Australian Father's Day

So Australia has it's own father's day.  They don't celebrate it in June, when America does, but in September, September 1st to be exact.  The girls had been making cool presents for Cory at school and were really excited to give them to him.  They also kept making tons of cards at home for him also.  They could hardly wait for the day to just spoil their dad.

I also decided to do the super cheesy, trendy thing of getting a picture of each of the kids holding the letters, D-A-D.  I thought that I had better do it this year since I have three kids for three letters.  Perfect, and I'm hoping that that still won't be the case next September when Father's day rolls around again....but we'll see.  Anyways, the photo shoot was so fun, my friend Ali, was doing it with her kids too.  So we had lots of fun trying to get good smiles and happy faces out of all the kids.  And they were seriously some of the best photos my kids have ever taken.

Get ready to be overloaded, we're going to see with how many different poses we can spell dad.  :)

There's one...

There's two...

There's three...

There's four...

There's five...

There's six...

There's seven...and we ran out of Lily "D's" So here are some just plain "AD's"

There's one...

There's two...

And there's three...now we just have a couple "A's" left...

 And here are the ones we actually put together for dad.  :)

Here are some of the things that the girls made for Dad at school for Father's day.

How great is all these cute things they made?

These girls sure do love their dad!  Will does too, he just shows it differently!  ;)

I sure do love him too!  I'm very glad that he is the father of my children!  I couldn't ask for a better man to do the job!  WE love you, Dad Cory!  :)

Random Bits of Life

Not too much has been happening for us down under lately.  We are all just so ready for Spring and Summer!  Here are just a few of the random things that have been going on lately.

I got a haircut.  A huge hair cut.  My long hair was driving me crazy, and I just wanted to go to my shoulders, but this is what happened.  And that's alright!  Always fun to try new things.  :)

 We went to our first "hangi" as a family.  So the Maori's usually bury the meat and coals in the ground, but they have discovered this new way of cooking the meat and vegetables which is easier than burying it, they do it in a keg.  I am a little embarrassed to say that this was the first time in all my 30 years that I had ever seen a keg!

 On nice days, we still do a lot of park playing.  :)

 There is a pay phone outside of the library that Will just loves!

 The girls are still loving school!  Here is a lovely necklace and headband Ava made at kindy out of noodles.

 The kids always love to stop and play on the way back to the car when coming home from school.

 Will busy being an excavator at another park.

Ava and Will sailing on the playground.

I thought this was a really cute door, just on an abandoned building right by my favorite fabric store in town.  Love the color!

Here are some of the first signs of spring.

 Here is Will enjoying some of the new greenry.

Here's Ava just being her cute self.

Lillian received another Principal's Pride award.  She is just such a little school super star!

 Lily is in the green, her faction color.  All the kids at the school are split up into 4 factions.  I don't really understand it, all I know is that it is okay for Lily to wear a green uniform shirt because of it.  

 Here are the girls being Captian America at Kmart on a drastic occasion when I HAD to take all the kids shopping with me.

And that wraps up our random bits of every day life.

Songfest

A couple weeks ago the Kalgoorlie Ward had their first official activity.  It was Songfest, and it was so much fun!  Each different auxiliary prepared a musical number consisting of a spiritual song and a fun song.  It was so much fun to watch everyone perform.  On top of all the auxiliary performances, we had a live band!  And they were all ward members.  I'm so excited to know that we have a ward band, we will have to use them more often! ;)

Here are some pics of our awesome ward band just rocking it!  Me and the other American lady in the ward were quiet disgruntled that the Maori people are not only naturally beautiful, but also talented!  LOL!

The primary kids performed a very cute medley of songs from Mary Poppins and Sound of Music, which I took a video of the whole thing since Lily was singing in it. Ava was supposed to be singing too, but she refused to join the primary on the stage!  But I will spare you the video here, since I can't seem to get them to work on here right now.  Just trust me on this, it was adorable!

Here are a few pics of the primary.  Lily's in the front row the fourth from the left with the blue shirt.  I also must apologize, my old phone broke, and this phone was brand new, so I was still trying to figure out the camera on it, and so most the pictures are a little blurry.  I really miss my old stand alone camera!!!!

 Here's Ava, not singing with the primary!

Will and Ava being spectators.  

I preformed with the Relief Society and it was a lot of fun!  No proof though, as I am the photographer.  We sang "My God" from the movie Sister Act.  Ya know, nothing you can say can tear me away from my God...

The Elder quorum were awesome!  All those Maori men were pulling haka faces, it was amazing!

 The YM/YW were fantastic.

 The YSA were incredible, seriously so much talent!!

My favorite part of the evening was the very end when everyone insisted that the bishopric do some sort of musical number with the missionaries.  The sisters had an awesome African investigator there and they made Bishop Cory and everyone else sing this gospel song with them that they so didn't know!  I'm sure Cory thought it was so horribly embarrassing, it was awesome!!! LOL!

All and all it was a great first official ward activity and I hope we will have many more like it!!  This post is really a lame recap of such a fantastic evening.  :)