To the far left: Full of smiles as we move toward walking!

Top: Dad and his little girl

Next down: The boys standing in between two small palm trees they planted.

Our middle monkey showing off his garage sale find! We have been going to garage sales as far as our feet can carry us looking to replace some key items that we can't afford new, but would make life much easier. In particular some new bikes, but on this occasion, goggles were the most exciting find!

My oldest with his Grammy! We are all sad that she had to return to Canada, but enjoyed having her here to check out our new surroundings--and get us through the plane ride over! Just a reminder--WE LOVE VISITORS!

Well, our adventures continue. We still haven't been able to find a way for my oldest to attend kindergarten in a semi-affordable fashion so I have been working on collecting resources for home schooling. He is not overly excited about this plan as the part that made school bearable in the first place was the other kids. I guess I will just have to get really creative!

My youngest is crawling around the house and looking for trouble. She is less frustrated, but still moves too slowly to really keep up with her big brothers. We have also discovered that she does not have a gentle disposition. When she meets other little ones her size, she screams at them (in delight? yes, surely in delight) and then takes a swat at them. I'm fairly certain a 10 month old can't be intentionally aggressive, but we will be discouraging this behaviour none the less. (right?...okay, secretly I will just start working on a low tackling position in place of the hitting)

My husband also came home with a new toy that was gifted to us that will make life slightly easier: a '92 scooter! He has decided to refer to it as 'his hog'. Scooters are a common sight around here given they never face any snow and is moderately faster than his pedal bike. Certainly better for groceries and makes it possible for one of us to commute around town. I get a kick out of our little two stroke engine and we are delighted you can fill the tank for 4$...which will do you for quite awhile around here! I will try to get pictures of him on it soon.

The piece of settling in that has been hard on my heart is our discovery that many churches up here in North Queensland don't ordain women and many are pretty limited in what leadership roles women can take. It seems to be most common for women to accompany their husband's in whatever their ministry role is, but I'm absolutely certain that wouldn't work so well for me as I pretty much flunked out of biology in University and medical ministry is definitely not my calling. We are continuing to learn about this area, so may have just not found the more family friendly churches that also support the ministry of women, but we were quite shocked to learn that even what we would consider mainline churches in Canada don't ordain women up here. The uniting church does, though my husband hadn't been overly impressed by his innitial visit. Besides it being a challenge finding a church home, it also poses a significant challenge as I look for work in the field. I would emphasize the people are quite nice, but I'm still praying through what to do with it all.

I'm also thinking of starting a Sunday 'Theological reflections/message' post. Partially to keep me sharp, partially because I would love to hear feedback from any of you out there! So stay tuned for more cute pictures (I know that's what some of you are REALLY looking for) and some moderately deep thoughts (hey, maybe that would be a good label for them...).