Ellie is 5!

Yes, our baby is now 5-years-old!! We celebrated her with her favorite breakfast - monkey bread! For those of you not familiar with monkey bread it is divine. It's basically dough rolled into little balls and then dipped in butter, rolled in a cinnamon-sugar mixture and placed in a bundt pan. YUM! But, before even getting to that, we opened presents.

Each and every one was well-received, when you are five I think most things bring you joy. She especially loved the princess decorations hanging from our light fixture (thanks Dr. Ann).

Katie presenting the monkey bread.

We went to see "How To Train Your Dragon"in 3-D which may not have been the best choice as Ellie was scared for most of it and asked me to take her out about 2/3 of the way through. We went with our sweet friends though and they came over after for dinner and very pink cupcakes to celebrate our girl.
It's hard to believe when we arrived here Ellie-belly was only two, such a little one. She had a hard time with all the changes but I have to say she's always had her strengths and they've remained the same -she's confident, determined, smart, eager and independent. I think she may be Prime Minister or President one day! She brings us so much joy and we are thankful to have her and look forward to seeing how she grows and develops over the next year. xx

Auckland Adventure

Last year just before we traveled to America I realized that Meggie and Josie's American passports had expired. Unfortunately I realized it too late to do much about it and they travelled on their New Zealand ones. It caused a little bit of a hassle as we entered the country so I made sure to get their passports renewed before we travel this year. The US consulate that deals with passports is in Auckland, and because they are minors we couldn't renew by mail and both parents needed to appear with them, so off we we went this week.

The drive to Auckland from Wellington is 9 hours but we broke up the trip with a stop in Palmerston North for lunch, then a night in Waitetoko at the family bach. The girls LOVED the bach! You can see Lake Taupo from the house and it has a nice lawn to play on and they thought it was divine. The house was a bit cold but Dugald built us a fire and we warmed up nicely. We enjoyed sleeping late and playing games and just being together.

We arrived in Auckland to a warm welcome from Kate, Ant, Ben and Wills. Kate invited us to stay with them again which is always a treat. We had a lovely dinner together before heading off to bed for a fairly early night. Sometime after midnight Ant appeared in our room to say there was a fire in the attic and the fire department was on the way! We jumped up and got dressed, checked on the girls and waited for the trucks to arrive. Apparently Wills (who was sleeping upstairs) had smelled smoke, poked around and saw flames in the attic. Thankfully it was easy enough to extinguish but the fire department still did a thorough check to find out what had caused it and even had to tear out part of the wall to gain access.


Surprisingly Katie and Josie slept through all the commotion but the rest of us had a rather exciting night!

The next morning it was off to the consulate for our 10:15 appointment. We arrived just before 10 am, went through security where they took our bags and phones, and then waited for 2 and a half hours for our interview. Ugh.

The US Consulate in Auckland.

When we finally finished Kate took us all down to the beach for lunch at a cafe and a swim. The weather was absolutely stunning and we had a very nice afternoon.
Of course Holly came with us, she sat patiently outside while we ate at the cafe and then frolicked with the girls in the water before plopping down for a rest beside Kate.











After a fun afternoon at the beach we returned home and Katie helped Auntie Kate make homemade pizzas - delicious. We were all sorry to say goodbye the next morning and look forward to our next visit!

Our Passover Seder

We decided to celebrate the beginning of Passover this year with a real Passover Seder. The girls had noticed on the calendar that it was the beginning of Passover and they asked me what that meant, so as memories of Mrs. Weinstock bringing a seder plate to my third-grade class flooded my brain I decided I'd try to do one myself. With a lot of help from Google I think we managed pretty well for our first time!

To start with you are supposed to set your table with your best china. I left all my china, good and bad, in the states so we didn't have that option. Instead I let the girls pick out their favorite placemats and napkins and we used our "special" glasses. (They aren't really that special, they just aren't the ones we normally use). A seder is a Jewish tradition that is "both a retelling and a reliving of their ancestors exodus from slavery in Egypt more than 3,000 years ago." (from eHow) A key part of the Passover Seder is the Seder Plate. Here's ours:
The plate contains Charoset - a mixture of apples, nuts, wine and spices. That is in the big bowl and is actually quite yummy. It is symbolic of the mortar the Jewish slaves made for the Egyptians. There is also supposed to be Zeroa on the plate (a shankbone) but I couldn't find one that morning at our local grocery store so we just talked about how it symbolized the mighty arm of God in delivering the Jews from slavery. The Baytzah is a hard-boiled egg to represent mourning for the loss of the two temples. The Karpas is the potato that you dip into salt water to remind you of the tears shed by the Jews in slavery. The Maror is meant to be a bitter herb, we used horseradish, to represent the bitter life of the Israelites during their enslavement. The Chazeret is a bitter vegetable (we used lettuce, it's a stretch but the best I could do). The crackers in the bowl represent Matzah as our store didn't have that either.
I used the instructions on EHow to lead us through the evening's ceremony. In reality a seder is meant to take hours and be shared with friends, but we rushed ours a bit and basically just got the general idea. We did read the Scripture accounts but there are also supposed to be lots of blessings and since I hadn't researched enough to know exactly what they were we just said some of our own. We were also all meant to drink four glasses of wine throughout the meal. Dugald and I found that rather daunting so we opted for three half-glasses and still felt a bit over our limit. The girls drank all four of their kiddie-wine glasses (grape juice).
We finished the evening with psalms and blessings and decided that we'd try it again next year - maybe with friends and a little more research!!

Christos Anesti! (Christ is Risen)

Alithos Anesti! (Truly He is risen). We used to share Easter greetings in Greek when we worked with Mercy Ships - I guess it comes from the fact that the ship we were on, the Anastasis, was named "resurrection" in Greek. Anyway, I hope everyone had a very happy and blessed Easter, we did!

We went to Palmerston North on Saturday to celebrate the holiday with Dugald's parents. We are so grateful that they are only a few hours drive away and that we get to see them fairly often. It was also nice to spend the night and not have to cram our entire visit into one day. Margaret actually had time to teach me some knitting. I've been practicing and I think I'm getting better but it's a good thing we will see them again in a few days as I don't know how to correct my mistakes nor do I know how to "finish" or cast-off when I am done.

The girls were thrilled to hunt eggs when we got home from church - Meggie was great about making sure Ellie got some as well. Grandma also gave her a hand.

Lots of love from all of us!! xx

Josie's 7th Birthday

Beautiful Josie-bean turned 7 today!

We opened presents before even eating breakfast and she was thrilled to bits by everything.
Grandma and Grandpa sent her a gift certificate to our local bookstore which was a huge hit. We often wander in and have a look around but she doesn't have enough pocket money to get what she wants (usually because she's spent it all at the dairy nearby) so she was thrilled and even managed to get her daddy to take her there during their limited Easter opening hours.
She got a Groovy Girl doll from Katie.
And a Groovy Girl horse to go with it from Meggie.
From Ellie she got a Three Musketeers Barbie.
Dugald and I gave her some doll clothes for her American Girl but she won't get them until we get to America in June.
Later that afternoon we had dinner with our friends the Burts and they recently got a new kitten named Minky.
Earlier Josie and I had made rainbow cupcakes to take and they turned out well (I had my doubts). The kids all thought they were fantastic and that's the most important thing.