Family Night

Justin, Matthew, Kyle J, Joel & Kyle S.


Last night was family night. This is when the students come to the staff houses and spend the evening 'hanging out'. We feed them tea (supper) and then spend the evening doing things they wouldn't normally do living in the dorm.

This time we had 5 guys (including our Kyle).

We had a great evening! They played darts, practiced flying remote control aircrafts (on the computer) and played Rummy-O. We ate hot dogs, pizza, chips, banana splits, apple pie, chocolate chip cookies and homemade caramel popcorn.



Joel was very proud of his 'bullseye'!


Kyle striking the 'pose' - Justin mastering his flying skills.


Playing Rummy-O - Tamzin playing Repel with Matthew


They were upping the 'anti' by holding Kyle's leg in the air while he shot the dart! Not sure what they are up in the other picture but the other Kyle thought it was funny! (we have 2 Kyles at Fountainview)


Kyle Jacobson with his captive audiance! One of the boys father was here visiting for the weekend - with their dogs, so he and the dogs came for the evening too.

Our couch will never be the same again having 5 guys jumping on it to retreive darts etc! But it was lots of fun...........

D-Day

Well tomorrow is D-day for Cassidy - departure day - she is going home to New Zealand.

She has been here for almost 3 months now. She is holding out for warmer weather, fish'n'chips, pineapple lumbs and NZ cheese!

Today she packed her suitcase - she tried fitting Jordan in there but he just wouldn't fit! Jordan is the new boyfriend she picked up while here! She didn't think she could afford the overweight charges she would have to pay, with him in the suitcase!

So tomorrow we are off down to Vancouver airport (a 4 hour drive) to bid her farewell.

Life round here has been going good. Things are 'hotting' up for the up coming mission trip. Not long now till we leave, only a few short weeks.
The snow has melted - there is mud everywhere! I think I prefer the snow, at least you can brush it off yourself.
I am looking forward to summer - the warm weather, the lack of mud and the sunshine................

Concerts & Drivers Licenses

This past weekend the kids had a 'mini' tour down Vancouver way. They did a concert at New Westminster, Vancouver on friday evening. Then one for church in Hope on Saturday, then a final concert in Merritt on Saturday night - after which we drove home the 2 hour drive.


These concerts had quite a few new songs which we hadn't heard them sing before at a concert - it was great. The quartet did a few numbers this round - Kyle really enjoyed it.

On Friday morning we headed down to Vancouver early so Kyle could get his drivers license. Canada and NZ have an agreement which you can 'swap' your license over - which is what Alistair and I did. Kyle had his NZ Restricted, but as you can't get your learners till you are 16 here we weren't sure weather they would swap it over for what they call their "N's" - which is equavilent to Restricted - or if he would have to start from scratch here.. Over here they can't get their restricted (or N's) till you are 17, which you then have for 2 years and go for your full at 19 - it's a bit of a process. Well they swapped his license over and put him 6 months into his 'N', which means he can get his full license when he is 17 and a 1/2. All the guys here are soooooo jealous - it is so funny. It was the talk of the weekend.
So Kyle is back driving. He hasn't driven since we got here in July last year, so he is rapped. We did have the wipers going instead of the indicators a few times (they are on opposite sides here), but other than that it was good. We haven't let him drive in the snow yet - thought we better let him get use to driving on the other side of the road first!

We got another layer of snow on Sunday, but it has mostly melted, so now we have slush everywhere.

Alistair's Mum headed back to NZ last week. It was nice to have her come stay even though it was only for 2 weeks. We are trying to talk her into coming again in summer.

This week is week of prayer here. The speakers were meant to arrive on Sunday but they got denied entry at the border - because she was on her phone trying to find the email they asked to see - can you believe it. Talk about power trip! She was using her cell phone to find the email which said they were doing this week of prayer and the guy said to her 'don't you have anything better to do at the border than play on your cell phone' - she tried to explain what she was doing, but he wouldn't listen!! He told her she wouldn't be entering Canada today! So someone from the school had to drive the 3 hour trip to take a 'hard copy' of the letter and give it to them, so they could give it to customs and they were finally allowed in.
And Alistair wonders why I get so nervous crossing the border - they have soooo much power.

Well I better go get my beauty sleep. Alistair, Cassidy and Jordan are up at 4.30am tomorrow to go delivery carrots in Vancouver

This past weekend we thought we would take Alistair’s Mum to Whistler to take in the sights.

We couldn’t have asked for better conditions. It snowed on Friday night so our trip over on Saturday morning was lovely. Nan enjoyed seeing all the snow capped mountains.

While in Whistler we caught up with John and Jan (Joy’s brother and his wife) who are over from NZ on a skiing trip – Joy travelled over with them. It was nice for us to see them and have a good ‘kiwi chin wag’.

Saturday afternoon we headed down to Vancouver on the Sea to Sky Highway. That was a nice trip – one we haven’t done before.

We stayed in a motel in north Vancouver. After sun set we found the closest Costco and introduced Joy to ‘giant sized’ packaging. She enjoyed wondering round looking at all the different fruits & veggies. Couldn’t get over how much ‘ready made’ food you can get here.

Sunday morning we went for a drive round Stanley park – which is a 1000 acre park right next to down town Vancouver. It was a lovely morning, the sun was shinning and the water was like glass. We even got to see a couple of squirrels scamper past which was exciting.

After our flying visit to the park we headed to the largest shopping mall in BC – over 450 shops. That was fun – we didn’t have near enough time to do the mall justice! I can see we will need to make another visit there sometime soon!

After shopping we made our way home.

It was a lovely weekend. We enjoyed being able to take Joy around to see some of the sights in our patch.

I can’t believe her time is nearly up and she leaves in 2 days – it has gone so fast.

We are trying to talk her into coming again in our summer and get away from the NZ winter – we will see if we can convince her!

John, Joy & Alistair - Icicles along the way to Whistler



Nan's new friend! Tamzin and Nan with a totem pole


Kyle, Paula, Tamzin, Alistair, Joy, Jan & John