All Aboard!

This weekend we took the girls to visit the m/v Doulos docked in Wellington Harbour. It was such fun taking them onboard for a tour, the ship reminds us both of the Anastasis where we met. Surprisingly, at least to me, the Doulos is about 30 years older than the Anastasis. 

Just being at the port, walking the gangplank and being onboard a ship brought back a flood of memories! The ship even smelled much the same as the Anastasis, a mix of seawater, diesel fuel and old age I suppose, but a smell I remember fondly. The girls were a bit apprehensive just walking up the gangway, and they remained slightly nervous going up and down stairs throughout our tour. 

These photos are out of order because of my inferior uploading skills, but anyway here is Katie getting her "Passport" stamped by our lovely South African tour guide.

The girls all at the lookout. . .
And on the bridge. . .


On the dock with daddy and the best shot I could get of the ship which doesn't really do it justice . . .
Walking, carefully, up the gangway. . .
Overlooking the bow. . .
Getting our "Visitor" passes for our tour. . .
A view off starboard of Wellington Harbour.
It was so fun sharing this experience with our little ones who wouldn't even have been here if we hadn't served with Mercy Ships. We all came home with visions of serving on the African Mercy at some stage. . . is this of God??? 

I got my new computer, my new Macintosh computer (does anyone say Macintosh anymore? Or is it just Mac now?) and I am LOVING it! I haven't been this excited about a new toy since my dad gave me my camera (a digital Canon Rebel that I love, love, love). I'm having to learn how to use a Mac all over again but it is fairly intuitive and it's coming back to me pretty quickly. Plus Macs have the best packaging ever. I am a salesman's dream when it comes to pretty packaging and Mac does it very well.  I should have taken a picture of the size of my PC and the size of my new Mac. Instead of sitting on the floor in all it's hugeness, the little box sits right on my desk taking up very little space and accumulating very little dust which is a miracle in this house. I wish I had bought a new screen as well, with the camera built right in, but my screen didn't break so hopefully the computer master (Dugs) can get my Logitech camera to work with this system so we can soon Skype again. 

I have piles of old videos from our video camera that I need to burn to DVD and last night I pulled one out and uploaded it to the computer to see how it all works. It was so easy!! I am ecstatic and the girls were loving getting to watch home movies again. I may even get fancy and put a clip in here just for fun. I may get tripped up trying to upload it to blogger, but if I do I'll just start an imac video page and send those of you who are interested the link. Such fun.

Today we officially started our new school year. I have a schedule all typed out and for the most part we are doing well sticking to it. However, and this is a problem, this is my exercise time and here I am blogging. Meggie and I did take the dog on a 45 minute walk this morning before Dugald left for work so I am sort of counting that. I'm going to have to ease back in to working out I think. 

It's beautiful here today - the sun is shining!! I wanted to get out and rake up leaves in our garden but I didn't have time for that built into our schedule so I was a little ferklempt (spelling?) as to how I could get it all done when I had the bright idea of having Meggie and Katie make lunch for everyone. I asked them if they would do it and they were pretty darn excited about the challenge so I raked while they made lunch without any help at all from me. Poor Meggie has a few small cuts on her fingers from trying to cut the carrots, but other than that they did a fantastic job. 

That's it from us! Lots of love to all . . .