Earthquake

The world just seems to keep heaving with some sort of pains - I think it might be end of time pains! I am sure you have all heard about the massive earthquake that has hit off Japan. These disasters just seem to keep coming. I guess the Lord does say this will happen as the world draws to a close!

I see that they have issued a tsuanmi warning for Hawaii and a lot of the South Pacific. We are due to leave for Hawaii on Monday! We will be praying that the people of these countries are safe and that this doesn't impact our filming trip too greatly.

Well here I am sitting here all alone - Alistair has found his way back to New Zealand!
The kids are still here so I shouldn't say I am all alone now should I.

Alistair left on Monday to go and help get the new owner of Greenways underway with the grape harvest. He will be there 2 weeks and then he will join us in Hawaii for a few days - which will be nice.

The school leaves on Sunday for Hawaii for the filming trip for the new DVD series they are doing. It has been a lot of work preparing for it. My number one jobs were to oversee the fundraising of funds the students had to raise, and the booking of the tickets. These were far bigger (and more stressful) jobs than I thought they would have been, but I am happy to say that the Lord really blessed and all the tickets are booked and all the funds are in from the students! This was no small feat as each student had to raise either $1350 or $1650 (depending on what grade they are in), and there are 85 students - so it was quite a large amount of money we have been working on raising.
It is such a relief to know that we hit the target.

I would never have guessed as to the planning and work that goes into such a production - it is huge - right down to making sure we have bug repellent for the kids, as there are quite a few mozzies in Hawaii.

So we are almost there, only a handful more sleeps till we head out to that tropical island - to oversee 85 students for 3 weeks - yee ha
Please remember to pray for us - I think we will need it.

If any of you want to follow along on our happenings in hawaii, they have a blog for the project which is:
www.helpindailyliving.blogspot.com - it is Help In Daily Living - which is what this project is called, as it is based on that book.
Anyway, check it out and you might even spot us on there sometime. It doesn't have anything much on it right now, as we haven't gotten to Hawaii yet! But watch this space..........................

Tamzin's "Pre" Birthday Bash

Today we had a little 'pre' birthday celebration for Tamzin. Her birthday is on Sunday but since we had to go down to Chilliwack today (a 2.5 hour drive) for a dentist appointment for Alistair, we decided we would do it today.

We took Jo-Ann and Rebecca with us and they went to a placed called 'Color Me Mine'. It is a ceramic type place that you can pick a piece to paint. When you have painted it, the place fires it and you go collect it in 6 days time.



One of the hardest jobs for them was choosing what they were going to paint! But once they had decided they were underway.


Jo-Ann chose a trinket box shaped like a slice of cake, Tamzin did a rainbow plate and Rececca did a vase. Kyle also painted a plate with the silver fern on it (since I broke the last one he did at Splashy Fish in NZ!)







After they had finished making their creations we headed to the food court for a bite of lunch. They choose chinese. Then it was off to Cold Stone Creamery for ice cream. This place was really cool. You choose your ice cream and then you could add things to it like nut, marshmello, berries, lollies. Tamzin had a cheese cake one which had graham crackers, strawberries and blueberries mixed into it - it was yum. Kyle got one with Reeces Pieces mixed into chocolate ice cream - Reeces are peanut butter flavoured chocolate bars, it was pretty good too. It wasn't really the day for ice cream as it was quite cool, but it still tasted good.

We did a spot of shopping - the 3 girls all got matching t-shirts. I must get a picture of them all wearing them.

It was a great day.

On Sunday we are having some of the girls from the dorm over for cake and nibbles and have Tamzin blow out her candles then.

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