Christmas Tree Lighting

This past Saturday after getting home from Geelong with the Blackwood family Tamara, Benjamin and I went into Frankston for the Christmas Tree Lighting where we met up with Uncle Ralph and his son Daniel. It was a bit strange to be outside where I wasn't freezing cold, there was no snow possibility, no ice, and I was near a beach watching a Gospel Choir perform, a fireworks show, and the 100 year old tree being lit for the holidays. It almost felt like the 4th of July except that there was a crane lifting a sleigh up and around the tree with Santa. Weird....Any who, it was a lot of fun and here are a couple photos from it.

Here are some photos that my poor camera attempted to capture of the fireworks. Also when you look up at the photo at the top of the page you can see the crane that I was mentioning earlier with the sleigh hooked up to it!

Enjoy and a Happy Holiday Season as it begins!

Spiders!!!

For those of you who are not Australian and have heard the horror stories about the spiders in this country, it's true they are big and some quite poisonous. Here's an update about a big one!

Last night Nancy (mum of the house) was greeted by a huntsman in her bedroom who wanted to wish her a goodnight and Maria saved her poor mother by catching the spider in jar and releasing back out to the wild (the backyard). Here it is!

Huntsman in a jar!

Bendigo

This past weekend was a busy one and the main excitement on Saturday was our 3 hour journey to Bendigo to see the Blackwood's friend Emily Mikelsons where we stayed the day and then traveled the 3 hours back to Frankston that evening.

Sour dough roll and ice coffee.

We began our trip just after 6 AM, stopped in a little town for coffee before reaching Bendigo, meeting up with Emily, meeting her housemates, and then heading out for an early lunch. I really enjoy all of the cafe's that are on almost every corner. I think we all really enjoyed the fruit filled sour dough rolls and Maria and I definitely enjoyed our ice coffee! And of course Tamara got a yummy milk shake. :)

Then we decided to walk off our early lunch in this really nice park that had a lot of art and a rainforest type garden in the middle. The art was really nice, there were some mosaics that were all over the ground explaining some of Bendigo's history and then there was even a big glass statue of Peter Rabbit!

One of the many mosaics. 

Maria and I with Peter!

 Are "rainforest" journey was a lot of fun. It was very pretty, the only downer was that we saw tons of bats hanging over us in the trees. Once we noticed them our fun was ruined and we quickly left! :P

Little man made waterfall. 

Maria, Tamara, and I

BATS!!!

We then ended our walk near a green house with the outer garden being this mass amount of rose bushes covering the landscape!

Green House

The inside sadly was not all that grand, but we decided it was probably because they just put certain plants inside during certain seasons of the year.

I think we enjoyed the rose's the most since both Tamara and I have the middle name of Rose. :)

Extra Yumminess!

During my last post I forgot to mention that for an International Dinner that we had at church I found a recipe for Crab Rangoon that was successful and it was very yummy. I was told that it tasted like what you would order at a Chinese restaurant or take out. Here are some pictures from that cooking day!

Mixture and Wraps

And they turned out! The recipe made about 50 in the end!

Reporting from Down Under!

The last couple weeks/weekends have been filled with many fun and busy activities. Hopefully I can fit some explanations and pictures in.

Benjamin enjoying the Bodhran

A fun fact about Australia (similar to the U.S.) is that there is a definite mixture of people that have moved to Australia. You have people from Asia, the U.K, U.S., India, etc............And with that comes fun little things that they bring along with them. A couple weeks back we had our prayer meeting at the McKeeman's who are originally from Ireland and Benjamin Blakston found a fun Irish Drum called the Bodhran and enjoyed playing it out in the living room.

Benjamin and Rose with Jonah

Then the newest excitement that the church in Frankston is the birth of Jonah Blakston! Very beautiful baby who I was born early in the morning and I was able to visit that evening after work. It was very touching to see how much the baby was being enjoyed by his 4 older siblings. :)



By the next weekend us girls started out traveling to Geelong Saturday morning for the Titus 2 Women's brunch which was very good, which was then followed by us all back at Dixon's Creek for the annual Congregational Camp where we spent Saturday enjoying each others company, playing ultimate frisbee, and cricket (yes I learned the basic rules of cricket), as well as a Bible trivia game in the evening. Then Sunday we had breakfast together, Church, lunch, and a Psalm sing. Was definitely a good couple days of fellowship.


I have also realized that I talk about Dixon's Creek and have not put up all that many photos for anyone who has not been there to be able to to see what I'm talking about so here are a couple photos of the camp from when we were there for the Congregational Camp.

Looking up the hill in the bush from the girls dorm.

One side (a quick sneak peek) of the inside of the the girls dorm. The guys dorm is set up very similarly. 

Getting the hall prepared for Sunday worship.

Some more of the grounds.