Friday, March 19, 2010

Another award.

Last Saturday Michele Emrath of Southern City Mysteries passed on the Beautiful Blogger award to me.
Thank you Michele!
Michele’s blog is well worth a look, so check it out when you get the time.

The rules to the award are: link to the person who nominated me for this award; share seven interesting things about myself; and nominate seven other beautiful bloggers.

Seven (hopefully) interesting things about me:

1. I grew up in a “hippie” family

2. Perhaps because of the above, I am most at home living on a mountaintop, miles from anywhere.

3. When our kids were young, we did live on a mountaintop miles from anywhere.

4. Despite the above I now live in the second largest city in Oz.

5. Two of our three girls almost died when they were children (see below)

6. Io our number two used to get really bad croup, late one night we drove her 25 km (15 miles) at over 160 km/h (100 mph) to the nearest ER (thank goodness we weren’t living on a mountaintop at that stage).
Io went from virtually not breathing, to breathing normally after a simple dose of adrenaline. Two nights later another little girl in the same town died from croup. Sadly she died while her parents waited for an ambulance.

7. When we were living on our mountaintop, E our number one daughter, was coming back to the car after closing a farm gate. The gate was hit by lightning when she was alongside the car. Fortunately, the lightning earthed through the fencing wire and steel posts. If she had still been touching the gate I am sure she would have been a goner.

Now I have to nominate seven blogs.
In no particular order, some of my old favourites and a few blogs I have found (or perhaps have found me) recently.

Heather at Gofita’s Pages

Kristen at We be Reading

Sonshine at Sonshine Thoughts

Rolf at Roffe the Viking from the North

Ann at Ink Pots and Quills

Alyssa at The Writers Block

And Finally Christy at The publishing Maven

Christy is running a givaway of a copy of Aaron Shephard's Perfect Pages at the moment. So if a book on formatting is useful to you head on over.

And now, yet another Banksia variety
Bored of Aussie wild flowers yet?

12 comments:

Natasha said...

Congratulations on the Award - richly deserved.

And # 6 must have been particularly scary. # 7 too, but by the time you realised what was happening, the worst would have passed - in # 6 you would have lived the fear.

And, no, I will never tire of flowers, wild or otherwise.

Alyssa Ast said...

Thank you very much! Great way to start my day!

Heather G. said...

Thanks, Al! I will be putting this one up soon. How scary to almost lose two of your daughters. I can't even imagine that. Thanks for sharing. And I always love your pics too!

Anonymous said...

Thank you Al! It's so nice to get a shout-out on your wonderful blog. And this blog really is beautiful-- I still think you have some of the best pics on the net!

Alyssa Goodnight said...

Yikes! Those are some close calls! Scary...

Congrats on your award!

DJ Kirkby said...

Wow, those were interesting and scary facts. I did one of these a couple of years ago. I was raised by hippies too.

Kristen M. said...

Thank you so much for passing on the award to me!

I was raised by crazy people which might have contributed to me hiding away in the house most of the time -- but I'm really trying to change that! :)

Lisa said...

And to think that we often take croup so lightly. So many children get it and the doctor just says "turn the bathroom into a sauna." Usually works but if you live very far away from a doctor or hospital it might not be the wisest idea.

Heidenkind said...

Congratulations on the award! And no, I'm not bored with flowers yet. :)

Al said...

Hi Rayna,
Thank you!
# 6 was terrifying, and it happened again too, although not as bad.
# 7 was frightening because of the implications of what might have been. Also poor E became quite phobic about thunderstorms for some years after.
Flowers it is!

Hi Alyssa,
You are most welcome. Pleased to have started your day of with a plus!

Hi Heather,
You are most welcome. When ever suits you.
It is frightening to realise how easily they can be taken from you.
Thanks!

Hi Christy,
You are most welcome for the shout out, only too happy to oblige.
Boy you say nice things! Hey I have an advantage in that there is so much photogenic stuff near where I live!

Hi Alyssa,
Terrifying, both of them. Still as they say what doesn’t kill you…
Thank you!

Hi DJ,
I am pleased you found my facts interesting.
Did you have fun with yours?
I find it interesting that a lot of my friends (who were also raised by hippies) ended up very conservative in a lot of ways.

Hi Kristen,
You are most welcome!
There is a whole world indoors, especially through the window of the internet.
I hope your plans for change work well!

Hi Lisa,
That is exactly the advice we are given here too. Steam the bathroom. But where we were living then had very cold, very dry nights and Io’s croup didn’t respond well enough. That time you could have sat a basketball in the cavity her tiny chest made as she tried to breath in. We just knew we couldn’t wait for an ambulance.

Hi Tasha,
Thank you!
I’ll have to hunt out some more flowers for you then!

Ann said...

Hi Al, Thank you so very much for this blog award. I am really delighted. It has brightened up a rather gloomy Monday morning for me.

Five, six and seven sent shivers through me. The safety of my children was always my biggest worry and stress. Glad it all turned out well.

Al said...

Hi Ann,
You are most welcome.
I am only too happy to have helped lift your Monday gloom.
Shivers indeed, the what ifs are too scary to contemplate.