Well, the fire alarm in our flat has just gone off twice in the night - very annoying indeed. The irony of course is that today is a public holiday, so we were all looking forward to a long lie in!
Sadly, instead we have a faulty fire alarm going off every hour, and we'r ebeing evacuated into the rain! No fun at all.
We're off to McDonalds now though - their breakfast has got to be the silver lining on this very dark cloud!
We're still alive!!! We've had a good couple of weeks, although have been pretty busy with church and our ever growing social life!!!
We've just had John & Jenny Peters visit the church for 2 weeks which was great; They lead
St Marys in London, which is the mother church of St Pauls.
John did some great teaching at a number of evenings, and services which was very refreshing.
We're looking forward to our trip to England in June - we'd love to see as many people as we can while we're back, so we'll be in contact soon with some more details of our trip.
We booked our flights home with Emirates to England yesterday for a short trip over the summer for Esther & Tom's wedding. We arrive in London on the 27th June, and leave for Auckland again on the 12th July. It's going to be a brief visit, but surely lots of fun! Hope to see as many of you as we can while we're back.
Just to let you all know that we are off on holiday with mum and dad today. We are not exactly sure where we are going but it should be lots of fun and we will no doubt have lots of photos of this gorgeous country when we return.
Talking of photos, those who know my mum and dad, they have posted their photos of their recent trip on this site in our photo section so please take a look! We have also recently added a few of our own pictures, as well as made some needed improvements to the site.
Right, off on our holiday now. Speak to you all when we return at the end of the week xxx
Oh, just want to wish Chloe a happy birthday for yesterday and Rosie for today xxxxxx
Yep, they made it - Laura's parents have arrived to stay here in New Zealand for a month. So far they have been up Mt. Eden, Had dinner in Mission Bay, Walked around the CBD (Central Business District), and watched people throw themselves off the sky tower - they bought a map at the Dairy, and Alyson wore her Jandals, which she purchased in Singapore! They still don't know if it's day or night; Ally is recovering from being checked twice in customs for carrying offensive weapons - Andy assured us though that she left the inspection room with a smile on her face.....
They have taken a trip into the future lives of the residents of Erinsborough; It will cost you to find out what happens!!!
More soon ........
A great friend of mine, Rob HIll, from the UK and his band Airborne have just released some new demo material and it is fantastic. Check our the website, Airborne or Airborne, My Space Downloads
I'm very impressed - before christmas my mum was involved in the recording of The Choir advertising the latest Honda Civic. The choir simulated all the noises of the car as a soundtrack for the advert - she was also in vision for the TV commercial, it's very impressive and well worth a watch if you haven't already seen it on TV. Check it out here.
So excited about the dolphins that i almost forgot to share my other news - our good friends Greg & Yona arrived at the beach at around 6 this evening and Greg & I got back out in to the water and I cought my first wave on his shortboard! I was pretty excited - i could stand up although it was high tide which meant for a short surf.
By the way, our 50lb arrival was our Apple eMac - sorry for all those of you who thought we'd given birth to a monster or got ourselves a lion cub!!!
Well... sorry we've not posted for a litle while; we've been cought up with going back to work and getting our lives back in to rhythm again.
So... last week we went to a beautiful white sandy beach called Te Arai with a couple of friends from church - we had a great picnic and enjoyed some bodyboarding in the beautiful sea. The highlight of the day, and infact the whole christmas holiday was having a pod of about 6 dolpins swim up to about 10 metres away in the surf - playing and jumping as dolphins do!! We were blown away by how cool this was, and were assured by the kiwi's that it's not all that common to be out in the water with them.
Today, Laura and I took a drive upcoast to a little beach (well pretty long actually) called Pakiri - again, there was a reasonable swell towards the end of the afternoon, so we got back out in to the water for another body board. We were seperated from the main section of swimmers and body boarders, and my heart skipped a beat, when i saw a fin metres away - Laura saw my face and pretty much pooped her pants, and seeing a very dark fin I decided it was a whale, and assured Laura it would be fine!!! Not quite sure what i was thinking, but suddenly a few more fins appeared, and it became aparent that they were in fact dolphins - this time round we think they were offshore bottlenose dolpins - they were very dark, and had short noses and looked very similar to the photo above. They were a lot closer this time, and i loved having them close by, but Laura was not convinced.
It was really an amazing experience once again - you just can't beat being out in the surf with dolpins 2 weeks in a row!!!!
Well, it's 2006 and we got here before you did!!!! Auckland has just partied in the new year, and I was there with my trusty camera to get it all on film!! Happy New year from us here in Auckland...
Laura and I are excited about our new arrival; Emily Mac arrived on Monday and weighed in at just 50lb!! She is so cute....
She is bringing us much joy, and we're simply loving getting to know her....
More soon...
If you want to know what we did on christmas day; take a look at the movie we made by clicking here.
Merry Christmas Everybody!!!
We're having a great christmas day, and was made special by a surpise visit by santa at church. Can you guess who it is? Click here to watch the video!!!
