Hello again. We have had such a great time over the past few weeks. They definitely flew by way too fast. On Saturday, November 20
th, Rob's family arrived in Perth after spending a few incredible days in Sydney. They also fell in love with Sydney. Our first official visitors consisted of Mia (my mother-in-law), Papa (you figure it out:) ), Auntie Emily and Uncle John Ross. We wish that Jen, Bruce and kids
could have come, but it just didn't work out...this time.
It was so wonderful, and so normal, to have them all here with us! Right away Ella whisked Mia off on a "world tour" on bikes. She took her to The Oval, Richmond Primary School, our church, the Swan River and everywhere in between. Next, it was Emily's turn. As you can imagine, Ella slept very well that night! The weather was gorgeous so everyone swam in the pool and we could have dinner out on the deck. I don't think I've ever seen John Ross look so happy!
On Sunday, we walked to church. There was a baptism service that was to be followed by a baptism down at the ocean. The 2 girls (mid 20s) who were baptised gave their testimonies which were pretty amazing. One of them, Kaori, is a girl from Japan who came to Australia for a year to help out at a school. She's been attending our church for almost the whole year and became a believer about a month ago. She shared her story about depression, suicide, and despair and now her new hope. It was really incredible. She's leaving to go back to Japan today where no-one that she knows is a Christian. We had a little send off for her last night back at the beach and she looked both happy and afraid. It would be great for people to pray for her adjustment back into Japan and her continued hope.
After church, we went into Fremantle and had a delicious lunch at Mia's new favorite place - The Fremantle Bakehouse - and we went to the Fremantle Markets, which is always a treat. A great place to buy good quality souvenirs.
During the week my in-laws would walk the girls to school in the morning and pick them up in the afternoon. They (and I) loved it! I think that Mia and Papa would probably say that that was their favorite part of their trip here.
Pieter and I also took them to Caversham Wildlife Park (which I've mentioned before) to see all the native Australian wildlife and to pet koalas and kangaroos. We got to see a joey, the size of a cat, in his momma's pouch and then drop out. It was amazing. We couldn't believe that he could actually fit in their. At one point he tried to get back in but couldn't really find the opening. The momma just lay there all relaxed as she couldn't help because her arms were too long and don't bend that way. Hmmmm? Maybe kangaroos are onto something us human mommas aren't... Anyway, it wasn't hot at all (only like 93 degrees) and the flies definitely weren't annoying (right John Ross?)! There were also these hillarious emus that had their jaws hanging open and looked so excited to see us. That's what we believed anyway. We all agreed that it was very fun and totally wonderful time despite the heat and the flies.
One day, our friend Jenny Deeks took Mia and me to these amazing rose gardens. We had lunch there with a few of Jenny's friends. Jenny and a couple of her friends are also past and present submariner wives just like my mother-in-law. This was an incredible place with such beautiful and nice smelling flowers.
And, of course, we had Thanksgiving! We sent the girls to school anyway, but Rob took the day off. Ella had made a diorama of an American Thanksgiving feast to bring to school. She also wrote a little blurb along with it explaining what Thanksgiving was all about. It was really cool and all self initiated. We (mostly my mother-in-law) spent the day cooking and preparing for our Thanksgiving meal for 16 people. The day before Mia and Papa went to the grocery store to get the ingredients and discovered that there is no such thing as a unfrozen turkey. They decided to get a small turkey that would be sure to thaw out AND a leg of lamb (lamb is huge here). A great opportunity to let our two worlds/cultures collide. It was a very fun night with lots of food and our Aussie guests were excited to have experienced an "American Thanksgiving."
We rented a beautiful perfect house in Margaret River (3 hours south of here) for a weekend. We were told that there were resident kangaroos living there! That truly sealed the deal for us. Once we made our reservations on-line we were given the property manager's bank account # and asked to deposit a large amount of money into it! Being the cautious, slightly suspicious Americans that we are, we all hesitated and thought "Wait a minute! This could be a scam!" Well, we wanted it too much and decided to trust that this was all legit. and it truly was amazing! There were actually resident kangaroos which wassooooo cool and a frog pond. We spent the weekend playing Monopoly, Bananagrams, hunting for kangaroos (and frogs) on our long walk, going to The Mammoth Caves and seeing incredible stalactites and stalagmites, walking through a magical forest which really did have fairies (Amelie), going to a couple of vineyards, seeing tons of wild kangaroo along the roadside and spending an afternoon at the most beautiful beach with pristine water. The weekend could not have been nicer. Auntie Emily was the life saver by keeping Amelie entertained with hangman and "Miss Mary Mack" the whole way home!
We also went to The Shipwreck and Maritime Museums in Fremantle. I'm very excited to take my Dad to the Shipwreck Museum (if he ever makes his reservation :) ) as it's mostly about the Dutch settlers here and how Australia used to be called "New Holland"! Mia, Papa, John Ross, Pieter and I had the most peaceful and beautiful lunch at "The View" which is named that for the _ _ _ _ of the Indian Ocean. Wow! The next day we were going to go back to the Maritime Museum so that I could finally realize my dream of touring a submarine with my father-in-law, the submariner, AND because he/Papa had also never been on this type of submarine, but the museum was closed. It was a disappointment, but Papa told us all about the outside of the sub and another man came along and joined in on the conversation. This man's father had been on
some sort of surface ships (from Germany) during the time of Hitler. He said that at this time Hitler would not allow them to listen to certain types of music. So the ships would go out to sea and blare swing music and they would all dance!
