Nan Arrives & School Closes down!

Yesterday Alistair's Mom arrived from New Zealand. Here they are at the airport.
She has come to stay with us for 2 weeks. It is great to see her and have her come visit us in our patch.

The snow was kind enough to stay around for Nan to see - usually they don't have much snow here so it is nice that it is still here.


Tamzin, Nan and Kyle out enjoying the snow and sun!


Missey is just loving have Nan here, as Nan gives her lots of cuddles and scratches! Missey has been feeling a little neglected these days since Kyle is gone all day and I don't have the time to sit and cuddle her. So she is 'in heaven' with all this attention - I think we might find Missey cuddled up in Nan's bed tonight!

Today school has been cancelled and everything has been shut down. There is some sort of 'bug' going round and over half the kids are sick with it - high fevers, aches, pains, some vomiting. So they decided to shut everything down and try and stop it spreading. It couldn't have come at a worse time - next week are the students provincial exams! They have been busy in classes cramming in last minute topics and doing practice exams. We are all praying that this bug can be stomped out and the kids can focus. They are also in the middle of doing all the recordings for the up coming new DVD series - so there is quite a bit going on round here at the moment, and getting sick isn't in the plan!

Alistair and Cassidy have fled the property - they are off in Vancouver delivery carrots today. They left at 5am and should be back round 8pm. Alistair enjoys having Cassidy along with him to help keep him awake and keep him company................

Well I better go make some supper (tea) for Nan .

Sweet 16!!

Today our #1 son turned 16!!

Where has the last 16 years have gone.
Everyone said they would grow up before you knew it - and they were right. Mind you it sure didn't feel like he would ever grow up when he was first born and screaming at 3am wanting to be feed!

God has blessed us with a wonderful son. We thank God for the gift He gave us when He delivered Kyle into our lives 16 years ago. We are so proud of the young man he is becoming and pray that he will continue to be the caring and loving person he has become and that he will continue to include God in his every day life.

To celebrate his birthday we had 5 extra guys from the dorm for lunch. We had pizza, chips and savories - it was yum.



Here they are trying to work out how to fly the remote control helicoptor that Kyle got for his birthday.

We all ate way too much food, and still have heaps left over............

I guess I should tell you what we got up on Friday night - which I mentioned in my last post.

We all got dressed up and drove down to vespers on Friday night. While we were in the meeting it snowed - quite a bit. When we came to come home the car wouldn't get up the hill - there was too much ice. We managed to get up the first hill and drop the boys off at their dorm, but it just wouldn't go up our drive - so out we all got out and had to push the car! Bear in mind, we weren't dressed for tramping in the snow - high heals and skirts - we didn't have our snow boots or gloves.
We finally managed to get the car up the hill - after Alistair had taken 3 runs at it and we pushed too.
We were all very wet from the snow - they were huge snow flakes and very wet.

Meanwhile another staff family were having problems getting up their drive, which is much longer than ours. We could hear the spinning of their wheels ringing out across the campus as they tried to spin their way up the mountain they live on. Alistair and Kyle quickly got changed and headed out to help them. The boys dean jumped on his snow mobil and headed up to help them also.
There was no way their car was going anywhere, there was way too much ice. So the dean ferried them home on the snow mobil, then bought Alistair and Kyle home.

It was all very exciting, there is something about the snow, it seems so magical! Cassidy thought it was the greatest of fun!


Here we are after pushing the car up the hill. We were all rather wet. I just love Kyle and Tamzin's expressions - Alistair got them at a bad moment - they really were having fun!

More pictures

Thought I would post some more pictures from Christmas.......



Here we are at Wayne and Kim's place for Christmas dinner - with our 3rd child - Cassidy (my neice) who has been staying with us since the beginning of January.
Kim got a stomach bug so wasn't up to having Christmas dinner on Christmas day, so we delayed Christmas till Sunday.



Aunty Maureen, Wayne, Kelvin and Uncle Ralph. Wayne, Scott, Kim & Hannah



We went snowboarding/skiing one day at a mountain called 'Powder King'. It sure lived up to it's name. We had a great day - along with about 5000 other people on the mountain!!!



