A Thanksgiving Feast

Last Friday night we celebrated Thanksgiving with our closest friends from church. I must admit, I was excited and nervous at the same time...wondering if the turkey, stuffing, and gravy would be edible. I actually prayed quite a bit as our group had spent $80 on the turkey alone!!! Yes, turkeys are not as common here in NZ. Well, everything turned out great! And each of our friends brought a dish, so we had quite the feast. Everything from mashed potatoes, salad, rolls, sparkling cider, apple and pumpkin pie...ohhh it was glorious! The party ended close to midnight and I went to bed with a huge smile on my face :) We have much to be thankful for!

Isaac enjoyed his first taste of turkey...

And yes, we made Nana's special bean dip. It was just as yummy as I had remembered. We thought of you Nana as we ate it. We love you!

I ate a bit too much!

Stuart and Rachael pose with Rachael's sister Naomi...she was in town for the week and a JOY to be around (Naomi is on the left).

Our friends cleaned up our entire kitchen, washed dishes, and brought back the tables and chairs to the church. I felt so blessed. I was pretty licked by the end of the night, but in a very good way, so I appreciated the extra help. Thanks guys!

A Day at the Beach

Last Saturday we decided to treat ourselves to a day at the beach! It was the most beautful, sunny day...not a cloud in the sky. I think that Isaac could have played in the sand forever! We ate lunch at one of our favorite spots called the Maranui Surf Club. What a great day!

Stuffed Animals

After Isaac woke up from his nap the other afternoon he proceeded to run down the hall with three of his stuffed animals, and he managed to climb into his high chair with all of them as well. He has been cuddling with them and giving all of his animals kisses lately. It is really dear.

I love the Toy Library!

There are many things that I love about living in Wellington, and one of these things is the Ngaio Toy Library! How it works is this: you join the toy library for a very small fee...were talking around $50, and you can check out toys weekly for the entire year! What a great idea. It sure does beat spending lots of cash on toys that your toddlers are sure to get bored with, and then what do you do? I have found that about every two weeks is Isaac's limit. He starts to get bored with his toys right around that time, and then we make a trip to the library. Yeah! You can check out everything from basketball nets, bouncy castle's for parties, puzzles, cd's, videos, ride on toys, and the list goes on and on...

Here is a cool castle that we recently brought home, although Josh transformed it into a race ramp. He is so creative!

Check out Isaac's lips...he is making car sounds as he races them down the ramp.

Castle Point

In mid-October our team's (both old and new team combined) took a little 3 hour trip to Castle Point, which is located on the East coast of the North Island. The second part of the drive was quite windy, but we made it in one piece. Thankfully, our church allowed us to borrow their van so that we could all ride together. It was only a two day/one night trip, so it was quite short. We did manage to get in a hike up to the light house, check out the local dairy, flood the kitchen with soap suds (see previous post for details), and have an all around grand time. Sarah even made me some yummy chocolate/caramello brownies to celebrate my birthday, and the team gave me some of my favorite tea and a special container for it. Thanks Everyone! NOTE: If you ever go to Castle Point bring groceries as there is no local super market for miles. We had to get creative in our cooking as we did not have enough food...we still had fun! Check out some B-E-A-U-TIFUL Pics from our trip.

No more liquid detergent

So, the girl's on our team decided to help us with our dishes one night, which was really sweet. I was working on my computer as they were loading the dishes and I had a thought that I should go over and make sure everything was alright...that they knew how much detergent to use, etc. Well, I disobeyed the Holy Spirit's prompting, which was a big mistake. About 15 minutes after loading the dishwasher Josh walked into the kitchen and he saw soap suds pouring out of the washer onto our floor. It was crazy!! Suds were everywhere! Turns out that the girls had used our liquid detergent we use to hand wash the dishes in the dishwasher. Yipes! We were all up way past our bed time trying to clean up this big mess. The best part of this story is that the next morning our team left for a team trip and we all laughed and joked about the soap suds in our kitchen the night before. We made sure to tell everyone NOT to use liquid detergent in the dishwasher as it will cause a huge bubble mess. I am not sure what Alex was doing in the back, but he apparently did not hear this warning...the very next morning he caused a huge soap suds mess in the kitchen of the house we rented for our team trip. Let's just say that I was not as enthused to help with the clean up this time. :)

A VERY Special Birthday Present

On October 15th the Lord gave me a VERY special birthday present. I was scheduled for my 23rd week ultrasound on my birthday and it was so special. I was able to see our little babies heart, lungs, brain, arms and legs, kidneys, etc. Everything looks good and we are right on track to meet him or her on February 7th. I thought I would add a few pictures of my belly so that you all can see how I am growing. I have been tracking our second child's growth with Isaac's charts and I am about the same...minus a few pounds at each check up. We do not want to know the sex of the baby this time, so it will be a suprize. I am looking forward to meeting this new little addition before too long.

Oh, and I got my hair cut too! I am really enjoying having it short.