Laura

Happy 2nd Birthday, Laura!

Maria

Happy 4th Birthday, Maria!!

Maria is celebrating her birthday with the Wellington family this year! Photos to come at a later date ;)

Wellington Adventure! || Part 1

Last month I spent a few days in Wellington visiting Nana while Uncle Bill and Aunty Melissa were away for a few days. Nana lives with them now, so I got to stay in their {flash} house! (Thanks for having me!!) Check out my room:

Aren't those curtains amazing? :D

I flew down late-afternoon Friday (hooray for an amazingly smooth flight and landing!), and Uncle Marty and Aunty Denise picked me up (thank you!). They stayed to have McDonald's with us left some wonderful donuts (anyone know of a Donut King in Auckland? :) )

On Saturday Uncle Marty, Aunty Denise and her sister, and Kurt (my cousin) dropped in for a while, followed by a visit later in the afternoon from one of Nana's cousins. Basically we had an easy day, and wrapped up the day with Ever After. :)

I got a ride to church on Sunday, and the new experience of staying at the church between services! Thankfully the time didn't drag, and soon I was back at Uncle Bill and Aunty Melissa's. Uncle Marty picked us up for dinner at his and Aunty Denise's place (a curry - yum!) and thus my second full-day in Wellington passed quickly.

Sorry about the quality,
I took this on Mum's phone.

On Monday Nana and I got the house in order, and soon Uncle Bill and Aunty Melissa arrived home. Loads of washing resulted from their trip, and I was at the washing line when the rumbling started. Yep, my first time feeling an earthquake. Where we live here in Auckland, the ground shakes slightly when trucks or trains pass us, so initially I thought a truck must be going passed. Only it carried on for longer than normal, and, well, the shed doesn't tend to rock back and forth! No damage to speak of where we were, only a few small things got knocked (er, rocked?) over. Not quite sure how the photo frames in the above pictures didn't fall down though! The 6.2-magnitude quake centred 10km north of Castlepoint, Wairarapa. I'm told we felt it much more strongly than most that hit down there, so it's surprising that we didn't feel any after-shocks!

After picking up Jesse from the kennels and having dinner, Uncle Bill pulled out a couple of his guitars for a jam session. (Why can't I play from memory yet?!) Afterwards we all watched Mt. Zion (That's an NZ movie, has anyone else seen it?).

Danielle

Happy 11th Birthday, Danielle!!

As something of a birthday treat, Danielle took her first clarinet lesson today. She's already jumping up an octave and attempting scales! Very musical, she is also taking lessons in recorder, and teaching herself piano and voice.

A Homeschool Family || Tim Hawkins

Be All There

Photo credit: Esther Sonneveld

"Wherever you are - be all there." 

― Jim Elliot

In our modern, fast-paced, technological world, we can so easily be distracted from what we're doing, or the people we're with. But our project will be finished much sooner if we give it our full attention. Our relationships will benefit from giving our full attention during a conversation. And the world won't collapse in a heap if we're absent from cyberspace for a time.

Photoshoot || Jago Children || January 2013

 

Because Nana lives in Wellington and we rarely make the trip to see her nowadays, I thought it might be nice to take some photos of the family down with me {on my recent trip} for her to see. I got some cool photos and learned more about Mum's camera and Monique's, but somehow when I picked the photos to take with me I missed all of these. Oops! I snapped away happily and before long the number of images was in excess of three hundred! Here are a few of the better ones. :)

: : Selfie : :

: : Jarrod | | 14 yrs 8mths : :

: : Monique || 12 yrs 9 mths : :

: : Danielle | | 10 yrs 11 mths : :

: : Bryce | | 6 yrs : :

: : Maria | | 3yrs 10mths : :

: : Laura | | 2yrs 10 mths : :

Okay, that's my beautiful cat Snowbell ;)