A weekend full of blessings

Friday 1st January 2016. After working on Christmas day, boxing day and the Monday public holiday, it was great that Brendon now had a wonderful 4 day weekend (only back to work on Tuesday). We had a really restful weekend.
Asher is enjoying her new beads.
Russell (one of their karate senseis) stopped in this morning and ended up giving Hannah an extra lesson.

As it was just coming to lunch time, we invited him to stay for lunch. The children enjoyed some games with him before we ate.

BELOW: Monthly children photos continue this year. The children are so used to it now that they remind me.
Getting the photo done before heading off to the pool.

Asher sure loves swimming. It would be interesting to see what she would be able to do if she had goggles (with sunglasses for lenses) and floatable togs (like Hannah has).
It's a bit of a pain with the glasses if her head goes under as the water gets trapped behind the glasses. At this stage it's working for seizure control - so we are thankful for that. I'm so pleased she has been able to enjoy the water so much already this summer.

Hezekiah called me to take a photo of him "floating". Great to see his confidence growing.

In the evening I helped Ruth with a new idea she came up with. Making little badges for her "Purple Panda" unit with the purple ribbon that we bought. On the e-mail we got from the leaders, they had a little panda logo (panda written in a way that it looks like a panda). So we copied that on and wrote CBee 16 (the name of this year's Jamboree).
We managed to make just over 30, so hopefully enough to give one to each of the girls and leaders in their unit.
Saturday 2nd: Asher found it difficult to get the first domino out on each row (and we all struggled) as they are really tight. So I got a spoon out to help leaver them out. It didn't take her long to learn to do it herself.
Thankfully the Countdown was open on Saturday, so I planned to get some shopping done. I had hoped to combine it with an outing with Hezekiah, but it was raining. He said he still wanted to come with though, so we headed off. Just was we arrived in Amberley, the rain stopped.

So he got a nice play in two "new" parks.

There is an aviary next to the park, so we stopped there for a photo as we were leaving. And at that exact moment, the rain started (thankfully only just a small drizzle at first). By the time we left the shops it was pouring with rain. What a blessing to get that little break in the rain to have some fun.

Asher and I joined the family at church again this evening.
We were overwhelmed with the Church's love and support of Ruth with her Jamboree fundraising. She got 6 envelopes with financial gifts from different families, as well as one from the church. They also prayed for her as she heads off to Jamboree on Wednesday.
I had thought last week that they has specifically prayed for Asher during the service because of us attending for the first time. This evening they prayed for her at the start of the service (as they had last week) and then she was prayed for again at the end of the service. I left church feeling so overwhelmed with love. On the way home I mentioned something to Brendon about how much it meant to me that they prayed for Asher again. His reply was that they pray for her every week. It brought me to tears.