2007

We are in it and you are not : -)

Let me tell you, 2007 is sooooooo much better than 2006. We have flying cars now and everyone lives in glass houses.

Speed cameras oh how I loathe thee

So Brandon and I have accumulated two speeding tickets over the span of a few weeks now. Ohh how it angers me. The first was on the way to the hospital so I think that one should be excused. The second was driving to the grocery store. I was going 55 in a 50, that converts to going 34mph in a 31 mph zone. 3 over!!!!! grrrrrrr is all I can say.
So that is about $300 in fines. Oh the joy.

All I can say is that it is good I don't have the mustang over here right now. I don't drive it really fast (by really fast I mean 100 mph) but I certainly don't stay within 3mph or 5kph of the speed limit. I realized too that if I was driving it here I would have real problems knowing how fast I was going since the dial is in mph instead of kph, I would constantly have to convert. Either that or make some kind of cover to put on the dial that way in kph.

God cares about the little things too

I just thought I would share this with all who read the blog,maybe it will help someone else.

Wednesday night I was feeling really homesick. Brandon and I were talking about being so far away from home and how we wish sometimes we could just get into the car and drive to our parents houses. I don't feel homesick every day but I think after the holidays it has been particularly hard.

When I feel homesick I try to pray and that helps me focus on why we are here and how God has provided for all our needs since we have been here.

On Thursday God showed me once again how he will provide even for needs that don't seem like top priority. Thursday morning my dad called. He said that he just felt like he needed to call. The call helped me in my homesickness as most spontaneous calls, letters, etc. do from friends and family.

Not only did the call help with my homesickness it also helped show me once again that God cares for even our smallest needs and that we should always be lifting them up in prayer.

---

A little something for the grandparents...

Jolene's first haircut. I only cut about 1/2 inch off or so just to even it up a little. I don't think it helped though. Her hair is too curly/wavy for it to ever look very even. Oh well I tried.


Here is Adele after her bath. I think she enjoyed it, what do you think? :-)

White Christmas

well sort of.

We had a hail storm and for a few minutes the ground was covered in balls of ice. However it did snow in Melbourne, how funny is that?



Christmas day was very enjoyable and very multicultural. Here are the countries that were present.

Sudan, America, Ireland, China, Australia, and New Zealand.



Everyone brought something different to eat, some things from their mother countries.

We were at Graeme Hart's parent's house located in Lovely Banks. We ate, looked at pictures from the Hart's round the world trip, sang Psalms, played cricket, watched a nature movie on Australia, and of course told stories. We thoroughly enjoyed ourselves and came away very stuffed.

A good time was had by all.



Today we are celebrating Boxing Day. Not really sure how to do that so we just slept in till 9am (the girls actually allowed us!), did a little shopping, hooked up a gray water system for the laundry, and watched some cricket. Brandon is watching I am doing stuff on the computer :-)

Hope all of you had a good Christmas and have happy New Year!

Meg

p.s. I will post some pics soon of the gathering

Our tree

This is the tree that our moms and friends Robyn bought for us and set up as a surprise. Much better then the electric purple in the past post, don't you think?

Christmas day we are going to Graeme Hart's parent's house for the day. We are having a pitch in lunch.

Hey guess what is happening right this very minute as I am typing? It is raining!! And of course my laundry is hanging out to dry! I thought what are the chances of it raining? Especially since we haven't had any rain for a month or so? I guess pretty good :-) Oh well, they can dry during the night.


We are inviting the Young Adult's group from church over for New Year's eve. Hopefully we will be able to see the fireworks from our balcony. As long as there aren't any major bush fires that day we should be ok.


This is a pic of Adele finding her thumb, I don't think she has found it again since.



Tonight Brandon is having a bunch of guys from church over to play poker. B asked if I was going to play, I told him I didn't want to show them all up : -) You all know my mad poker skills. Actually I can say that last time I played I got second place. I think it was beginners "luck" though.

Later

Funky trees and Ashes

This is a pic of some Christmas trees for sale at K-mart. I know you are all jealous of the hot pink one! I really don't know what K-mart was thinking selling these trees, in my opinion they are pretty hideous. I mean how many people really want an upside down, gold Christmas tree? Does anyone know why there are upside down trees? I would be interested in knowing the story behind that one.