We sadly had to say goodbye to our family on 12/3. They truly spoiled us with their love, generosity and service! They were off to New Zealand and we were back to being 5. It was so nice to finally have had the opportunity share our Australian life with family from home.
I'm going to try to do this last bit in a bit more summarized fashion or else I'll never get it done. The past 2 weeks have continued to be fun and busy preparing for the last day of school (12/18) and for Christmas. We've been to the East Fremantle Festival, made/decorated a gingerbread house at Jenny Deeks' house, been to parks with friends, heaps of swimming in the pool, birthday parties, swimming down by the River and jumping off the peir, and the outside movie that Rob already blogged about.
Some things to expand on were the Family Christmas Day at the Showgrounds. They opened it up to businesses who could then invite friends to come ride on the rides all day. We went with about 15 other friends from Rob's work. It was a super hot day, but the Fremantle Doctor saved us once more. Ella got to hold a gigantic boah, the kids road on ponies and camels, saw a circus and went on lots of bouncy houses. Ella and I went on a super spinning ride and I wound up extremely dizzy and extremely sick. I spent a lot of time in the bathroom and lying on our "rug" outside. Very pathetic :) Needless to say, we really did have a great time.
Pieter's class put on the most amazing Christmas Concert. Again, another beautiful day. We all brought picnic "tea" (dinner) and watched his class sing lots of songs, act out the Nativity Story, sing an Italian Song with sign language and do an aboriginal dance with didgeridoos. All 24 kids participated without tears and without shyness. It was so fun. This all happened outside on the lawn. The amazing thing about Western Australia is that you can totally depend on the weather. It just doesn't rain in the summer, especially if there is no forecast calling for it.
On the last day of school for the girls the entire school (400 kids) met out on the quadrangle to do the final countdown. Mr. Keady, the very cool music teacher, hooked up his acoustic guitar to an amplifier and the whole school sang the school song that he wrote: "We are Richmond Primary School. Where the teachers and the kids are oh so cool. Monday through to Friday we get out of bed. Can't wait to get there...yeah, yeah, yeah..." It was so neat. It got me all choked up, which of course isn't all that hard. Then at the end they rang the outdoor bell and summer vacation began!
Our huge news is that we are moving...again! Our current lease doesn't end until the end of February. The original plan was that Narelle and her family (our landlords) were coming back mid January so that their girls (6 and 8) could start up the school year here in February and they would just live with her parents until our lease was up. Well, our mutual friend, Kate, just moved into a new house and has had her house on the market for a while and it hasn't sold. She approached me a couple of weeks ago to propose us renting her house. Her house is in East Fremantle, is partly furnished and has a pool. It's a gorgeous house. This house is available now, so we decided we might as well move out so that Narelle and family could get back into their own house. We leave for NZ on Friday so we'll move a couple of days after we get back and then my mom, Allan, brother Nick and wife Ann will come visit a couple of days after that. It's not quite the peaceful week leading up to Christmas that I was so looking forward to as we have to pack up this house and get everything set for the new house, but we feel really and truly blessed that this has literally fallen into our laps. Our main sadness is that we will really miss the proximity to our neighbors, the Tongas. Ella hangs out with Sam and Natashia all the time riding bikes, catching tadpoles or swimming in our pool and we really enjoy hanging out with their parents.
Speaking of the Tongas, Joe Tonga, the dad, does a lot of research and work with bats and bat boxes. He also has a business that involves him taking people on night walks to see the nocturnal life here in Australia. A couple of nights ago we finally got to go with just our 2 families. He took us to this gated bush area where he has a lot of bat boxes. Unfortunately, a lot of the bats weren't around, but we saw lots of "eye shine" from wolf spiders and frogs. The kids got to hold lots of frogs, which they totally loved. Just before we got there Joe had seen a tiger snake, 2nd most poisonous in Australia. We never saw it. Part of us wanted to see it just to see it, but the other part of us was very happy to have missed it. We did see a few bats flying overhead using Joe's bat detector. Our kids were in their glory as they are such nature kids.
The last cool thing that I'll mention is on Sunday night about 300 people went down to the Fremantle Art Center lawn for Christmas caroling. We all arrived early and brought picnic dinner. They had a large stage set-up with a singing group. At 7:00 pm we all started singing lots of Christmas songs. It was a beautiful evening, with an incredible sunset and the moon right over the stage. When we sang "Silent Night" it sounded like angels singing. So beautiful.
We're off to see Mark and Erin in New Zealand in 2 days. Can't wait!! We'll be back in Australia January 16th.
Well, we wish you all a blessed and wonderful Christmas. We've been thinking and talking a lot about the wonder of Christmas. There is a lot to think about. The kids really have enjoyed this and gotten into it. I pray that you will each experience the wonder of Christmas this year. Much love! Merry Christmas and Happy 2010!!!
