Happy Easter!

Its hard to believe that Easter has come and gone already!  Was it earlier than usual this year?  I'm afraid I was a bit unprepared and uncreative this year with our Easter preparations but it was still a really lovely and special time with family and friends.
I'm finding that having the girls adds so much more joy and excitement to things.  I read, "The Amazing Journey - Jesus, Creation, Death and Life", by Susie Poole to the girls on Good Friday and was reminded of how amazing God's gift of new life is in Jesus.
It was lovely to have Jeff home for the four day weekend.  Both the girls love him so much and have so much fun with him!  On Saturday we had hopes of catching a country train to a historical town called, "Ballarat".  We live about 2 minutes away from the train station and so we see and hear trains every day.  Evie has been asking me for quite a while if we can ride on the train so we thought this would be the perfect opportunity.  Well, it turned out that all the trains to Ballarat were cancelled for the next week so we settled for driving there instead.
Ballarat is a beautiful old town that was settled in the mid 1800's at the time of the goldrush.  It has a lot of big old buildings and a lot of history.  Since we couldn't ride the train, we settled for a tram ride around the lake.

We also took the girls to a large playground.  Its nice now that Hayley is able to walk and play on a lot of the play equipment.  I'm pretty sure she thinks that she is about four or five years old because I kept finding her playing with the bigger kids on the higher parts of the playground.  I often call her, "Jeffrey Junior" because she is so adventurous and shows very little caution!

On Easter Sunday, we drove down to my parents' house in Ferntree Gully.  Their back yard was perfect for an Easter egg hunt for the girls.  We all had so much fun watching their excitement and helping them find the eggs.

                                    

          

                      

Hayley had her first taste of chocolate and loved it!

                       

On Easter Monday we headed down to one of our favourite places, Geelong, which is right on the beach.  Evie got to have her first carousel ride.  

               

And according to Jeff that was his 16th carousel ride!  Evie named her horse, "Giddy-Up Hat".

We finished up the day with ice-cream and a walk along the beach.

Hoping that you had a lovely Easter!

Our Family

After a lot of procrastination, we have finally started a family blog!  The girls are growing up so quickly and we wanted to be able to share photos and milestones with family and friends.

We've been out in Australia as a family for two and a half years now.  It's amazing how quickly that time has flown by!  Jeff is working at the moment as a site supervisor for a large excavation company, "EPH"and has just recently been transferred to a bigger site.  He works long hours and often six days a week but we're really thankful for the work and that it's in the construction industry, which Jeff loves.

I (Ruth) am really loving being able to stay home and raise our two beautiful girls.  They are so much fun and so different in personality.

Evie is going to be 4 in June.  Its hard to believe that she is almost kinder age already!  She has a very sweet and sensitive personality and loves learning.  She is constantly amazing us with how capable she is and how quickly she is growing up.

We are finding that one of the biggest blessings of parenting is watching our girls grow in character and watching them become who God has created them to be.  

Evie can be very thoughtful.  Sometimes she will find a quiet corner and tell me she needs to think.  Usually if I ask her what she's thinking about, she'll tell me she's thinking about Jesus.  Apparently when Jeff was little, he had a thinking tree, where he would climb up onto a branch and just think for a while.  It's cute to see that carry through to Evie.  

Evie has already made some good friends, mainly through church, and having a lot of parks and also the beach nearby, there has been some great opportunities for some fun outings.

Hayley is 14 months old.  She is such a fun, mischevious, and always busy girl.  She loves Evie and always has to be in the middle of whatever Evie is doing which is sometimes appreciated and sometimes not!  She started walking about a month ago and hasn't looked back.  Hayley likes to keep us on our toes by getting into everything and usually trying to eat whatever it is she's found.  She has a very inquisitive mind and a very loving spirit.  She has always been a good communicator and is really trying hard to talk at the moment.  It never ceases to amaze me how much their little brains absorb and learn in those first few years.  It always brings me back to Psalm 139 and the fact that we are "Fearfully and wonderfully made".

We hope that this blog will enable us to stay in touch regularly and hope to hear from you as well!

Have a great week.