Our moms and our friend Robyn surprised us and bought us a tree. Thankfully NOT the hot pink one :-) It is nice to have a tree and to have my snowflakes around, reminds me a little of home. It is pretty hard to get excited about Christmas here. I guess it is mainly because of the weather. I am too used to having cold weather and snow, it is just too strange to have 80 F temps for Christmas. We are going to Graeme's parents house Christmas day. They are having families over who don't have their own families around. It should be a lot of fun but also sad at the same time.

---

Baby news :
The baby forecast is looking good today. We will start out with a nice long nap in the morning followed by several nappie changes and feeds. In the evening we will head towards a more restless time followed by a "tank up" and then a steady decline into slumber land. Tomorrow looks pretty much the same as well as the next day, and the next, and the next, well actually you can count on this forecast being true for the next month or so.

Jolene decided to give Adele a bath on her own the other day. Adele was sleeping and all of a sudden I hear her burst into screams. I run into the bed room and there is Jolene with an empty water bottle. Adele and the bed are soaking wet, Adele is looking pretty angry ( if babies can look angry at three weeks). Adele, welcome to the world of a younger sibling.

---

The Ashes -
I think I have mentioned cricket on here before? Anyway the Ashes is going on right now and it has given Brandon and I a good laugh. To inform you, the Ashes is a competition between England and Australia. There are five test matches, each of which is five days long. Yes, they play for 25 days to see which is the better team. Basically whoever wins the most out of five test matches wins the trophy. It is called the "Ashes" because a long time ago England beat Australia. Being the good sports that they are England took the wickets and burnt them, then gave the ashes to Australia in an urn. Those ashes in the urn are now the trophy for the competition.

Yesterday Australia won their third straight test match, making them the winner. This is the part where Brandon and I had a good laugh. These guys are playing for 25 days to claim the prizes and to become the next Ashes winner. I thought " wow, that is a long time to play, they must be getting the biggest trophy in the world for this competition". I mean that is what you would expect right? The longer the competiton the bigger the prize or trophy. Oh how wrong we are.

As we sat watching the news, we saw the Australian team gathered around celebrating. Camera flashes were going off, people were cheering, the team was smiling. So then I asked myself "where is the trophy?". I saw the team but where was the prize. I had to look carefully at the screen otherwise I would have missed it. Their coveted "Ashes" trophy is about the size of an egg cup. Brandon and I just looked at each other with disbelief in our eyes, could this really be it? It is quite comical to see a group of men huddled around something the size of an egg cup. I don't mean to offend the avid cricket fans I know. I'm sure this is the best sport ever invented and that it is a joy to watch. I am just an ignorant American.




Adele is screaming should probably go

Meg

News and pics

Well it has been a few weeks since writing, a lot has been going on down here since Adele arrived.

A little info on the labor part for those of you who are curious. My contractions started getting pretty painful around 4am Sunday morning. At this point they were around 6 minutes apart. Around 2pm Sunday afternoon I took a bath to relieve some of my back pain. When I got out the contractions were around 3 minutes apart. I figured since it took so long for Jolene to come that we had several hours still to go and therefore we were in no hurry to get to the hospital. I waited until about 5:30pm and at this point I was starting to feel pretty bad. We hopped into the car and stopped by the church to drop Jolene off with Josh and Sarah. We got to the hospital at 6:15pm and Adele was born at 7:16pm. I guess for the next kid we probably should not wait so long, we might end up having a kid in the car.

Oh, one other thing that happened that day...we received our first speeding ticket. Thanks Adele! I guess it is ok though, seeing as though we used public health care we will just say that her birth cost $180 (the cost of the speeding ticket). We are going to try and appeal the ticket, hopefully they will show some mercy :-)

So our moms have been here for a week and a half now. It has been a lot of fun showing them around our new state and having them meet all of our friends. I think they are finally getting over the jet lag, just in time to leave and face it again at home.


Earlier this week we took them on the great ocean road. We stayed at a summer house for two nights. It was fun exploring the two towns close to us and also the beaches. I saw an echidna, first time for that.

Saturday they all went on a ferry across the bay to hang out with the Blackwoods. I couldn't go because I was dealing with some mastitis (oh what fun).

Sunday, Adele was baptized. A little earlier than usual but it was nice for our moms to see it and nice for us to have some family present.

Today our friend Robyn from Sydney is flying in to surprise my mom. Robyn was a foreign exchange student who lived with my mom's family during college. It has been hard to keep the secret! My mom has been saying how she feels bad about not being able to visit here, little does she know :-)


Here is a link to more pics of Adele and also our wanderings with our moms, enjoy!

I will write more later,
Meg