Sorry! Blogger isn't letting me post any photos yet, so I'll add them tomorrow or the next day...
We have loved having internet, especially when New Zealand enjoyed a freak winterish weather week last week... cold and wet!... they even had enough hail in one popular beach city that it looked like snow covering all the ground and cars! Weird. My laundry hung on the line for six days before it finally got dry enough to bring it in. Plus, there was mud everywhere for the whole week... I felt like my grandma Doris who used to have to mop the floors EVERY day in her little farm house becase of all the muddy family traffic.
We've settled into a good routine around here that only gets interupted about twice a week when Jonah and I drag the girls to go house hunting with us in the surrounding countryside and the try and do all the errands before we have to make it back to our village by 3 pm to pick up Cam from school. Ana gets mad when she has to do "van school" instead of "home school", but we don't really have another option. We're still waiting for that perfect property to present itself before we give up our quaint little rental cottage... but no luck yet. The exchange rate is still bad for us, so we're fine waiting for awhile. Its nice to rent again and not feel like we need to be constantly "Working on the house". However, I did spend a few hours weeding the garden on Saturday, but that's mainly so we can keep enjoying the winter vegetables for a few more months.
Ana has had a hard time focusing on her school work ever since we adopted 17 chickens and two bunnies. She usually finishes her task for the hour and then sneaks out of the house to harrass the animals. Elsie has finally figured out the joys of chicken herding also and has completely fallen in love with our white silker rooster "Bluey". He is a gem of a chicken and is SO completely tame and was FREE. He doesn't move when you come up to him and pick him up, so he is perfect for a two year old. She pretty much just picks him up, puts him down, then picks him right up again, then puts him down, etc. He's my little buddy, too, and follows me everywhere hoping that I'll throw him some food or dig up a worm (which I usually do because he is so awesome). He also takes care of about 8 of the other chickens while they all roam around the back "yard". All the other chickens live in the "chicken yard" with the bunnies because a couple of the hens are laying eggs, and if you don't keep them enclosed, they'll hide their eggs and try and hatch them. We also had to confine the other black silkie rooster because he was beating up Bluey (that was quite traumatic for Ana). So, the chicken politics are pretty complicated as you can tell, and thus Ana has to be out there about 18 times a day to make sure every animal is behaving properly.
Cam LOVES school and decided today that he wants to go to school FO-EVEH and never leave and even be a teacher there when he grows up. I am in total shock when he says this because, though he is totally delightful in every way, he is very lazy and never likes to go anywhere... in fact when I was working in the garden on Saturday, he just sat in the house and kept knocking on the window to try and get me to come in the house so he could talk to me... he couldn't even put on his shoes and come out there. But, I guess he "blossoms" in the classroom and is a real star for his teacher. He's already reading short books and has started writing even! This is pretty amazing if you consider that 18 months ago he couldn't talk well enough to be understood, and two years ago he didn't talk at all. His teacher asked me how we taught him to be such a good listener, and we reminded her that when you can't talk for the first 3.5 years of your life, you learn to listen very, very well. We also told her that the reason he is able to resist the peer pressure to misbehave is because his entire life has been standing up to Ana's peer pressure to jump off the stairs, dive into the pool, run a race, etc.... Little did we know how well our poor parenting would pay off!
Elsie has finally come to terms with New Zealand thanks to Bluey the Rooster and our church's nursery class. She lives and breathes for both of those. Oh, and she also is totally addicted to Disney Princesses. She knows their names, she sings their songs, she comments on the colors of their eyes... everything is "pin-pesses!". Luckily, we bought her a "Disney Princesses Teach About Manners" book before we left the USA and it has produced one polite little "baby" (she insists she's not a girl, just a baby).
This is a great country and it is so constantly gorgeous. The people here are great and we're making more friends so we can work up to actually having a social life again. My sister and brother-in-law (their band is called Tangled) finally "released" their single "Make Your Way There" and supposedly it has been on the radio, but I don't get radio out here in the country so I can't speak from experience. I'll announce when the single is on iTunes so you can all bask in its glory (and contribute $1 to the cause...). Enjoy Jonah's notes about Cam below. More photos coming this week!
We have loved having internet, especially when New Zealand enjoyed a freak winterish weather week last week... cold and wet!... they even had enough hail in one popular beach city that it looked like snow covering all the ground and cars! Weird. My laundry hung on the line for six days before it finally got dry enough to bring it in. Plus, there was mud everywhere for the whole week... I felt like my grandma Doris who used to have to mop the floors EVERY day in her little farm house becase of all the muddy family traffic.
