Matthew turns 9

On January 20th Matthew celebrated his 9th birthday. It was a Wednesday so we normally go to church for a meal and bible study. Matthew attends choir on a Wednesday night and loves it so he was content for us to attend church on his birthday. We did have a family birthday lunch and a cake. Matthew asked for chicken, rice and a sweet potato casserole (with marshmallows on top).

Matthew also got to celebrate his birthday with friends in Louisville one evening. They went to Chucky Cheeses, which is great for birthday parties. It has pizza, arcade games and a huge play area. They had a fun evening.

Family Photo

A friend of ours from Immanuel Baptist, our church in Louisville, very generously took some professional family photos of us as a going away gift. We have never had any taken and for those of you in NZ you know how expensive this can be. For those of you who did not get a Christmas card from us we apologise. We would have loved to send more out but we have to count the cost as the postage is expensive. So this is a belated Merry Christmas and Happy New Year to you all and here is the family photo for those who we were unable to send one two.

More Snow Photos

It has now snowed for three days here. The snow is pretty but we got so sick of being inside that we decided to walk in the snow over to the park to find a hill to sled on. The only problem being that the only thing we had to sled on was 'For Rent' signs.

There is a large deer population here and we have already seen over 10 deer at different times. Even though we see them almost every time we drive, having been deer hunting in New Zealand, I still find it hard not to get excited every time we see some.

We had our first full Sunday at Buck Run Baptist church yesterday. We enjoyed the fellowship with the saints and are looking forward to our year here. Mark started work, officially, today.

From the surf to the snow

This is us enjoying the pool at our hotel in Orlando. Below are photos from today at our townhouse in Frankfort. It has snowed all day so the children had a day off school as the schools close.

The Beach

Our last stop in Florida was the beach. We spent two nights at Daytona Beach and were blessed with a warm enough day to paddle in the waves. It was really nice to be at the beach again. It has been a couple of years. The beach has hotels the whole way along it and was a hive of activity.

The boys building sand castles with the girls in the background.

The view from our hotel room. We did not use the pool, it is unheated and freezing.

Kennedy Space Center

On the way to Daytona Beach we spent the day at The Kennedy Space Center out at Cape Canaveral. It was a really interesting place. There is lots to look at. You can go into the actual control room used for most of the Apollo flights and see old space suits and go inside old ships. It was a neat place to visit.

The Holy Land - Featuring Matthew

Our wonderful hosts who we stayed with over Christmas gave us tickets to a park called The Holy Land. It is like walking into Jerusalem in the time of Jesus. There were several shows to go to and a Scriptorium which was great. The gospel was preached clearly and we had a great day there. Matthew was feeling very photogenic that day so Anna-Marie became his personal photographer. Matthew would call her over, "Anna-Marie, Anna-Marie, take a photo of me on this."

Christmas Day - Sea World

On Christmas Day we went to Sea World. It was a great day to spend there as it was not too busy. Sea World was probably our favourite park.

Mark, Anna-Marie, Rachel and Joel enjoy the roller coasters. They went on this one and one called The Kraken which is one of the top 10 roller coasters in the world.

Matthew does not enjoy some of the faster rides so we don't make him do the roller coasters but we talked him into doing this one, as you can see he did not enjoy this one either.

We have always loved aquariums and Sea World had some great ones. This is a leafy seahorse. We had Christmas dinner at a restaurant with the shark tank along one whole wall.

The whale shows were amazing! If you sat in the front rows you got soaked.

A dolphin show Anna-Marie's camera ran out of battery, but once it got dark there was another whale show, then an ice staking show with fireworks to end the night. It was a great day with a great atmosphere throughout the whole park. While waiting for shows everyone would be singing Christmas carols and doing the Mexican wave. It was a lot of fun.