man. What a wonderful moment that was. We joke now that my husband has done the course he has finally made it :-). For all of us we are never going to make it until we get to Heaven but he now has some great tools to being a great father. In his children’s eyes he was already great so now he must be magnificent.

I made a new friendship with one of the wives who I hadn’t met before this course. My husband really connected with her husband so we are looking forward to getting to know them better in the coming months.

The children have been busy practicing their piano and their scales especially. They have another Eisteddfod this coming week and then their exams are at the end of July. They are both going so very well and we are very grateful to God for their giftings.

Okay so that’s about it for our quiet week at home, it was so nice. But now onto our link up…

Our top three posts this week were…

(sorry no pics this week – I am having some internet downloading problems).

A Thrifty Week at Harvest Lane Cottage by Laura at Harvest Lane Cottage

The Gift Cupboard by Woman Abiding

The Inner Views of Shyla Brown by Cheryl at Homespun Devotions

Thank you to all of you who stopped by and linked up, I hope you are blessed by this link up as much as I am.

This coming week is another almost home one until Thursday when the next Eisteddfod is on. The children are playing on Thursday and our son-in-law, daughter and their family are coming as well which is wonderful, our children are so excited.

Then that night we are all catching up with some friends of ours for a pizza tea. We did this last year and we had a wonderful time, we are all such great friends and it is so nice to all be together.

Friday morning our daughter is playing again so we will go down and then be home for the afternoon.

Then it’s music lessons again on Saturday morning and that is our last one for this term, then we have two weeks holidays.

We won’t be taking the holidays this term, we will keep on schooling and we will take a break in a month or so.

Now don’t forget about our new link up…

Remember that this is a once a month link up with a different topic each month.

This month’s topic is WORSHIP and what that means to you and how you live it.

Also you don’t need to link up if you don’t have a post on the topic, but you can leave your thoughts in the comments section.  I would love to hear from you.

Have a blessed week my friends and may God lead and guide you in your everyday life.

Numbers 6:24-26 “The Lord bless you and keep you; The Lord make His face shine upon you, And be gracious to you; The Lord lift up His countenance upon you, And give you peace.”

Blessings to you all dear friends xxxx

An InLinkz Link-up

You will find me linked up at some of these great blogs.

Good Morning Mondays Link Up is back and what a great opportunity for us to come together and share for the week.

Welcome back!! How has your week been??? It has been cold and wet here this week, winter has really arrived.I took this photo the other day when it was bucketing down. It is so nice and cosy inside, I feel for my husband on days like this when he is working out in the cold and wet. 

On Monday we had the Hamilton Eisteddfod and our two younger children competed in the piano sections.  We were there all day and it was very enjoyable.

Both children took first and second placings and also received honourable mentions or third placings.

No 2 daughter got 2 firsts, 2 seconds and 1 hm and no 2 son got 1 first, 4 seconds and 1 hm. They did a great job and had a great attitude as well. It was so lovely to see them and their friends be so encouraging to each other.

There were times when they were competing against their friends but not each other. Last year they competed against each other as well. We try and teach them that it is not about winning but about doing their best and being happy for someone else if they win. The adjudicator this year was great and very encouraging to the younger students. He didn’t just award places if he didn’t think they deserved it but he gave some great critiques.

We spent another couple of nights going in to see some of our other friends in the older piano and violin sections and that was great as well. It was good to see all their hard work pay off and not just in winning but their ability as well.

On Friday it was our no 2 daughter’s 11th birthday. She is such a great young lady and we love her very much.  I made her favourite tea for her and she enjoyed her creamy bacon pasta.

On Saturday her brother-in-law, older sister and their children came for lunch and the afternoon and we enjoyed a meal together.
Here they are at the table about to eat. The only one missing was our no 1 son who is away working at the moment.

Granddad had lots of fun with the children and gave them heaps of cuddles. Not much else happened this week. My husband worked some days and I suppose I managed to get the washing done and food cooked for us all. Sometimes I get to the weekend and wonder where the week has gone.

Okay onto our link up…

Our top three posts this week were…My Thoughts For June : The Role of Older Woman by Finding Joy in the EverydayCleavers, An Herbal Remedy for You and Your Cat by Kathi at Oak Hill HomesteadLiving Fully With A Broken Heart by Michele at Living Our Days

Thank you so much for taking the time to stop by and link up. I hope you have been blessed by some of the other posts here and that you are getting to know each other.

NOW FOR THE BIG NEWS

Announcing a new link up….

Wednesday Wisdom Searching

Our Good Morning Mondays Link Up will remain the same this is a totally new link up.

As the name states, this link up will commence this Wednesday 15th June and at the moment, will be held each month – on the 3rd Wednesday of the month.

This is a different type of link up, actually I want it to be a discussion forum where we use the comments section to talk about the topic for the month and you will also be able to link up posts that relate.

