Goodbye, Gibbs

 Tonight we had a party at Black Mountain Peninsula in honor of the Gibbs family who is leaving our ward and moving to Darwin.  Doug wanted his picture taken while he is throwing his chooks (chicken) on the barbie.  Just so you know, Aussies never throw another shrimp on the barbie.  

Malia, Sarah-Jane, me, Sarah, Lucy and Johanna.  

Sarah was my visiting teacher and I'm going to miss her.

Call of the Beast

 I convinced four gals to come and get muddy with me today.  

Johanna, me, Ivey, Sara and Malia.  We look so clean before the race.

This was probably the most fun I've had in a race.  There were lots of obstacles we had to do:  climb through tires, jump through tires, pull tires with a rope, climb a mountain, run through the river, climb boulders, carry sand bags, climb over walls, crawl through heavy nets, crawl through mud and we loved it all.  OK so maybe climbing the mountain got old after awhile.  Overall, it was such a fun day and I'm so glad I did it.  Thanks, gals!

Happy Turkey Day!

 I have a blessed life. I know it every day I wake up and try not to take anything for granted.  I'm grateful for it all:  family, friends who have become our family, health and strength, the gospel of Jesus Christ, and every little thing that make my life what it is...very blessed.  We celebrated Thanksgiving with Doug's coworkers again this year. We were very happy my dad was here with us.  Our first visitor!

 Poor Princess the dog. I bet she was glad when my girls left.

 And because we didn't eat enough on Thursday, we decided to do it all over again with Americans in our ward and the missionaries. 

I think we set a record for the amount of food on our bench (island).

Sports Carnival

 Faith had another Sports Carnival at her school today so we went to watch her.

 I tried to get Hope out of her night gown.  I really tried. 

Faith was in the blue group and they rotated to six different stations of fun games and activities. They ended with a foot race and of course a sausage sizzle. 

Faith at Five

So I don't forget:

Faith is NOT shy.  She talks too much in primary and loves to talk to anyone who will listen.

She loves to paint, glue, glitter, whatever.  She loves to make crafts out of anything she can find, usually garbage.

She wants to be an artist in a museum when she grows up.

Her favorite colors are pink, purple and rainbow.

She loves to help me cook.

She loves McDonald's.

She loves preschool.

She HATES being dirty. She won't eat pancakes with syrup because the syrup makes her sticky.  She asks whenever we are going to a park if there will be dirt there and then she says, "I'm allergic to dirt."

She loves bedtimes stories.

I love to listen to her when she doesn't think I'm listening as she plays.  I will miss that a lot when she is grown up.
People love to ring our house and hope Faith answers the phone.  She always answers, "Hello, Faith speaking."  If the caller asks if they can talk to me, Faith says with lots of expression, "Absolutely!"

Hope at Three

So I don't forget:

Hope loves dressing up.  She will wear the same dress-up dress for days and we can't get it off her.

She loves make-up of any kind.  When she sees that I have lipstick on, she always wants to wear some too.  

She loves her blankie.  If she doesn't have it, it's pretty ugly at bedtime.

She love pancakes and waffles. I think she just loves the syrup. This is her meal of choice.

She loves being with Faith.

She hates to have her hair combed.  

She loves her dance class and singing.

She loves playing on our neighbor's (the Leefe's) ipad.

She loves pink.

She loves to paint.

She loves to help me cook.

Family Pics

 We recently had our family pictures taken and here they are.  Some are better than others due to the subjects being photographed :)  We love our photographer.  Thanks, Tara!