Silliness at Grandma's 95 Birthday Party

Grandma celebrated her 95th birthday on the 13th of October with her three children. Mom sent me this picture and commented on how Uncle Ron now has a mustache. I wondered if he was competing with Uncle Paul. And then I commented on how glad I was that Mom and Grandma did not join in and grow mustaches.
Of course Mom and Uncle Ron had to do something about my little comment. Aren't they cute?

The October 3rd Birthday Bash

Well for the last three years my friend Becky and I have celebrated our birthdays in Madang. This year we could not make the trip so our friends brought Madang to us. We had a wonderful afternoon!
Joanie and Becky decorated and organized a wonderful luncheon.

Brithday girl number 1 - Becky

Number 2 birhtday girl...

Our Mandang "ocean". Pretty silly, but very fun.

The hostesses of the wonderful birhtday celebration. Thanks so much ladies!!!

PNG Independence Day!

Our band starts the day with a march...

Then they play the PNG national anthem...

Our parade is next, including a local drum band, little kids on decorated bikes, individuals in golf carts and buggies, then the class floats...

And the rest of the day is full of games and activities. It was a good day. The sun was out so things got a bit warm but all in all the day was fun.

Staff Retreat

This weekend we had our second annual staff retreat. It is so much fun to hang out with our coworkers. As teachers we spend the day with students and don't get much time to interact with each other.

We had some great professional development sessions. One was about how to prepare our MKs to enter a world that doesn't have a biblical worldview. The other one was about personalities and how to use the knowledge of each other personalities to communicate better. Here are a couple pictures of the activities.

We also had lots of fun playing games and eating amazing meals. We were so thankful for the hospitality of Interface.

First Day of School

Today we started school at Numonohi Christian Academy. We started two weeks late but we started none the less. I am back in the classroom after two years of administration. I love being in the classroom so that isn't a hardship. I am teaching grades 3 and 4 which is a bit different than teaching grades 5 and 6. So I am learning right along with the students. I am still the elementary principal, which has been juggling act. I am missing 5 students for various reasons (hopefully they will arrive soon) and have one visitor. We had a great day and I am looking forward to going back tomorrow. I hope the kids are too.

Here we are...

This is my view all day....

Just sitting there all ready to learn....

Oh how studious they are...

A Picture for My Sis

My blog posts are never as exciting as my siblings because I don't have any cute kids to take pictures of an publish. I guess I have lots of "kids" since I am at a mission school, but you know what I mean. So I was talking with Carol today about blog posts and she said again - remember we want pictures of you too. Well it is hard to take pictures of yourself and sometimes kind of weird to ask people to take pictures of you, but here goes...

This is a picture from dinner this evening. Starting on the left we have Emily, me, Paul, Vince and Carrie. Vince is a visitor and we were going out for dinner as a farewell. It was nice to get off base and see a bit of different scenery.

Here is another picture, not of me, but it was an interesting PNG shot. We were riding behind this truck as we went to the airport one day. I believe it is a picture of the election ballots coming in. I like the security with the man riding on top of the ballot boxes.

Slumber Party ? Sleep Over ? Almost All Nighter?

One of the extra fun things that is included in my life at our school base is that I get to see the students in many areas of their lives. Last Wednesday night there was a grade 7-12 sleep over in the teen lounge. It was pretty fun for me since many of those girls were ones I have taught over the years. It is great to see them growing up.

Now I am not sure why it is called a sleep over since no one really wanted to sleep. We started at 9:30 pm,but really it wasn't until 10 pm that all the girls arrived. We watched 2 movies with a bit of a toilet problem in between the two movies, but all in all it was fun. The last movie ended at 2:15 and most of the girls were ready to turn in. There were a few wide awake girls that weren't too excited that I told them that it was time to quite down. Anyway, most everyone was asleep around 3 am.

The girls seemed to be able to sleep in a little bit but I was up by 6 am. So I left at 6:30 and started my day. I was a bit in a daze for the first couple hours of my day, but eventually I was back on track.

This was a good evening of memories.