This months topic will be WORSHIP, so if you get a chance I would love to see you there. Pop back here to Darling Downs Diaries on Wednesday to see what it is all about.

I’ve got a week at home coming up and I am really looking forward to it. I am going to achieve school and piano practice, I have knitting to do and some sewing as well. I really enjoy weeks at home.

We do have my husbands graduation night from his Fathers Course on Friday night. That should be a great time and I enjoy getting together with the other wives for some fellowship.

So that’s it from me this week. I hope and pray that you are all well. As you can see from this months topic at Wednesday Wisdom Searching, I have been doing a lot of thinking about Worship and what that means and how it fits into our daily lives.

What is God talking to you about, where is He leading you – I would love to hear about it.

I pray that you are all well and that God is working in your lives.

Numbers 6:24-26 “The Lord bless you and keep you; The Lord make His face shine upon you, And be gracious to you; The Lord lift up His countenance upon you, And give you peace.”

Blessings to you all dear friends xxxx

Hey there and welcome back to our Good Morning Mondays Link Up.

I really don’t have that much to say this week except that I was totally worn out after our son’s 21st party last Saturday night.

So I didn’t really achieve too much this week until Saturday afternoon when my husband was at a meeting and I managed to mend 7 pairs of his work jeans and re-fitted a blazer I bought for our no 2 son at the op shop on Saturday morning.

Woo hoo what an achievement. Well I did do the washing and folding and our no 2 daughter reheated the leftovers for our meals so we didn’t even cook anything until Friday night.

No 2 daughter cooked us a stew for Friday night, and then my husband rang and said that we had been invited to friends for dinner as they had been tuna fishing and wanted to share.  So we enjoyed a beautiful meal of salads and tuna steaks and were blessed to bring home enough for 6 or 7 meals for ourselves. This fish was fresh from the sea and tasted just delicious.

Maybe I should talk about what God has put on my mind. That may be more exciting than the pigs in the vegetable garden, digging it up.

Last weekend we were blown away with this family that visited us from NSW. These are the people our son is now working for. As our No 1 daughter said, spending time together with these people and their mum was like being at a retreat.

Their mum is an awesome woman who just brings every conversation around to God and where we should be with Him.  Her husband passed away 2 years ago from a heart attack. It was unexpected and I suggest a total shock, but she speaks of how God has led her to Him when she doesn’t think she can go on.

Matthew 27:50-51 Jesus, when he had cried again with a loud voice, yielded up the ghost. And, behold, the veil of the temple was torn in two from top to bottom, and the earth shook and the rocks were split.

She talks about that because Jesus died the veil of the temple was torn so that because of his sacrifice we have the privilege to enter boldly into the throne room and live in the presence of God in the Holy Place, to surrender to Him, and all that we do is an act of worship.

Hebrews 4:16 Let us therefore come boldly unto the throne of grace, so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need.

So I suppose in all that, we have been doing a lot of talk about walking the walk of our faith. Being a christian isn’t only about Sundays it is about every day and every thing that we do.

We also started doing a bible study with our younger children – up against just reading from a devotional. We started with Psalm 1, and the first night we did one verse. My husband then broke it down and we talked about what it meant to them. This was just great and we are keen to continue on with this each night when we can.

We need to encourage our children to read God’s word not just hear it on a Sunday but to actually immerse themselves into it each day of the week.

How do you encourage your children to read the Bible???

Okay onto our link up…

Our top three posts this week were…
National Geographic for Kids – Tigers Book Giveaway! by Our Home of Many Blessings
Cooking Orange Rolls With Grandchildren by Grandma IdeasWe Will Always Remember by Sharon Sharing God

Thank you for stopping by and linking up you are all such a blessing to me.

Okay onto the coming week…

Monday is the Eisteddfod and we will be in there all day. The children are in the morning, afternoon and then the evening session. They are excited and nervous at the same time but I think they are really looking forward to it.

We have talked about how we need to encourage others and if they don’t win they should be happy for those who do, because everyone has worked hard on their pieces to get them right. Our children are very gracious and this is such a blessing. Mind you they don’t mind winning either and this Eisteddfod comes with a $20 cash prize for each win, so that encourages them to do their best as well.

After Monday we will go back to the Eisteddfod on Tuesday night to see some older friends play. It is always good for the younger ones to see how the older ones perform.

Then the rest of the week is back to normal, school and cleaning and cooking. We now focus on music exams and scales – the children are so excited about getting back into their scales ;-).

What is God talking to you about, where is He leading you – I would love to hear about it.

I pray that you are all well and that God is working in your lives.

Numbers 6:24-26 “The Lord bless you and keep you; The Lord make His face shine upon you, And be gracious to you; The Lord lift up His countenance upon you, And give you peace.”

Blessings to you all dear friends xxxx