October Update

I didn’t realize it had been so long since I updated the blog! October has been a busy month.

We had visitors most of this month. First Alan and Donna Phillips came to visit our team for a few days (Alan works with Missions Resource Network); and then my folks came for a couple of weeks. It was good to see some people from back home.

Mom and Dad and the Phillips

Emily is now 20 weeks pregnant. We found out from our ultrasound this past week that we are going to have a boy! The interesting thing is that he is due sometime between the 16th and 19th of March (we’ve been told both days, so apparently it’s not an exact science), which is exactly when I was due (March 17) – thirty years to the day. How’s that for a thirtieth birthday gift?

Speaking of babies, our teammate Nicole had her second one in the past 15 months! When it rains it pours. Noah Kai Whaley joined us on the 27th of this month.

The day before the birth – a little bump and a big bump

Noah

In other news, my garden I planted in midwinter is still going strong, so I guess it is a spring garden now. I don’t have a scientific measurement, but I have picked 45 plastic bags so far (those kind you get at Kmart…don’t worry we reuse them) out of my little 8x1 meter garden – so I’m extremely pleased with the results. I’m going to let it go until the end of November, then it’s coming up so I can plant some summer vegetables.

I’m pleased to report that two blue tongues have taken up residence at our house. A blue tongue is an Australian Lizard that grows to about a foot and a half long and looks like a short fat snake…with a long blue tongue. They’re really cool, although if you just see their head sticking out of the leaves it can give you a bit of a fright, since it looks like the head of six foot long python. Emily is not as pleased as I am.

Other Aussie critters that we encounter at our house are skinks and huntsmen. The skinks here look similar the skinks back home (small shiny lizards). A huntsman is a large furry brown spider. They can get pretty big (I’ve seen a couple almost as big as my hand), but they are not poisonous or aggressive. They sometimes get in the house. Emily usually discovers them. She lets me know that she has found one by screaming. Usually with spiders I kill first and ask questions later, but for some reason I’ve kind of taken a liking to huntsmen…there’s just something about them. So when I find one, I just scoop him up on a newspaper and release him into our backyard. Emily’s not extremely pleased with that either.

Isn’t he cute? …I just hope he didn’t use my toothbrush.