Cockington Green Garden

 We had a Groupon to Cockington Green Garden that expires soon so the girls and I took Grandpa to visit it with us. We had never been here before. 

 It is a garden full of miniature houses and people and cars, etc. 

 A cricket game.

 A church.

 A soccer game.

 We liked the international section the best even though they didn't have any miniature buildings from America. 

 The windmills of Spain.

 Working the train.

 Masada

 Petra in Jordan

 Inside they had two doll house displays.  I'm thinking it was a great idea to leave the boys home for this one.

 We finished the day with a train ride.  Kind of  like the Casey Jr. Train in Disneyland going around Storybook Land :)

Carols Service

 Tonight at St. Christopher's Cathedral, Canberra Grammar's Junior School held their annual Christmas Carols Service.  

 The Cathedral is beautiful.  As soon as Faith walked in she yelled, "Hey, that's Jesus up there!"

 The organ loft at the back of the Cathedral.

 When we arrived, the place was packed.  No seats anywhere.  We were standing in the back and a teacher motioned for us to follow her because she had shifted the boys around up front and made room for us. So there we sat right on the same bench as the back row of singing boys.  We had a great view of James.

 Since we were sharing the pew with some of the boys singing, I sat right next to a boy who got up to sing with the choir.  I wish everyone could have the experience of sitting next to Robert in a Carols Service.  That boy sang with more gusto than any singer I had ever seen.  I wanted to film him and put him on YouTube, but that would be too obvious since I was sitting right next to him :)

It's our second Christmas down under, but it's still hard to get used to the hot weather at Christmas.  

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).