Holiday part 1

I was going to post something a lot sooner than now but life is busy!  I forgot. :D

Anyways, I'll continue where we left off....our holiday!  Which was awhile ago now. We decided on staying in Auckland and do a bit of touring around.  It worked out very well and the kids enjoyed themselves.  Our first stop was Butterfly Creek.  Aaron has been wanting to go to Dinosaur kingdom for awhile now.

Here is Owen in the butterfly house

My crazy children.

They are growing too fast. :(

The children took turns feeding a bearded dragon live wiggly gross worms. They thought it was great!

The alligators were coming up to the glass to get a closer look.

"Mmmmm.....those fingers look yummy."

Aaron is wiggling a tooth here....oops.

Yeah for dino's!

Our paleontologist in the making!

Our children.

Keith practicing his steering skills

I'm not going to even imagine what it will be like when he gets to driving age... :D

The sleepy-wouldn't-move-for-us-or-do-anything-for-us croc.

The other one (I think this is Scar) who was willing to give us a show.

I now understand the story of the five little monkeys swinging in the tree...Croc's do "snap" and make a large popping sound when they do very neat.

Family Photos 2015

Yes!  Finally after how many years since our last family photo?! I'm pretty sureI wasn't even expecting Keith. We've finally updated ours!  

I just can't seem to decide on which one to use  to send to family.

By the way, this coming May we are celebrating our 10th anniversary!  I can't believe it has been that long already!

I really, really like this one of Owen...so natural.

 An everyone seeing this one of Keith probably will start to laugh at what looks like a bunch of mischief and believe me that is exactly what he is!! (We still love him.)

Will give another update with our holiday pictures..we had a nice time just touring and hiking around Auckland...well, not necessarily *in* the city but at the beautiful regional parks. :)

We also received our passports with our resident visa's! :)

Good news!

I would like to announce that our application for residency has been approved!  Weare very thankful!  

Isn't this silver fern pretty?  Surely everybody knows about this national symbol? 

Now onto the next step which is sending in our passports, paying a migrant levy and another detail that I can't remember. All of this sounds easy, except we just realized Jett doesn't have any pages left in his passport for the residency visa.to be placed (and they definitely specify where it cannot be put)..haha!  Ok so we need to renew his passport now but that shouldn't be too much trouble thankfully. :)

So there is our good news. :)

Jan - Feb update

Ah life tends to be busy with 4 kiddos.  Never a dull moment, although sometimes Mommy wishes there were a few dull moments. ;)  But I'm thankful for happy and healthy kids.

They just do lots of random stuff, like a sleeping party in my living room...with as many blankets and pillows you can muster from the rest of the house.

I also have a wee boy who constantly picks me flowers.  It is sweet to have this little boys voice sounding out to me, "Here Mommy, these are for you."  Another good thing is we hardly have any dandelions about now... :D

January is a busy month for us.  Getting ready for the communion and then having the communion!  On the Monday we had the Campbells over.  The children seemed to get along quite well.

Mr. Hutton had quite the audience when he was drawing a pig for them.

A very nice family. :)

Isn't Marion a doll? She is so cute.

Mr. and Mrs. Hutton

Jett, Alaisdair, and Mr. Hutton

After the communion I tried getting all the washing done. And then busied myself with preparing for Aaron's birthday party!  We had about 15 kids at this party including our children.  Yes it was noisy, but I think it was fun too.

We filled up the kiddie pool for the kids to splash in...seemed like the right thing to do and it kept them well occupied!

But everyone wanted some cake...:)

Aaron was thoroughly spoiled on his birthday as you can see by all the gifts!  He is really big into Dinosaurs at the moment.

An after all the bustle of the party was a quiet weekend while Jett was in Gisborne.  And then Monday after we picked him up from the airport we started school!

Here is Mr Aaron starting Gr 2/Year 3. 

And Miss Amelia starts Gr 4/Year 5 this year.

And Tuesday morning we got our family photos taken by a good friend.  We can't wait to see how they turned out! :)

Happy New Year!

I realize I'm neglecting this blog more and more,but other things take priority. :)

Like this teddybear cake for example. Keith turned 3 late December!  He really liked his cake actually all the children liked it.

 Here he is playing with one of his gifts.

