October 31, 2010

Happy Hallowe'en!  We actually had kids come to our house tonight - we were really surprised.  Only one student at school mentioned he was going out for Hallowe'en and none of the teachers mentioned it at all.  We were under the impression that it wasn't really done here.  There were costumes for sale in the stores and some candy for sale, too, but it wasn't really talked about and no ads on tv, either.  It turned out that only six kids came to our house.  We don't know if that has to do more with the fact that we live out of town or that it really isn't done much period.  I will ask the teachers at school tomorrow how much it is done here.

Yesterday we had a really lovely relaxing day here in Hervey Bay.  We started out by sleeping in 'til 9:16am - what a great way to start the day since we are usually up by 6am when I am teaching.  We Skyped with Terri-Ann for about 90 minutes (the boys were already in bed) which was really nice (the talking bit,  not the boys in bed bit ).  We love Skype and look forward to doing it with the rest of you at some point, too!   After lunch, we went down to the beach and spent the afternoon there.  We set up our chairs under a tree - some backpackers had the NERVE to sit under OUR tree, so we had to make do with another one. :-)  As soon as we had set up, we went into the water and boy, was it refreshing - actually, it was COLD! :-)  We stayed in for about five minutes and then decided we would rather be sitting in the warm air.  Dad bought some camp stools for us to use at the beach so we were very comfortable with our feet up on them as we enjoyed the sun and the books we were reading.  We did take another short dip in the water part way through our time at the beach - very refreshing! :-)  Dad and I both agreed that we have to stop taking the beach for granted and get down there more often.

Today at church, I had a meeting with our Branch President and he has called me to be the Primary President.  I thought it might be coming since our current Primary President is burned out (she's been in the calling for six years), but I thought that since we travelled so much, they might call someone else as President and leave me as the first counsellor.  So, I will be sustained next week and then have just one more week after that before we head back to Canada for two months.  Also, today, we found out that our branch is going to become a ward which is very exciting to everyone here.  We will also, along with Bundaberg, become part of a stake.  The stake centre is in a city called Nambour which is about 2 1/2 hours away and stake conference will be transmitted via satellite into our chapel.  The first one will be on the third Sunday of November so we won't be here for that, but when they have the next one which I'm guessing will be in six months, Dad and I would like to travel to Nambour to see what a stake conference is like here in Australia.

Just a note about our 'getting healthy' plan - it's going really well to date.  I have lost 21 pounds so far and Dad has lost the same.  We are finding that exercising is really making the difference and we are making sure that we get out and get some every day (well, not on our 'day of rest' - Sunday :-)  We either go for a walk or a bike ride.  This week, we are also going to start doing some strength training exercises.  We hope that we will be able to continue on this plan while we are in Canada, so please don't offer us any fatty foods or desserts when we are there. :-)  Actually, we don't eat any fast foods anymore because our tummies just can't handle it.  We rarely have any desserts, but if we do, we try to make it low fat and try to fit it into our eating plan.  We are looking better and more importantly, we are feeling better.  :-)