Wellington || Other Things We Got Up To || Final Post

One day Nana spent a few hours with us at the lodge while Aunty Melissa took Monique, Danielle, and Diana out shopping. Maria and Laura weren't sure about Nana at first but here Laura requests Nana's help to puther sandals on.

After the girls' shopping trip, we all went down to Uncle Bill and Aunty Melissa's for a birthday afternoon tea. Maria ended up getting all the attention though, since Laura slept through the whole thing!

Birthday girl! (Well, one of them.)

Maria isn't so fond of the camera so it took a few attempts to get a decent photo of her with Aunty Melissa. Photo bomb from Diana!

Don't you just love Henry? I'm not sure I've ever seen anyone so excited about vaccuming!

On Wednesday we travelled over the Rimutaka Hills and visited Dad's cousin and her husband at their Salvation Army shop. Then she took us to see dad's uncle Tom (her father), who loves gardening and gave us piles of grapes. (As in we each got a bunch like this one!) After that we dropped in to see a family from church and stayed for dinner. Sadly we didn't take any photos but Auke and Ally's two-week-old little girl, Lana Katy, was very cute. :)

Relaxing one night after we had some of the rallies over for supper.

We have piles of photos {somewhere} of our little people with chippy bags!

Day 5 ~ Friday ~ Driving Creak Railway

{Written by Monique; Used with her permission}

Today we did the washing and the dishes and got our stuff together, and we went to Driving Creak Railway, and had sandwiches there; and there were heaps of ants. And we dropped a piece of lettuce and so many ants came that we couldn't count them. And there was heaps of bird poo, but it was still heaps of fun.

After lunch, we pottered around a little bit while we waited for the train to come; looked around the shop a bit and bought our tickets. When the train arrived, we hopped on and found our seats and I was sitting with Maria and Bianca was facing me on the other side of the carriage. Jarrod was sitting next to Bianca.

Bianca took my camera and took photos of herself and anything else she could -- Maria, the grass, the bush, and everything else. When the train left everyone smiled because it was so exciting and at one stage we went over a bridge and it was kind of freaky because there was only track on wood and then there was also another train going underneath us. And there were walls [retaining walls] that were made of bottles and they were colour-coded (sorted into colours), they were bottle-retaining walls with dirt around them to the ends.

There were also tunnels and in some places there were tunnels with clay blocks making the walls on each side and pottery done into the walls, or put on shelves in the walls.

When we got to the Eyeful Tower, we went out onto a platform, in the train. It was kind of scary, and Mum said it was really freaky. The view was amazing and the tower was really cool. We stayed and looked around for five minutes and then went all the way back to the office/station. Then Mum bought an egg cup made by a potter, and then we went to the car, and had afternoon tea and left for home -- the tent.

: : New family photo! : :

When we got back it was quite late, so we got bacon and egg pie out of the freezer and put them in the microwaves that were at the campground. We also had coleslaw. Then we did the evening routine.

Operation Christmas Child

A skirt I made to go in a box.
I almost wanted to keep it for one of my sisters!

Back in October (OCC's national collection month), my dad came with my friend Becks and me (and a few other home-schoolers) to volunteer at Operation Christmas Child for a few hours one Saturday.

Operation Christmas Child, a project of Samaritan's Purse, provides underprivelaged children aged 2-14yrs with a shoebox containing various gifts for Christmas. Some of the impact stories are very moving!

My boxes all packed up!

I figured since we were going to the warehouse anyway, we should take the boxes I was filling, rather than having to drop them somewhere else. So on the Friday we went from one shop to another, buying the rest of the fillers I needed; I ended up spending most of the day working on the boxes! 

Becks and me

We left home around 9am Saturday morning, so we could be at the (OCC) warehouse in Henderson by 10 o'clock. We spent the next few hours unpacking boxes, checking the contents for anything that wasn't supposed to be in them, making sure (as best we could) that there was something from each of the listed categories, removing unnecessary packaging, and filling (from stocks they have there) any that didn't have enough 'stuff' in them. 

2 o'clock came all too soon and we left since we didn't want to be home too late. We stopped in at The Coffee Club for afternoon tea before dropping Becks home. :)

Afternoon tea...

And I won't mention what the house looked like when we got back...suffice it to say my mum and siblings were in the midst of a massive cleanup/out, which involved taking everything out from under the beds in the girls room...!

The Smiths Come for a Visit



Mrs. Smith plays the piano for us

 One day during the holidays (sorry I don't recall which one exactly! lol), the Smiths (our pastor's family) came over for afternoon tea.

I must say the double choc chip muffins were, as usual, a hit! Sorry, no pics, but in fact I'm probably doing you a favour - if you saw a pic of these mouth-watering, choc-filled muffins, you might salivate so heavily your keyboard would be kinda gross...:P

But anyway, to get back to what I was writing about...



I'm not sure the ukelele is supposed to be on the tramp...!

 Nobody in our family can really play piano (Danielle was taking lessons last term, but no-one is learning right now), and Mrs. Smith is Grade 9 (!), so it was really nice to hear the piano played that well, despite the fact that she played from memory because we don't have any books her level!

Monique enjoyed Keith (4 months) and the other little ones (she loves young children).

Amelia enjoys our trampoline

Diana and Amelia LOVED playing with each other. I think Amelia has probably only met people within our church so far, and it is relatively small, so I think there is like one other girl her age (who is our cousin!). Also, my siblings were talking for AGES before the Smiths even came to NZ about being friends, going to their place to play and whatever!

Despite the fact that I was sewing, I still managed to read to Aaron (4yrs). He just loves Thomas the Tank Engine, so I got to read parts of a few books to him (haha little ones aren't patient enough to listen to a whole story!), and name the characters on the covers of the books shown on the back covers; thankfully their names were written down, or I would have been stuck!!! lol



Amelia and Diana pose...



 I think Mum enjoyed sharing some of her accumulated homeschool knowledge; it's nearly 11 years since she began homeschooling me!

And mainly, everyone enjoyed socialising for a few hours!

~~~~~~~~~~~

Well, um, I hadn't planned to write much...consider yourself lucky!!! haha

Bee

Saturday, 5 February

Hi again,

On Saturday 5th Feb, Mum and Dad had a Growing Kids God's Way course, run by my friends' parents, at Papakura Baptist Church from 2 - 4pm. That was the second week of a 17 week course.
And since there is approximately 25 children/babies, and only 3-5 people (4 teens and a pre-teen)   running the children's program, my friend Anne Roos and I went along to help out as well.
Well the idea was to be at the church at 1:30  so we could see what we were supposed to be doing with the children, but..yeah..anyway..that kinda didn't work out! I think we got there just before 2.
We were downstairs and used 3 main rooms, which we refer to as the 'big room' and the 'little rooms.'
Soooo... we started by getting all the children to sit down in the big room, and ticked a book to show who was there. Then Esther told them all what was happening, and split them into 2 teams, before taking one team into each of the smaller rooms.
Once in the smaller rooms, and seated around a table, we helped them make the following craft:

In case you were wondering, the words are

the fruits of the Spirit, which is what they

were learning about that week

Then took them back to the big room to say the previous week's memory verse, learn the new verse - "But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control", and listen to a story (which I had to read....).
After which we split into the smaller rooms again, to colour in a picture and have afternoon tea.
Next we put them all back in one group, and upstairs to play games in the gym until 4.


After that we were all exhausted(!), so just sat around talking until it was time to leave.

Until next time,
Bee