A year of horror, a new business, and a growing toddler....

Well, this year has been eventful so far if nothing else.

First we had the Qld floods, followed by Cyclone Yasi. That was January. February saw the Christchurch Earthquake. My 2 oldest girls live in Christchurch, so seeing the news flash, while in the waiting room at the local hospital, saying 'mass fatalities' was pretty scary!! Took about an hour from then to get a text from Alicia saying they were both okay! Sara had been in her first Latin lecture at university when it hit. After the uni closed down for a month or so, lectures re-started in tents! They are still getting aftershocks (in fact, they never stopped after the September 4 quake), and personally, as a mum, I find it pretty scary having kids living there.

March it was the massive quake, tsunami and nuclear fallout in Japan. April there were masses of tornadoes in the south of the USA. We are only a week into May. I hope and pray we don't hear more bad news!!

Here, in little old Roma, we have been through a couple of more floods ourselves. In March we went to the Gold Coast for a week to see my sister, Sonia while she was over from New Zealand. On the way home, travelling at 90km/h in the dark, and towing a trailer, we hit a wall of water, and got swept across the road. VERY SCARY!! We then got to the Bungil Creek (the one that keeps flooding Roma), and were one of the last vehicles (and only cos we were in the 4WD) that was allowed through for the night. Then a couple of weeks ago, we went down to Brissy for the day to get some of our stuff out of storage. We left Samara at home with the bigger girls to spare her a 14 hour round trip in the car. Then the floods hit again! We didn't get home til 2 days later!!!

Feeling the pennies pinching through all the ups and downs of the last few years (and months in particular), I decided I needed to try and do something about our finances. So I revamped my facebook page www.facebook.com/justjuniors, and started selling a range of clothing, and also promoting my t-shirt designs to raise disability awareness.

I am now selling my designs on a massive range of products through two sites. www.zazzle.com.au/justjuniors and www.cafepress.com.au/justjuniors. Feel free to come and have a look, comment, or better still, buy! LOL.

I have also started a blog about disability awareness, and hope some of you will come and join in, and guest blog your stories. www.just-juniors.blogspot.com

Then there is the toddler. The little princess that got me blogging in the first place! She is growing like a little weed! Here she is in one of 'my' t-shirts and a gorgeous tutu I had made for her for World Down Syndrome Day.

She is learning more and more words, and even starting to string some simple phrases and sentences together. Although, she still prefers using Makaton signs. She especially loves signing animal names! Her favourite word is 'dowaty', and even if we tell her to say dinosaur, she says 'dowaty'! She has also started saying 'henwywywy' for Henry the Ocotpus! Oh, well, as long as she knows the important words!! LOL

She is sick at the moment. Has had a couple of nights in the hospital, and last night was up with me from 4am! She may end up back up at the hospital tonight, as she is finished her round of predimix (baby prednisone), so won't have that extra protection.

And me? Well, I'm just plain tired! Too tired to even think of anything else to share with you. So for now, I'll luv ya and leave ya!