Jordan & Kyle - Jordan is one of the boys deans from Fountainview, he drove 4 hours to join us for the day on the Mountain skiing.

The 3 handsome dudes are Kyle, Alistair and Jordan!

I even skiied for the day - it was fun. Haven't skiied for about 15 years.


Check out the icicles.


Kelvin took us up Morphy Mountain on the snow mobiles. It was fun - apart from the bumps!



This was at the top of the mountain - it was a repeater station or something. I loved how the ice had coated the steal. I looked quite erry in the twilight, almost like something from in the ocean.


We have just had a very exciting Friday evening - but I will tell you about that in my next post............

Happy New Year

Happy New Year!!

I thought is was time that I updated the blog! It has been awhile - I don't know where December went!!! I think we slept at home for 6 nights for the whole of December. Between the school tour to California and Christmas up in Mackenze - we weren't home very much.

I have uploaded a few photos - they aren't in order as it is very time consuming to get them just right. So I have just 'flung' them on here - I am sure you can work out what they are.

The school tour was a great success - they managed to raise twice as much money this year as they did last - which was fantastic. I didn't enjoy having to keep track of all the money thought - I was the official sales person, offering person and petty cash women! It was much more stressful than I every thought it would be. I had lots of good help though - which was nice.

We arrived back from tour at 8.30 Monday night - had Tuesday home to do washing and repack to head up north 10 hours to Prince George and Mackenzie for Christmas. We headed out to Prince George on Wednesday morning and stopped off at Glen and Yvonnes place for a couple of nights. We opened our presents there on Thursday evening (Cassidy wanted to beat all our Kiwi friends to open presents!) No, we thought we would open them before we got to Mackenzie as they weren't doing the 'present' thing up there.
We got some nice gifts between us all - my favourite was the lovely peach/orange belliclava that Kyle and Alistair bought me at the auto shop!



Check out the roads we had to drive on and the wild life we had to dodge on the roads - it's a moose.



Kyle using Uncle Ralphs snow blower.



Hanging out round the fire while everyone snow mobiled. The fire was a life saver - kept us from freezing.


We put this wood down to get Missey off the cold snow - she enjoyed digging in the snow.


All of us at Yvonne's place about to open presents. Check out the Christmas lights, while we were on tour, a couple that we were billeted at took us to see a street done out with lights - it was amazing! Cassidy couldn't get over them all.


Alistair modelling his 'spoils', my lovely hat and Kyle's new shirt (which he is very proud of with the fox logo and Monster Energy logo!



This is one of the Churches they played/sang at while on tour. It was pretty impressive.


Look at all the candles behind the guys. Here is Tamzin playing her heart out! Unfortunatley something went wrong with wrist and she is finding it very painful to play - not sure if it is over use or what. She has to wear a arm brace thing to help stop it aching. We are praying it will improve as they are about to start recording for the next DVD series and that will include a LOT of playing.


Kyle was lucky enough to be able to sleep in with us on several occasions and not have to bed down with all the guys - we usually got our own room at the schools or churches we slept at since I needed space (and privacy) to sort money etc. Cassidy was my 'cheif' helper at the sales tables - she helped me 'hold the fort' till the students could get off the stage and come and help sell. It was crazy at some concerts - people everywhere wanting to buy products. At one concert we sold over $8,000 worth of product in about 1 hours, so you can imagine how busy it was. They all did a great job.



I couldn't get over all the 'wood peckers' - better known as oil wells - it was amazing to see so many so close together. This was in California - as was the famous Hollywood sign.

I think I better end this post. I still have quite a few pictures to add, but I think I will do another post - hopefully in a day or 2.

All the students arrive back at school tomorrow and we will be back into it again on Tuesday - much to Kyle's displeasure! I must admit that I aren't overjoyed about it myself either - I have enjoyed taking it a bit easier.

I hope you all had a great Christmas and New Year - we sure did. I will tell you more about it in the next post...............