We've settled into a good routine around here that only gets interupted about twice a week when Jonah and I drag the girls to go house hunting with us in the surrounding countryside and the try and do all the errands before we have to make it back to our village by 3 pm to pick up Cam from school. Ana gets mad when she has to do "van school" instead of "home school", but we don't really have another option. We're still waiting for that perfect property to present itself before we give up our quaint little rental cottage... but no luck yet. The exchange rate is still bad for us, so we're fine waiting for awhile. Its nice to rent again and not feel like we need to be constantly "Working on the house". However, I did spend a few hours weeding the garden on Saturday, but that's mainly so we can keep enjoying the winter vegetables for a few more months.
Ana has had a hard time focusing on her school work ever since we adopted 17 chickens and two bunnies. She usually finishes her task for the hour and then sneaks out of the house to harrass the animals. Elsie has finally figured out the joys of chicken herding also and has completely fallen in love with our white silker rooster "Bluey". He is a gem of a chicken and is SO completely tame and was FREE. He doesn't move when you come up to him and pick him up, so he is perfect for a two year old. She pretty much just picks him up, puts him down, then picks him right up again, then puts him down, etc. He's my little buddy, too, and follows me everywhere hoping that I'll throw him some food or dig up a worm (which I usually do because he is so awesome). He also takes care of about 8 of the other chickens while they all roam around the back "yard". All the other chickens live in the "chicken yard" with the bunnies because a couple of the hens are laying eggs, and if you don't keep them enclosed, they'll hide their eggs and try and hatch them. We also had to confine the other black silkie rooster because he was beating up Bluey (that was quite traumatic for Ana). So, the chicken politics are pretty complicated as you can tell, and thus Ana has to be out there about 18 times a day to make sure every animal is behaving properly.
Cam LOVES school and decided today that he wants to go to school FO-EVEH and never leave and even be a teacher there when he grows up. I am in total shock when he says this because, though he is totally delightful in every way, he is very lazy and never likes to go anywhere... in fact when I was working in the garden on Saturday, he just sat in the house and kept knocking on the window to try and get me to come in the house so he could talk to me... he couldn't even put on his shoes and come out there. But, I guess he "blossoms" in the classroom and is a real star for his teacher. He's already reading short books and has started writing even! This is pretty amazing if you consider that 18 months ago he couldn't talk well enough to be understood, and two years ago he didn't talk at all. His teacher asked me how we taught him to be such a good listener, and we reminded her that when you can't talk for the first 3.5 years of your life, you learn to listen very, very well. We also told her that the reason he is able to resist the peer pressure to misbehave is because his entire life has been standing up to Ana's peer pressure to jump off the stairs, dive into the pool, run a race, etc.... Little did we know how well our poor parenting would pay off!
Elsie has finally come to terms with New Zealand thanks to Bluey the Rooster and our church's nursery class. She lives and breathes for both of those. Oh, and she also is totally addicted to Disney Princesses. She knows their names, she sings their songs, she comments on the colors of their eyes... everything is "pin-pesses!". Luckily, we bought her a "Disney Princesses Teach About Manners" book before we left the USA and it has produced one polite little "baby" (she insists she's not a girl, just a baby).
This is a great country and it is so constantly gorgeous. The people here are great and we're making more friends so we can work up to actually having a social life again. My sister and brother-in-law (their band is called Tangled) finally "released" their single "Make Your Way There" and supposedly it has been on the radio, but I don't get radio out here in the country so I can't speak from experience. I'll announce when the single is on iTunes so you can all bask in its glory (and contribute $1 to the cause...). Enjoy Jonah's notes about Cam below. More photos coming this week!
3 comments:
How great to hear all these details Aja! Even though we don't have pictures, your written picture is great...especially because we've already met the bunnies and some of the chickens. I'm so happy for Elsie that she loves two things already! We sure miss you guys! St. George just isn't the same without you! But we don't wish you were here, we wish we were there. Sounds simply splendid!
I'm trying again! It won't let me comment. Just in case it goes this time...I LOVE hearing all these details. Your writing is almost as good as a photo! Keep it coming!
Love the pictures! Those bunnies seem pretty well-loved...chickens too!
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