What child is this

 Mmmm, yummy Sunday lunch...got home so late from church that cooking wasn't an option!

Graham and Liz opened their home for a carols singalong after the evening service.  Scads of people arrived with their takeaway tea, instruments and voices as instructed (well, not so much the instruments, but definitely voices!).  Sang through the well-known traditional carols and some of the  less-known ones (Good Christian Men Rejoice, As With Gladness, O Come O Come Immanuel among others) and have also been doing some entirely new ones in church (Joy has Dawned and Fullness of Grace by the Gettys are super).  

A rainy morning had cleared to a mild and calm afternoon, so the singing spilled over to the outside.  Nick wandered around with the camera.  We are thrilled to have so many little kidlets in the church now with the Overcomers' four and the Courage's three (becoming four next year). 

Customary visit

It's taken us two weeks to find the time to get out for a walk to Dashing Rocks! All elements lined up this afternoon though - had the time, had the energy, and had the weather for the walk. 

We hadn't anticipated that we would take an hour and a half to do a circular route so perhaps the health aspect wasn't all there; Aaron is still coughing badly and found himself quite worn out after the first hill.

A new walkway has been made around the northern side of our little bay so we found a whole new view of Dashing Rocks and walked all the way around to the northern wetlands.

Give out prizes

And so, with only one more "fun day" of school left on Monday at Caroline Bay, this year of school has more or less ended. The final formal thing was tonight's prizegiving.  We took our pizzas to Centennial Park which the ducks especially thought was a treat.

The prizegiving evening started with the choir performing a piece on which they had worked hard during the year, and then each class performed an item which was followed by their certificates, with speeches from the BoT, Principal, PTA and Trust Board peppered in between.

The youngest class was first - bit of a show stealer really, with all their cuteness! 

Aaron's class was third up; Aaron was nervous about the performance as he'd missed a few practices this week with being sick.  Went off well though and the kids looked like they enjoyed it!

Caleb's class, the senior room, was last up and instead of singing a song themselves, they showed us their sign language prowess (and none of them seemed to have a schizophrenic attack during the song).  Caleb picked up the signing well over the year and so was in a smaller group who signed the verses of the song as well as the chorus.

Caleb and a fellow Year 7 student were privileged to pray for the Year 8s as they leave TCS to go to High School next year. 

Super work, students and teachers who all put in a lot of time to make the evening so fabulous!

Houseful of sickies

Caleb and Aaron have been sick this week and off school for a few days.  I am so thankful that my mom and dad have been able to have them at home with them.  The four of them have played Balderdash, Rummykub and Scrabble to keep busy, aside from reading and resting. Popsie hasn't been well either and has needed to see the doctor twice - good thing we didn't have many big arrangements for this week like we did last week! 

Family from the North

We were most surprised to see Dafydd and Maria Hughes walk in to church this morning, along with their two gorgeous kids, Ajinkya and Anjali. Dafydd is the pastor of the reformed Baptist Church in Palmerston North, so Sundays would normally see him behind a pulpit!  Had we known they would be down our way on holiday, Nick would have put Dafydd straight back behind our pulpit (must be why they travelled on the quiet :) ).  Had them around to lunch and although Nick has fellowshiped with them a fair amount at various FRBCNZ functions, I have spent very little time with the family so it was wonderful to sit around the table over a meal and chat.

Church picnic 2013

We had our annual church picnic/BBQ today (hot on the heels of our staff year-end function which was a breakfast this morning at Fusion Restaurant). The Van den Berghs hosted this year's picnic at their place in Pleasant Point, and the Lord gave us a fantastic day to enjoy with sunshine and warmth, and even some cloud cover when the pure sun was too hot :) Had a really superb afternoon of fellowship and food. 

Allergies were rife during the afternoon with the freshly mowed lawn heating up - I'm no good surrounded by so much nature either and came away with some seriously itchy eyes.

Pétanque was particularly popular with the men who set up games all over the yard, throwing their shots over bird baths and between trees.

My lovely mummy!  She seldom poses for photos but Chrissy's lacy parasol was more than my mom could resist, and SHE requested a picture with it!  I had much fun obliging. 

Happy 11th Aaron!

Had quite a gathering in the lounge this morning for Aaron's birthday - the last time my parents were with him on his birthday was when he turned 5 and we had a holiday in SA from St Helena.  We did the customary present hide-and-seek (how do you wrap up an abstract item such as a book you've bought on-line in electronic form? Easy, wrap the year-old Kindle!)  Proceeded onward to a pretty regular day otherwise with school as usual.  Had nachos for tea, and the boys watched a movie with granny and grandpa when Nick and I went to our last dance class for the year. 

String quartet

With a ridiculously busy week of year-end arrangements, it sure was a blessing to come home from school to a pot of soup happening in the slow cooker from Chef Philip. How yummy does this look! Dad sadly stated that it wasn't up to his usual standard as he would have used a pressure cooker at home, but we definitely had no complaints!

It was Caleb's turn to have a concert this afternoon, and unlike Aaron he was not at all nervous.  The piece he played in a group of 4 was performed well and sounded good! 

Nick and I celebrated our 14th wedding anniversary today, celebrating at Coffee Culture after Bible Study.  14 sweet years of ups and downs - I count myself exceptionally blessed to have Nick as my husband and thank the Lord for him!

A year of oboe

Living on different continents means that the grandparents have missed out on all sorts of stuff over the last 8 years that we've been away from South Africa, so we were especially glad that Mom and Dad arrived during the last two weeks of term while there were still activities going on that they could attend.  It's a very busy time of year but my parents were well-warned that they would be hitting the ground running!  They came along to Aaron's final Year 5/6 basketball game; sadly another bad loss for the team but it was great to see Aaron so involved in the game.

Directly after the game we rushed across town to Waimataitai school for Aaron's oboe concert, arriving with just a few minutes to spare.  Poor Aaron has had a tough time with his oboe reed - they seem to be temperamental things and we've had some struggles over the year in finding the right one (professionals play with harder reeds which sound good but are difficult to blow), which then broke about two weeks ago.  Found some on TradeMe which hadn't been there before, which arrived in the mail just a few days ago, in time to test out.  It still wasn't a very good one so Aaron had a few false starts with his piece while his teacher adjusted and tweaked it slightly. 

All things considered he has done very well with music this year, and his certificate was for "phenomenal perseverance and all-round improvement"