Children's Day activities

One of the more interesting things we did as part of our outtraining was to go to things that were going on in the community to try and raise the profile of The Salvation Army Kilbirnie in its area. One the things we went to was the Children's Day 'festival' that was held at Kilbirnie park. By the time we got there after church and lunch it had more or less finished even though according to advertising it still had 2 hours to go..... We did manage to get some cool photos though... Here they are..... I have to say at the moment most of the photos that we have taken lately are of the youngest member of the family.... We may have to do some things to fix that in future days......

We found this funny looking train thing... I

think that it is called Henry... I assume all you

Thomas the Tank Engine fans will correct me if

I am wrong..... Perry looks thrilled to be

aboard... Not....

Emily had a blast on this merry go round thingy.. I thought that she would be frightened but no actually she had a blast...

One of the better things for your child to drink when they are at a festival.... Maybe not but that was about all that was available.... Emily certainly enjoyed it.....

And then there was the River

When we were not playing with the water slide on campus there was always the river to go for a swim in. Freezing cold but refreshing. The only thing I found was that it was not too pleasant if you got a mouthful....

Christina ready for action
The water was very clear and also quite fast moving in some places. Further upstream from here it was deep enough for the boys and some of the girls to jump off the cliff....

Emily decides that the best way to get everybody wet is by throwing stones into the water





Emily enjoying the sun shine on the edge of the river.. I think that the swift current may have been a little to challenging for her.





Patrick building a wall to create a nice sitting place in the river... Where current is no problem.




Patrick the builder.... Still having a great time in the water.... Fully dressed and all.


Go on jump in the water is great.... At this point in time this is our water baby. Emily comes a close second.




The river was definitely a great place to cool down and relax... I had wondered why we never did this at the beginning of last year and then remembered that there was the issue of some sort of toxic algae in the river and so a swim was somewhat ill advised..... We however made the most of it over the summer.

The Hazy Days of Summer

During the first couple of months of Summer quite a lot of fun was has at the college with a great big black plastic, lots of water and dishwashing liquid..... To put it clearly a giant water slide.... Here are some pics




Christina getting up steam to make a dash down the slide....




Christina trying to
'encourage' Sarah to get wet

Christina towing Naomi down the water slide... mmm... a little too much soap by the looks... all those bubbles... Some dishes won't be getting done tonight.


Look out 3 year old with the hose










At the starting line ready to race down the slide... Christina, Kate, Hannah, Tiko, Simeon and Rueben


Patrick hiding out from all the wet stuff..... He did have the excuse of having had heat stroke during the day at school and was avoiding the sun and heat........ Playstation was his adventure of choice.
A group shot...... from left
Christina, Naomi (sitting in front) Hannah behind Naomi, Louis and Ethan.....


Sad to say those days are now over.... The weather has turned cold and not much chance of getting this slide out until December , maybe November if the weather heats up soon enough, but going on this past year there is not much hope considering in Nov 2006 we were still getting snow on them there hills.....

And finally ...... Some pictures

I have finally worked out how to get the photos off my camera.... so for you pleasure and delight some of Emily's 3rd Birthday.... Enjoy.

This is all very exciting for the one getting to open the pressies. Christina looks a little depressed..... Never mind darling your birthday will come around far too quickly..


And what is behind door number 3.

Look at me I am mobile and I want to be off right now..... This big girl bike thing is all just a bit too serious tho and besides it is far to early in the morning to be smiling.......



At last I have escaped with my bike.... Where shall I go.... Maybe just around and around the teardrop at college...... This event was planned by the creche as a fundraiser..... A bike a thon... played into my hands quite nicely really..... They planned it on my actual birthday day. So I got to try out my new bike properly..... I even got to test the helmet when I fell off.



Now I am really mobile.... hehehe. Talking to my Granny Pat when she rang me to say Happy Birthday......

Well I hope you enjoyed these. I will try to add more photos as we go along. Some of them will be a little bit older than this but I have to catch you all up some how.
Ciao

Out Training at an end

Well it is over. I can not believe that 3 months have gone past so fast. Out training is now over and we are preparing ourselves to go back to the classroom and continue with the academic stuff that we need to complete this year.

For us it does not seem quite real having been on campus the whole time and not having to actually come back from anywhere probably makes it a little bit surreal. Then there is the fact that we have not actually left Kilbirnie for good either. We will be going back every Sunday until the end of the year.

But it has come to an end and in some ways I am looking at getting on with the rest of the stuff that we have to study ..... because it means we are another step closer to the end of our training and closer to finding out what God has in store for us next.

It has been great to see Sue, Simon and the girls and Corryn back from the deep dark South.... Emily certainly is loving having Monique back as her playmate and has spent every minute she can with her. We even tried a 3 year old sleep over at our house on Sunday night.... It lasted until about 8:30 when Monique wanted her Mum. We will try again another time.

We now have the task of completing a 3000 word assignment about the 10 things that we have learned while on outtraining..... Watch this space for a more homourous version of my assignment. Most likely to be entitled "The 10 most useless things I learned on out training" or even "The most frigtening things I learned on out training." I'm not sure yet.

The catwalk beckons

Well Friday night saw me and 5 other people from Kilbirnie Corps (+ one person from the fashion store staff) strutting our stuff on the catwalk at the Ballantynes Fashion Central store in Kilbirnie. This was a fundraiser for the Corps who were able to sell tickets at $10ea to the event and all they had to do was supply the supper and the models for the clothing.

What a hoot.... We had four categories of clothing to show off. There was the denim range, casual wear, day wear (for the working woman) and then after 5.

I am pleased to report that there was only one changing room tantrum that was thrown.... hehehe .... not really somebody managed to knock down a whole lot of coat hangers around the place.

There were 70 people there. The only hitch during the whole thing was that the store staff could not get the sound gear working and so there was no music.... Made me feel just that little bit more self conscious.

I do have to admit that I have always thought of Ballantynes as a shop for the more mature woman but I was surprised that some of the clothes were actually things that I would wear if I only had the money. I have to admit to a little bit of a spend up..... Just the important things mind you..... Seeing as I have lost a significant amount of weight since Christmas, I decided that I could justify quite nicely a certain amount of spending.... Maybe .....

It was definitely something different to be doing on my Out training ( a lot different to sorting second hand clothes at the very least) I really enjoyed myself but I doubt that I will have any talent agents knocking at my door in the near future.......