Happy Holidays!

Hi everyone - Happy Holiday season! Hope this finds everyone very well, and enjoying all that snow we hear has been covering massive portions of the US. Even the Oregon coast and Portland - hooray for snow in Portland! Just a few pictures to share from Thanksgiving, a recent camp trip here in Victoria, and our tropical-style (and free from the park across the street) Christmas tree.

Life in Melbourne is good. We continue to have spring showers and coolish temps, and you can just tell that everyone is ready for summer to hit full blast. People are tired of their BBQs being rained out. Andy and I leave this Saturday for our 7-day Christmas trip to Adelaide and Kangaroo Island. Kangaroo Island is reportedly one of the best locations in Australia for viewing wildlife in its natural habitat, so we're looking forward to celebrating Christmas with each other and some kangaroos, koalas, emus, echidnas, sea lions, seals, & fairy penguins. We return to Melbourne on Dec. 27th, just in time for my brother Steve, his wife Michelle, and my niece Cami to land in Melbourne on Dec. 28th! They will be here visiting until Jan. 11th, so we will certainly be busy and loving having family back in town. New Year's Eve will find us in Sydney, so if you're watching the fireworks on TV, be sure to keep a keen eye out for us - we'll be waving from one of the many boats floating around Sydney Harbour.

Now that it is mid-December, our time in Australia seems to be diminishing rather quickly. November was fairly quiet for us, and, for me, the month really seemed to drag along, which kept making our departure in May sure seem a long way off. And missing out on Thanksgiving was tough for me this year. It was an interesting difference - last year it was pretty fun just seeing if we could find all of the proper ingredients for eating a Thanksgiving feast; this year there was no challenge to it, so it didn't seem that fun at all. I was sure crabby on that Friday over here/Thanksgiving US time. Really crabby. My crabbiness was cured, however, when we enjoyed a family Thanksgiving feast with our friend, David, and his 2 children that Saturday. David has lived in Australia for around 10 years, but is originally from Onawa, IA, which is about 30 miles from Sioux City, where I grew up. He also graduated from South Dakota State University, which is where Andy and I both went to college. He and Andy tracked each other down on Facebook as SDSU alumnus. So, what fun we had sitting here in Melbourne, chatting about all of these familiar regions from our lives. I had thought it might be kinda awkward to spend the day at his home, not knowing him very well at all, but it ended up feeling very peaceful, and 'homey' and comforting. And it certainly didn't hurt that he had gone to the USA Foods Store over here and purchased cans of Libby's Pumpkin and baked multiple pumpkin pies - what a treat!!! Words simply cannot describe how awesome those pies tasted!
I also owe a thank you to my good friend Jon Daby. While in my crabby funk on Thanksgiving, I was complaining to him about not being home for the holiday, and said something along the lines of, "May just can't get here quick enough." He immediately told me some advice that he had gotten from his parents: simply, Don't Wish Time Away. And when he first said it, I was kinda defensive and thought, "I'm not wishing time away." But as those words sat with me for the next few hours, I finally came to the conclusion that I actually was kinda wishing time away, which was really quite a horrible conclusion for me to admit to myself. I find at times that I am so ready to return home that I neglect a lot of the amazing things and people right here in front of me. So, again, my thanks to my good friend, Jon, for his powerful advice. I really needed to hear it.

May we all revel in all that we are blessed with this Holiday season.

Love, Christy