 The weather has finally turned warm enough to eat outside!  Nice to have a change!  The tablecloths are being put to use a lot more now. :)

A quick pic of us in the van...or some of us.  We were up at Omana this week for a few hours.  Beautiful scenery as usual.

And yes I need to take more pictures. :)  Sorry!

The communion here is coming up shortly and I'm trying hard to have most of my main meals for the weekend ready and frozen.  I like to be prepared ahead of time and not do everything last minute.  The children are looking forward to company, well most of them are anyways!  Amelia is a bit of a chatter box in the house so she looks forward to chattering away to the guests I'm sure!  She also can't wait to start school again!  Funny how that is! The girl enjoys learning, I like that. That is the way learning should be for the most part, or at least I'd like to keep it that way for a long time. The boys I think would like to play a lot more, which seems typical of boys really, although Owen was asking for his Maths earlier this week.

Jett is on his way home from the Youth Conference in Sydney, Australia.  He reports it went very well. 

Short update I know, hopefully I'll put more effort into the next one all being well. 

Oh and by the way, Happy New Year from us in beautiful New Zealand!

Very thankful!

Just a quick note, that this morning Immigration called stating they only need my birth certificate and a few things the doctor missed on my medical.  They said my application has been lodged and therefore the police certificates aren't "expired".  This is very good news!  As it would've taken a lot of time and money to get these all sorted.  The Lord is very merciful!

Where have we gone!?

Wow, it has been a long time since I posted last!  I have thought of just getting rid of the blog if I can't keep up with it....but I guess some still read this so it would be kind of sad for them (especially family).  Anyways, we'll see how we get on.  :)  

Life is generally busy here, sometimes crazy busy!  In the past couple of months we've applied for permanent residence and are still waiting on that.  We've run into some issues with myself (haha, it is always me) and my birth certificate is not long form (oh no!) so I've had to apply for the long form from Canada and it still hasn't come in the mail.  This means my PR hasn't been lodged yet which probably means all of my documents that have expiry dates (such as the medical, and police certificates) start expiring...like my American one has last Sat! This is frustrating to say the least, because of all times, the US has to change their system just recently and now are dealing with delays which means it will take approximately 12weeks to process a new police certificate which means another certificate expires, the medical and well you get the picture.  Yes, this is a major headache and all for a birth certificate I have never seen and have never needed until now!  I even got my PR status with the US with the birth certificate that I currently have. :) I may have a *little* extra unwanted stress.  Please pray for us!

In the meantime, enjoy the following pictures our short trip to Tauranga last weekend.

Some of the kids enjoyed the tub.  It had jets and stuff which Keith promptly named "belly-buttons" so cute.

Keith & Daddy having a wee nap.

Just before bed!

Near the Mount.

On our way home we stopped in Paeroa where L&P came from.

The oldest two have simming lessons once a week maybe Owen will soon too? All of my kids enjoy the water! Here they are dressed in their togs (Kiwi for swim suits).

My, this boy is cute. He is so quick to want to "fix" things even though he has no idea how to...he thinks the chair was broken and needed fixing.  He is also quick to pull out the screw driver when he sees any handles loose on my pots. :)

Old sheets and table = hammocks or reading spaces for little boys.

This boy reeeeally liked it!

Only a couple more weeks of school and then holidays Hurrah!! :)

Update # 2 - Field trip to MOTAT

Yesterday we went to the MOTAT (Museum of Transport and Technology).  It was Jett's first time but the rest of us our second time.  It was pretty interesting, and the kids enjoyed all the hands on stuff (VERY important for my youngest two).  We also got to ride on the Tram to the second building which holds the aviation exhibits. 

Playing music... :)

This is probably the second greatest thing at MOTAT...the earthquake simulator!  A you can see they enjoyed it maybe I bit too much?  Wouldn't want to feel are real earthquake!

Thy had two cars...or half of them for littlies to climb in an pretend to drive. 

Our next car maybe? Just kidding. 

The first thing that greats you in the aviation wing is this massive bomber plane from WW2.  I think it was a Lancaster Bomber.  

Costumes to try on. Notice the *very* American bomber jacket.  :)

Look it's Amelia Earhart, no I mean Amelia Smith! Just happens to be they both were born on July 24th.  We didn't know that though, we just liked the name. 

 Captain Owen! :)