WOW!!! Only 2 more days until our first New Zealand Christmas and we're very excited. We're now both on holiday for a couple of weeks so will be relaxing and chilling out for a while. As you can see we didn't go for the traditional tree in our apartment, but have gone for something a little more alternative!!!
Merry Christmas....
23-26 January06:
A 4 day city mission - Join City Lights to light up Auckland through practical service!
Find out more...
Well the staff at St Paul's have gone iPod crazy!!! Laura and I recently got up to date and got a 30gig iPod video with an Altec Lansing inMotion iM7 speaker system; It totally kicks butt!!!
We're going to spend the rest of our lives saving for an iMac to go with it!!!
Well, in what was a very stressful week for us, we managed to get hold of tickets to see U2 play here in Auckland. It is pretty much the event of the decade here. Both concerts sold out within 90 minutes and the tickets are like gold dust!!! Can't wait!!!
I really didn't want to go and was very dubious of the whole idea, but around 50 young people from St Paul's went along together with our picnics and blankets; We sat in the park in our shorts and Ts from about 5 till 11!!! We spent a lot of time eatind drinking and singing.
There were performances of pop songs from various NZ celebs as well as some good old christmas carols. The whole evening finished off with a massive fireworks display. You'll be able to see more photos in the photo section.
Well, Rich has fastracked it all and got him self fully ordained as a vicar! We went to the service, and can absolutley guarentee it was one of the most boring things in the world!!!!
We've posted some photos and you can view a short video here.
It seemed that it didn't take rich long to get himself back to his normal self!! In the evening about 50 of us from St Paul's went to party in the park and Rich was to be found necking champaigne from the bottle - good lad!!!!
Well, on Friday Laura and I decided to have a weekend away - or a night at least!!!
We jumped on the ferry from Auckland city cetre and headed over to Waiheke.
It's a small Island about 30 minutes away by ferry, and it's worth taking the trip as the pace of life is even slower there than it is in Auckland. We stayed at a very quaint little homestay called Blue Horizon run by a sweet elderly couple in Sandy Bay.
It was very comfortable, and very cheap ($95 for an ensuite B&B) and provided a great base for us to explore the island....
Naturally our exploration didn't get a lot past the local beaches on the first day!! We headed out to Oneroa which is the main town (more like a village!!) We had fish and chips there and sat on the beach and comtemplated life. As we didn't take our car with us, everything was on foot which was great. Aucklanders have to drive everywhere because the public transport is so shocking, so it wa a welcomed break.
On Saturday morning we awoke to a beautiful day, and incredible views from the deck that flowed from our bedroom - we took some photos and then headed to Oneroa to meet our friends Jeremy & Emily. We spent a fair amount of the morning and afternoon on Little Oneroa beach, where we built a sand mermaid, swam in the sea, and ate lunch!!!
Making the most of Jeremys wine expertise, we took an afternoon trip to Stonyridge Vineyard. Stonyridge make New Zealands most expensive red wines, and has a beautiful vineyard that we took a tour around. Jeremy used to work there so we got taken round for free and plied with alcohol :-)
Shortly after our wine tour we jumped on a ferry and returned to Auckland refreshed and relaxed...
So, were at the end of another week so thought we'd just write another little hello - it's been a mad couple of weeks and weve been incredibly busy. 2 weekends ago we had a first church weekend away; we went away to Waitomo, where there are fantastic glow worm caves; i genuinely just thought that glow worms were those little glow in the dark toys when i was a child!!!
So the weekend was absolutely exhausting, but brilliant - we saw God do lots with the guys from the congregation who all seemed to enjoy themselves. Sadly I was trying to fight off some sort of chest infection so was struggling to sing.
We were exhausted for most of last week, so spent most of it just trying to get our energy back up again. On our day off on Friday we went to a great beach called Muriwai - it was so long, that even after walking down it for an hour, we still couldn't see the end! It was really cool; we took a swim in the sea there and it wasn't actually as cold as we thought it might be; the waves were pretty huge though, so lots of caution was taken.
After church on Sunday we had a great barbecue at a friends house - played cricket in the garden which was great!!! WE LOVE NEW ZEALAND!!!
This week has been very quiet, although Ive been very busy at work writing for a talk for this weekend; I'd appreciate your prayers that it would be great.
Thats all for now - we'll get more photos on soon
Well I had my worst possible dream a little over 30 minutes ago! I dreamt that i was getting chased down a path by chickens..... it gets worse; The chickens appeared to subside until suddenly i noticed a whole army of them flying at me! This was enough to drive me from my bed and start the day an hour earlier than normal (5:45).
For those of you who know me well; you will appreciate that for me that really is my worst nightmare - i have a genuine fear of birds - perhaps it's something to do with the pandemic the media is preparing us for!!!
