Aikido Toss

Erick loves this sport and it has kept him fit and healthy....not to mention muscled. So as a wife who is frequently abandoned to Aikido....I do kinda reap the benefits. Hee Hee

One out of the Box....a warm, sunny day in the midst of a freezing winter!! What a great day to be outside with a pile of dirt for a castle!

Kids are sooo funny sometimes!!!

Last night we told my daughter to put a blanket over her head while an ad was on for The Adams Family....creepy and spooky and all that!!! She sits there with the blanket over her head but clicking her fingers along to the tune. Erick and I were in hysterics but trying not to laugh out loud. I love having four kids...they all keep me in stitches in one way or another. ...and yes she does love Milo!!

The Story of How we Met.....Part Two!

so...Erick wrote back and then a week later they were due to fly out from Auckland airport to Honolulu...the airport was only an hour's drive from where we were but I didn't have any money. A few of the american's on campus decided to go down and say bye and asked if I wanted to jump in for $10 petrol. I said I'd get back to them and that afternoon in the mail I received $10 from a mother of a friend from church. Met the team at the airport and said hi! to everyone except Erick as I felt really shy by that stage...but didn't know everyone was watching us as his team knew the dream and my friends knew what God had been saying to me. In the end Erick said "we need to talk" and we ended up having a 10 minute discussion in the cafe lounge which was time enough to lay all the dirty laundry and cards on the table and see if we were still interested in each other....we were. We just knew it was God. Erick got on the plane and went home with no money to return and I went back to College to finish my youth diploma. We started writing and phone calls when we could afford it but he had just finished being a student and I was still one, so neither of us had any money. It seemed impossible to come together. When Erick went back to his church at the end of his course, a couple went up to him and said "you aren't meant to be here, what God has for you is on the other side of the world"...and gave him money for an air ticket back to NZ. He contacted the Head of the Campus, arranged to come back and work on site and came back the end of July. the day before he came back Trev & Jan (heads of school) offered me their car to go down and pick Erick up, so I stayed in Auckland the night and God woke me and told me Erick was going to ask me to marry him and I needed to decide whether I would say yes or no. I struggled with it all night long, what if it wasn't God or was the wrong guy? Anyway Erick got off the plane, we went for a picnic lunch on a hill over the city and there and then he asked me!! Of course, I said Yes and when we got back to Lifeway, Trevor came out to meet us and said "Congratulations" before we had even told him.....but then Jan, his wife told him off for bursting our bubble!! The wedding is a whole other story...as neither of us had a dime and were both living on faith. Maybe one day I'll share that!!

Boy! can boys eat or what!! In trying to teach him to learn letters and there sounds, I asked what else sounded like Mmmmm? A good meal was the reply! Only a hungry little kid would think of that!

10 Years On

The Story of our Meeting!

I had been planning on heading back to India to do missionary work at the end of my Youthwork Diploma...and the LAST thing I wanted was a boyfriend, having been burnt before I went to Lifeway College. A guy on my course liked me but I just wasn't interested. Then we were told the Lifeway Kauai School was going to stay at the NZ school for two days before heading off for their mission in New Plymouth (4 hours drive away). They arrived in the afternoon and went down to the Yaxleys' house (head of the school)..at tea time we got our tea and were sitting down when they all walked in. I noticed Erick straight away...don't know why but tell him it was the hearing aid in his ear (LOL), he says it was his mystique!!! That night we had all the tables in one long row as 1/2 the college was away on a missions trip and only the Diploma students were on campus. Erick sat about 3 seats down from me on the other side. We ate and at the end of the main meal Erick started clearing up the plates but then he picked up the spoons and I quickly picked up mine, held it up and said to him "Pudding"...he said "What?", so thinking he was really deaf, I repeated "Pudding"...."What?" (man, he must be REALLY DEAF I thought)....so I yelled "PUDDING!!!"......"Oh, he said, you mean Dessert!"...the whole room erupted in laughter and I felt very embarrassed. At Bible College we only got pudding (NZ name for dessert) once a week and I am a real sweet tooth so the thought that someone would steal my spoon and my weekly treat was horrific! Everytime the team saw me after that they would say "there goes Pudding!".... I was not impressed but when I went back to my room and was praying that night I knew God was talking to me about Erick....I said NO WAY...God I'm off to evangelise for you! That night I had a dream that I had had several times before where I was walking down the aisle and could see a man in a black suit at the altar but the dream always ended with the man turning. this night the man turned and I finally got to see his face....it was Erick. I woke up and cried for hours saying No, No......on praying with older, wiser friend, she said she believed it was God's plan for me and I should submit to God's will as it would seem impossible to work out in the natural. The next day we did activities with Erick's team but he went swimming and because I hate my thighs I chose to go tramping (thinking if he liked me he would chose that)! We spent the day at separate events, that night we played cards and went out for coffee in a large group of others and the next morning their team left for NP. Just before they left Erick gave his address to one of the guys on my course and asked him to pass it on to me. That seemed to be an end of it....we hadn't even talked alone. Three days later I sent some of the team cards wishing them well on their mission but in Erick's card I included a spoon with a tag attached saying "NZ Pudding". When the envelope turned up in NP, they were all sitting around opening mail, when Erick opened his and the spoon fell out, all the boys went "Whow"...as Erick had shared a dream with them before they left Kauai where he had received a letter from his future wife and it had a spoon in it! (They had all thought he was quite mad and all cracked up but of course now it just seemed spooky!!) ..........Part Two to come tomorrow. What happened? How did we get together again? How did we end up getting married 7 months later? Stay tuned....