Wednesday, January 11, 2012

Graeme - 60 years

It was Graeme's birthday on Tuesday. 60 years old. Now we are both official "senior citizens".



A while ago we were given a packet of frozen crayfish tails. I have never even eaten crayfish, let alone cooked them, so I simply left them in the freezer. Graeme, however, enjoyed eating them with his father, and nagged me to read my cookery books, and prepare them for his birthday. He had to show me how to get the flesh out of the shell. I put the cray flesh in a pan in the oven and poured lemon butter over them. The end result was surprisingly good. I even ate one. I made savoury rice to go with the tails.



Something encouraging. A few weeks ago Graeme went to visit someone who had become estranged from the church, and encouraged him to come back. The next Sunday he showed up at church. The following Sunday he came with his daughter and grandsons. We pray that he and his family will continue to feel welcome, and become a part of the fellowship once again.



Kitchen life at the manse: At some stage during each day, if you come into our kitchen, you will find our 2nd cat, Calvin, perched on my shoulder while I am washing dishes, or stirring a pot, or something. Other people have parrots - I have a cat.



Hannah is now 3 weeks old, and has grown 4cms since birth!! Here she is napping with her mom.



Next week the children go back to school after the Christmas break, and all the Bible studies and evening hecticness will resume.

Monday, January 2, 2012

Christmas 2011 to New Year 2012

The Saints take Christmas seriously, and enjoy decorating their homes with coloured lights. Here is a photo of our neighbour's home.

Christmas day was rather hectic at the manse. Graeme and I went from one chapel to the other and held 3 services between 8.00am and 11.30am. Although I had planned on making something nice to eat for Christmas day, everything was so topsy turvey that we all agreed that I could just make beef curry and rice, and we had tinned strawberries and ice cream for pudding.
At 3.00 pm, just as I was about to go upstairs and collapse on my bed for an afternoon nap, the door bell rang... Danny's parents had come to share Christmas dinner with us... Yikes! They had brought a big bowl of roast pork and potatoes. I quickly cooked some frozen veggies to add to their contribution, and heated a Christmas pudding that was sent to us as a gift. The afternoon was spent chatting with them.

I tried to take a photo of Dash, our youngest cat. Calvin, the middle cat was just moving out of the picture. The result -"a tibby with one l-o-n-g tail."

We are getting used to having a baby in the home. Arthur is very comfortable with Hannah, as you can see from these photos taken on New Year's day at the Sandy Bay chapel.






















Here are a few photos of Hannah taken over the past few days.