So i thought i'd take this golden opportunity to update you all on what we've been up to. This week has been the eternal week!! We had a great weekend - we had dinner with Rich and Kath on Friday night which was great, and then spent Saturday afternoon down at Mission Bay with a whole load of guys from church - very nice indeed.
This week has been really manic for us both - the church is having a weekend away this weekend which has commanded a lot of my time in preparation; we also are working on our christmas services and have been having the headaches of song choice etc - i have a choir master though which makes it all easier once the decision has been finally made!!!
I'm fighting off illness this week which is frustrating - i'm had quite a sore throat and a bit of a chesty cough. I'm hoping and praying that it wont materialise but we'll see. I'm taking pills galore though to keep it at bay!!!
Sorry this post is rather boring - I'm still fairly traumatised by the birds! We'll post again soon; This weekend we're off to Waitomo for a couple of days; Waitomo has glow worm caves, so expect some fun photos next week.... Love you all
Paul
2 new things to report - we have finally posted a tour of the house, although the qulity isn't amazing.
We have also posted some new photos which you can look at in the appropriate section!!! Enjoy
Paul & Laura xxx
I LOVE New Zealand; Last night after dinner, Laura & I decided to take a drive out to the west coast to watch the sun go down - it was so amazing! We drove out to Bethells again, which is fast turning into a regular, and we spent a couple of hours there. We walked up and down the beach and took in a breath taking sunset whilst talking life and me taking loads of photos (they'll be posted tonight)
We were thinking back to our honeymoon in Devon; We observed lots of guys heading down to Bantham beach at the end of their working days, and we both said how much we would love to be able to drive to the beach at the end of a hard days work. Funnily enough, Sheffield never provided us with an opportunity even remotely like that!
Well, we are living that dream now!!! It is so amazing to head out to the beach at 7pm and it still be warm enough to go barefoot! We are looking forward to a long summer with plenty of surfing after work, plenty of BBQs on the beach, and lots of time spent out doors! It's only spring time here, and already we love it SO much.
So watch out for the photos from last night, and also our weekend with Dan & Emma - theyll be coming very soon.
This weekend we had our first staying guests!! Dan & Emma visited us on route to Christchurch where they will be living for the next couple of years or so. We had a fantastic time with them, although was not keen on the 7am pick up from the airport on Saturday morning; I think i was more worn out than the weary travellers!
So on Saturday, in our best efforts to keep the guys awake we headed into the center of Auckland and took a walk up and down Queen Street - we went up the Sky Tower which was a lot of fun; we hadn't been up during the day so was awesome to see the views from the top.
In the afternoon we took a drive down to Mission Bay for the legendary Movenpick ice cream followed by a walk down to St Heliers for a drink in Kahve - the rest of the day and evening we all spent recovering and were in bed at the early time of 8:30!!!
On Sunday I did church as usual in the morning which was interesting - we had a talk about drug proofing teanage children; something I'm not quite sure i'm ready for!!! We had our lunch with Rich & Kath, and then took a walk through the beautiful domain before heading back to church to lead worship again.
Monday was labour day which meant the first day off of the summer; along with a large crowd we headed off to Bethells Beach at 11 am; It was a stunning day, and we all enjoyed lounging on the beach, playing touch rugby and swimming in the surf, although we did get told off for not swimming even remotely near the flags!!!
On monday evening, we celebrated our day on the beach by eating fish and chips on the wall at Mission Bay, followed by a showing of The Last Samurai at our house - I love that film, and it was filmed about 4 hours away from us hear, so extra support is needed!
Dan & Emma left yesterday morning sadly, but we had a really great time with them here - we loved sharing our house with them, and will no doubt see them again soon; plenty of reasons for us to now go and visit christchurch!
Well, we've made it through another week, and have woken on our day off to the news that Laura's parents have booked their flights to see us. They come on the 15th Feb and will be staying for a month.
Our 1st staying guests arrive though next Saturday; we're really excited to have Dan & Emma coming to stay for a couple of days, on their way to Christchurch.
So we've been totally exhausted this week - were not really sure why, but it has been. I put it down to the clocks changing 2 weeks ago!!!
We're both off today though, so will get a good chance to have a couple of long sleeps! I'm excited, as today I'm having a new PA system fitted at the church.
Later on today we'll see if we can put a little video tour together for your amusement.
Enough of me; hope to hear from you all soon
We've had a great weekend having coffee, meals, and fun with friend etc, however Monday has come around ever so quickly again- is it just me or everyone, but I find Monday nights are always the ones where I'm unbelievably tired? I think the end of the week should be like that but its always on a Monday!
Anyway, work is going well and I'm bonding well with Stella and Holly, however today they got me good by vomiting all over me and doing a massive poo, so bit that it leaks out of the nappy all the way down the legs-maybe they feel comfortable in my care!
I'm very excited to have a night in to myself tonight, Paul is at a planning meeting and I was meant to be at another meeting but I decided last minute that a night in alone was more important for my health and sanity! I'm almost fully over my sore throat/chest/ear thing I had last week; thanks for everyone who prayed.
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