Morning everyone. Well after a very restless night with the rain arriving with a bang and then dissapearing again just as quickly, it was a case of up and down checking windows. I woke up quite early and as I was making tea I could hear the family dog "Abby" crying at the front door. I assumed that she wanted to come in as all the grass was wet, however decided to leave her a bit longer. After a short while I decided that there was something wrong so opened the door and she just flew straight into the house. I then realised what the problem was, a hot air balloon was landing in the fields behind our property. She is totally terrified poor little thing, so we comforted her and she lay down in our dining room. Every time these balloons come down they make quite a lot of noise as the slow themselves down to land safely by blowing the gas and it does make a noise. Poor little thing.

We woke to the news that there has been a tragic 8.8 earthquake in Chile, and that a Tsunami warning has been posted all along our coast line. Such a tradegy in Chile, am sure there will be many many deaths recorded. Fortunately Ivan was not on one of his many trips to Chile as he goes there quite regularly. He is away at the moment but in the USA. While watching the news it was incredible to see that people were taking no notice of getting out of the water. The lifesavers even had their safe flags up, who would be so stupid to go into the water. In the past 15 minutes though the lifesaves have closed the beaches and asking people to leave the beach. At this stage the authorities have no idea to the size of the waves. We have heard from our friends in NZ and from what they can gather they have had a rise in the sea level of 50cm. Hopefully there will be no major damage on Norfolk or Lord Howe Island.

Welcome to my New Blog

After many years of using old typewriters, electric typewriters, I was persuaded to get a computer. I was very reluctant as I had been typing on ordinary typewriters since I was 12. However I was soon hooked on the computer. Whilst in South Africa, I was not connected to the Web but used the computer most days to write "snail" mail. After immigrating to Australia and with help from both my daughter and my son I am now taking the first big step to have a "Blog" I love to read family and friend's Blogs as it keeps me up to date with what is happening in their lives.
Beverly has kindly helped me to get up and running with this one and as you can see I have called it DinoDot. For those that don't know why I would call the blog by this name, it is because over a period of 15 years, Brian and I have made thousands of Wooden Dinosaurs, the money from the sale of these lovely toys have made it possible for Brian and I travel around the world both to the USA and back to South Africa, with both our children providing air tickets for us for which we are eternally grateful.

We no longer sell the dinosaurs at markets as with age and arthritis catching up with us it was becomming a bit of a burden. Brian has been able to devote more time to his wonderful carvings and I have taken up Pyrography. We are members of the Ipswich Woodcrafters Club and have a great social day out and the more experienced members help us with our hobbies. With Beverly having been a Creative Memories consultant since 2000, I have become an avid scrapbooker. I have always loved photography since a young child as my father used to do all his own printing and developing and I have very fond memories of being the the dark room while the magical pictures came to life. Now I have been given a beautiful Cannon Camera by Ian and I still have lots to learn about this new camera but it certainly takes fantastic photos. To say that the whole family are big photographers is told by the fact that with Ian visiting Australia for one week only we managed to take between the 3 of us 1105 photos. We have a beautiful 2 bedroom home built for us by Beverly and Ivan on their property and it is so lovely to be close to our family here in Australia to see the grandchildren achieve their goals. Unfortunately we are not able to be with Ian and Wendy and their two girls but with the modern technology these days we are able to keep in touch via Skype.

I am sure I am going to be able to post photos and write up my blog most days, so this is certainly going to be fun.