Strawberries in the Winter???

We recently found out that our strawberry season has just started. It will last throughout the winter months. I love this place. Mangoes and watermelon in the summer, oranges in last summer-early fall, now strawberries. It is a never ending fruit salad.

I put the poinsettia picture in there just to prove that it is winter. Maybe we should have Christmas.

home?

I have started this blog on several different days and it has always ended in being erased. I hate to say that I am running out of things to blog about, but I think that it is all becoming familiar and feeling a bit like home. Hence, we are not experiencing "new" things all the time. We really are feeling like life is almost normal. We have friends. Grocery shopping is not such a chore any more. We are established in church and taking on the responsibilities of a church-goer. RT's job is encompassing more responsibilities and with that comes more stress. The "r" at the end of our "er" words are sounding a bit more vowel like (ie. "never" sounds like nevah). We are getting used to ignoring the stares of people who are shocked to hear an American accent. etc etc.

My parents left today to return to the states and I can honestly say that I am not ready to come home. We still have a couple of big trips and some smaller trips to take before we leave on Oct.6th. We are looking forward to seeing more of this beautiful country and the land of New Zealand. We also have the best friends here. I still ask "why" when it comes to our friendships. I did not expect to have any friends (I know, I was being blonde) much less to establish a close friendship with anyone. The Voigts have become dear to our hearts (Kirsty- you are just going to have to get used to sharing your sis :-). We feel quite young again as this last week we got together a couple of evenings to play cards. Unfortunately, we know that the end of this quality time together is coming to an end, which saddens my heart to think about.
So, all this to say....life is good....we are feeling blessed beyond words.....and YES, we ARE coming home in October.

Sailing

We had a very good trip sailing in the Coral Seas. We brought along our good friends Brad, Megan and Andie Voigt.
We sailed off on Friday May 1, and sailed for about 5 hours before we dropped anchor in a cove. The next day we explored the island and viewed some cave paintings before we sailed for about 5 1/2 hours and dropped anchor in another cove where we explored another island and took in some spectacular scenery. Abbie, the brave one in the family, took a taste of some ants which are known to taste like lime. The third day we motored around to Whitehaven beach, a 3.5km stretch of beautiful white beach only accessible by boat. We played there for a while before setting sail for another several hours. We spent this night in Sid Harbour, a natural harbor famous for sheltering the US fleet during a storm before the Battle of the Coral Sea. The fourth day, we sailed to Hamilton Island where we enjoyed using our land legs. Cas and RT took a trip to dive on one of the inner reefs of the Great Barrier Reef while the rest of us visited the resort and explored the harbor.
The next day we left the island and sailed for about 4 hours north to another cove. We had to leave the protection of the islands. The seas were about 6-8 feet. My friend and I sat at the front of the boat. I found that if I screamed on the way up the wave that I could catch my breath on the way down.
The next day,we spent crossing the passageway. This was a very rough day on the high seas. We spent the next two nights staying in resorts with just a little bit of motoring in between.



Cas intently steering the boat while Brad looks on


the kids watched DVD's and played around on the bed (dining room table) while we sailed

On Hamilton Island, overlooking some of the other islands

rainy day sailing

A 3 km beach where we had the only footprints

another look at the beach. We were able to swim with some stingrays. Awesome experience

overlooking our boat in a cove

A cute picture of Abbie, but she is actually waiting for the benedryl to set in

RT in his favorite place

the whole crew. Our family and Brad, Megan and Andie

Back from the High Seas

We had a great trip out on our boat. We had rain every day and some high seas, but it did not hinder our ability to enjoy amazing friends and God's indescribable creation. RT is at a medical conference for the next couple of days. When we get home, we will write more about our adventures and post some pictures.
Please pray with us for our friends in Pomona, Missouri who lost their home in a tornado/straight line winds.

A week in review

Believe it or not we have lived a pretty normal life these past 10 days...not alot to blog about. We are winding down on our formal school year - we will scrapbook AU history and do some geography in the next couple of months. We have used our extra time to spend time with friends, go swimming in Nan*ngo (they have an indoor, heated pool) and just have some down time to play card games and do some reading.
This last friday night, I had the amazing opportunity to be part of an outreach for our church. We had a women's night called "take a walk in my shoes". It was patterned after Dr. Phil's show with 5 women talking about issues in their life (mine was change). Dr. Phil wasn't able to make the journey across the puddle, so we had a local counselor named Bill (Dr. Bill) to do the interviewing. We also had a guy sing some shoe songs like "blue suede shoes". It would take a while to go into all the detail of the evening, but it was a fabulous evening of sharing. I might add that we packed out the hall with 150 women and more that were wanting to come.
We leave on Thursday to go sailing. We will be on a boat for a week (no phones or computers) and then RT will take a medical education class on our return home. -Grandma Ruth, you can take two weeks off from checking the blog, and don't worry-we will be safe!
I would like to take the opportunity once again to thank you for reading the blog, we are amazed and humbled at the amount of people who have been following our journey.

Easterfest (2nd post today)

As expected, we had an amazing time at Easterfest. We enjoyed hearing some familiar voices from home (Audio Adrenaline, Rebekka St.James, and Naturally 7). Rebekka St.James is Aussie but lives and performs in the States. We had 7 big top tents that had continuous Christian music from morning until night. R.T and Cas enjoyed the Christian jazz bands-their new love is Newworldson. I moved between Christian pop rock and the worship tents. I also took in a Dr. speaking on stem cell. Abbie enjoyed the Narnia children's area complete with crafts, sand pit, wii games, veggie tale movies etc and she enjoyed the carnival rides. It was great to have all this entertainment included in the weekend price. Aussies kept to their motto of "no worries".
We rented a house with several other families and on Easter morning we had 21 people from our King*roy church over for breakfast. What a blessing!
Sunday night we had a worship time with all 10,000 attenders. What a way to celebrate our risen Savior!!!
A highlight of the weekend was the two additions to our family. Georgina and Jhonny are Bolivian children that we have the privilege of supporting through compassion ministries.


Evening concert


Abbie was a cat one day and a clown the next


Aussies call these dodgem cars. In America we prefer to bump rather than dodge. Abbie loved the drivers seat. Anyone know a good Chiropractor

We are sitting with about 15 people from our church, waiting for the evening concert to begin.

Sheep Shearing Shed

Say that three times fast. We skipped out on some of the Saturday morning sessions at Easterfest and drove about 30 minutes west to the biggest operating sheep shearing shed. We enjoyed pancakes for morning tea and then got to see a couple of sheep being sheared. Did you know that Australia invented the tool that is being used everywhere for shearing sheep? It was great to experience yet another part of Aussie culture.

Shearing floor where 80 sheep could be sheared. "Back in the 1860's a fleece would hit the floor every 8 seconds." 3,000 sheep would be sheared a day.


Have you heard the saying "pull the wool over his eyes"? This sheep had just been sheared in front of a large crowd. The sheep shearer patted the sheep to a laying position and then put the sheep's fleece that had just been sheared over the sheep's eyes. The sheep went to "sleep" for quite a while

Australia's famous invention

poor sheep is giving his coat off his back for my sweater