Ballet and Jazz

The girls started Ballet and Jazz classes in the Fall.  It was SO sweet to watch them every week and it sure brought back some great memories of my ballet days!

I love the poses that they come up with when I take there picture...so cute!!!

My ballet years...precious memories!!!

Harvest Party!

Well this is how behind I am on blogging!!!

We had a great time at our Harvest Party last year!  I had so much fun creating these costumes with the girls.  Our goal was to make it for half of what they sell it for in the stores and yip we did it this time!  I'm really enjoying my girls and the ideas they come up with when we make these costumes!

Olivia the Lady Bug

 

Naomi as Jesse from Toy Story!

First day of school

Well this is a very different year for us when it comes to school.  Anton transferred from Principal/Outreach to being only the Outreach Pastor, so no more discounts for us at our private school.  God worked in both of our hearts and we decided to home educate the kids.  August first, was the first day of school for Reality Christian Academy.  The Principle started our day reading from Proverbs 1 and we had a ribbon cutting :-) It was great.

It was Olivia's first day of school.  Such a bitter sweet!  I can not believe my baby girls is SO big now.  I praise God often for my little angels!  They are so precious and they teach me so much.  I am thankful that I can spent more time with them this year.....

Olivia got her traditional Mini Mouse pancake for "first day of school breakfast"

 

 

Our Principal!

Very fortunate teacher!

Victoria!!

We had a great time exploring the city of Victoria.  I was so amazed with the amount of flowers they have downtown.  It is not called "The garden City" for nothing.

The Parlement building was diffidently one of my favorite.

We went wale watching wich was absolutely incredible!!!  We saw Orca Wales as close as 15 feet.

For those of you that have ever been on vacation with Anton and I, knows that food can make or brake a vacation.  Well Victoria stood the test!  The food was amazing!!! Even though we could not afford to enjoy some fine cuisine, we still felt very satisfied with what we had. My favorite was the fresh seafood in the harbor.  Yum!!!  FRESH steamed mussels and clams with Haddock Fish and chips.  AMAZING!!!!!

Trains, Planes and Automobiles, oh! and boats....

Day 2 of craziness!!!!!  We got up at 7 this morning to be on time for our appointment at the US consulate.  We traveled by bus and walked a few blocks to get there.  We did not know that we need coins to pay for the bus, so the guy was so kind to give us a free ride.  He was so helpful to get us off at the right place. At consulate I had to through my had sanitizer and my expensive Ghiradelli's Chocolates before I could go in. VERY strict security checked every pocket of my purse.  Even opened my lipstick, gum and mascara, to make sure I'm not hiding something in there.  The rest of the visit, went smoothly.  $300 and 2hours later, our visas was approved.  Praise the LORD!!!!!!!  We added it up, Anton's work permit, our Visa application and the plane tickets, came to $5000.00.  But we see this as a small price to pay, to be able to live in the States.

We explored some of Vancouver.  Anton and I LOVED  the city.  It has amazing buildings, friendly people and LOTS to see.

We visited the Totem poles in Stanley Park!

 We had Nando's for lunch!!! Oh my goodness, it was AMAZING!!!  Nanado's is a South African franchise and we had not tasted it for four years. It is really like nothing else we have in the States.  It was a quite, very happy lunch!

 We went back to the hotel to get our bags.  We left the hotel at 4, thinking we will take a bus, then a train, then another bus to the ferry, which will take us to Vancouver Island.  B.K Smith is a friend of Anton, who was at seminary with him and live in Victoria on Vancouver Island.  We figured that we would have dinner with him later at about 7.

Well, we did not arrive till 10 that night.  We went from bus to train to bus(stood for the hour and half drive, holding our luggage) to a ferry to a bus to our friend's car.  Through all of this we had nothing to eat and one bottle of water.  Everything on the ferry was SO expensive and we thought that when we get to the Island it will be minutes to our friend's house.  Well it took another hour and a half.

Through all of this, Naomi was an absolute star!!  It was fast paste, getting on and off the bus and train.  She pulled her own luggage, bravely held her luggage for an hour and a half on a bumpy bus that stopped often.  She often asked for food and just said "yes mommy" after I said "we will be there soon"  Well that was what I thought.

We got at B.K's house at 10 and he had an amazing meal for us.  The last two days surely was about trains, planes and automobiles.  And as if that was not exciting enough, we through in a boat!

Beautiful sunset on the ferry....

Canada here we come!!!

We got up at 6am this morning, to leave for Canada to renew our Visa's.  We left Olivia with the Elliason's, since she is not allowed to enter the US consulate tomorrow when we go for our Visa appointments.  It was SO hard for me to leave her, especially with the uncertainty in my heart of what our appointment will bring tomorrow.

It is moments like these in my life that reminds me, that God cares about her even more than I do.  He created her, and He takes care of her daily, I am just His instrument through whom He does it and for this week it is going to be my dear friend Martha or RaRa as we call her.  I'm sure going to miss my sweet girl this week!!!

Our travels for today was SO wild.  We were suppose to leave San Francisco at 12:45pm.  At first our plane was late, so our new departure time now was 2pm.  We boarded the plane,  just to hear that there is something wrong with the brakes and it will take an hour to repair.  After an hour and a half sitting on the plane, they decided to let us get off the plane, so that we can get something to drink.  We got back on 30min later and took of, well,  just to the beginning of the run way.  There we sat for another hour because something was wrong with the air in the plane.  We arrived at our hotel at 7:30pm exhausted and hungry.  We went out to eat at White Spot, where a warm Thai curry meal comforted my tired body.  What an adventure!!!

Our summer devotions

We started this book for our summer devotions and the kids and I are thoroughly enjoying it.  I’ve often heard the past two weeks how they reminded each other to be a peacemaker and came often to get help, when they could not work it out them selves. 

I’ve also been reminded of a few things about conflict.  One is that there is a difference between a peacekeeper and a peacemaker.

The book is written for middle school kids, but it is easy to bring it down on the level of smaller kids.  Definitely a book that everyone should work through at some point with there kid’s 

Olivia turned 5!

Olivia turned 5 in the beginning of the month.

Where did the time go?!?!?! It felt like yesterday that I got to hold this precious gift for the first time.

Naomi being such a sweet big sister….

We celebrated her birthday with a Tangled party with a view friends. It was ALLOT of fun.

The cake was a disaster, to say the least. It was really funny! I made the cake the night before. I made hair with fondant icing, which was too heavy for the donates and cup cakes, so it collapsed 2 hours before the party. I called Anton to run to the store to buy donuts an cup cakes, and reconstructed the whole thing, but the icing was melting and it was just not the same. Olivia still thought it was the most beautiful cake she has ever seen, so I still felt “mission accomplished”

Friends!!!!!

I love these girls!!!!

This is SO like Olivia. Here she is very embarrassed about all the singing around her

I love this girl! She challenge my wisdom and my Godliness like nothing else, but she is such an interesting, full of life little person, with no lack of personality.