Christmas Caroling and picnic dinner at the Fremantle Art Centre.
Night walk with "Bat Man", Joe Tonga looking for bats and eye shine.
Pieter, The Star of Bethlehem, at his Christmas Nativity concert.
Pieter and Marileen on a camel ride, Family Day at Perth Showgrounds.
Ella with some friends. Last day of school.
Christmas concert at the Leemings. Ella on guitar, Abby on flute and Jess on piano.
Christmas at Port Beach, Fremantle.
Christmas Eve dinner at our house with the Duncans
Amelie as an angel for the Christmas school assembly.
Since I've last written the kids finished up their school year and they each finished well. Pieter's class put on an amazing Christmas concert which included acting out the Nativity story. Can you imagine that they actually allow public schools to retell the birth story of Jesus?! Pieter was the star of Bethlehem and led the wise men onto "the stage". They also sang in Italian and used sign language, and did an Aboriginal dance. His concert was held outside and everyone brought picnic dinner and just had a beautiful night. The girls each had Christmas parties at school and each class read lots of Christmas stories. So refreshing!
We celebrated Christmas a day early because we left for New Zealand on Christmas morning. The kids had their pictures taken with "Father Christmas", while wearing tank tops and shorts, and we asked him if he'd be willing to come a day early. He was very kind and said that would be no problem. We had our friends, the Duncans, come over for Christmas Eve dinner (12/23) with us. We had a BBQ, which is the Aussie way, and we had a really nice night which ended with us singing Christmas carols to Ella and Janelle playing their guitars. The next morning we woke up and had the best Christmas that I can remember. Everyone was in such a good way and we just took our time enjoying each moment. Rob and I had decided not to get each other anything and it was really nice to not have to ooh and ahh over my own presents. Ella got her own acoustic guitar (which she loves!), Amelie got lots of littlest pet shops (which she continues to love!), and Pieter got an "electric" (battery operated) guitar, microphone and speaker from Mia and Papa (which he loves!) and spent the morning singing "Our God is an Awesome God".
Then, we went to the beach. That's what Australian's do on Christmas. The beach was beautiful and we all made sure to have a swim. Early evening we went to our friends from church, the Leemings, who have 3 girls all one year older than each of our kids. Their girls put on a Christmas concert for their neighbors each year and invited our kids to join in with them this year. They had so much fun preparing for this in the days leading up to the concert. They did a wonderful show with songs, poems, dances and musical instruments. It was completely put together by the kids without any influence of the adults. There were probably 20 people in the audience to watch.
Next we went to church for the Christmas Eve service. The kids from church had written a sort of Nativity Story rap song. All the kids from church dressed up (Ella and Amelie were angels and Pieter was the star) and sang this song. Then we sang a bunch of Christmas songs in a very lively way. There was this overwhelming energy of excitement at church that night. It was really fun and really felt like a celebration.
The next morning we left for New Zealand! I need to back up, though, and explain what happened leading up to Christmas. In the beginning of December, my friend Kate stopped me one day to say that they may have an offer for us to rent their house the second part of our year in Australia. Our current lease did not end until end February, but Kate and her family were moving into a new home, trying to sell their house without success, and knew we would be needing a new place. Also, our landlords of our current house were returning mid-January and would love to move back into their house, if possible, and not stay with their parents for 1 1/2 months. So the weeks leading up to Christmas also included going back and forth to Kate's house, figuring out furniture rental (as the house was minimally furnished), signing a lease and PACKING! Here I had been looking forward to having a calm and peaceful Christmas time and instead it was a bit chaotic. However, we knew that this was such a blessing and that we (I) should just be so thankful. So to fast forward a bit, we returned from New Zealand on Jan 16th (Deena's 40th!), finished packing on the 17th, moved on the 18th and 19th (in 105 degree weather with no A/c!!), and received my Mom, step-dad, step-brother and sister-in-law on the 21st! Thank God for the pool.
Our house is gorgeous and a little slice of paradise! It's bigger than our old house, it's also in East Fremantle, it is a closer, albeit all uphill, walk to the kids' school, closer to the river and has a fabulous pool! I also need to mention that Kate (our landlady) was the first person I ever had contact with in Australia before we moved here. She helped in the uniform shop and made sure that we had uniforms for the girls waiting on our front porch when we arrived here back in August. She is also a good friend of Janelle's and Narelle's (our old landlady) and I've been running with her quite a bit. God works in wonderful ways.
I will sit down and write highlights of New Zealand soon. That will take a while and as it's 4:00 AM, I think I should probably try to get back to sleep. Otherwise, I'm not going to be a very nice Mommy in the morning. Night night.
posted by Marileen
posted by Marileen
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