Friday, December 23, 2011

Last day of 2nd Grade!

Grace had her last day of 2nd Grade on Dec. 8th! It's so crazy to think that she will be starting 3rd grade in Feb. and Lance will be starting Preschool! Where has the time gone?? We are really proud of Grace because she received the "Most Cooperative" award (which is like the Citizenship award) in her class!! We're amazed at what she's accomplished and how far she's come since jumping into 2nd grade halfway through in July! She also tested and was put into the "Independent Learners" class for 3rd grade! We're so proud of you!! Good On Ya, Grace!! ;) ;) I was also pretty excited about Mrs. Stephen's gift that we made for her, something cute to put in her classroom - thanks Pinterest!! What a great site!



receiving her award at the assembly

Sydney Harbor Dinner Cruise

Back in early December, the Social Club at Josh's work had a Sydney Harbor Dinner Cruise. It was our first time to get a babysitter since we've lived here! We found one and she's amazing!! She's actually from Tennessee and goes to our church! She's attending Hillsong College right now. It was cool to see the Opera House and the Harbor Bridge at night on the water. The pictures aren't very good as it was on my phone and through the window, but we had a great date night!

Iowa Shirt!

Random post, but I had to share......we were shopping a few weeks back in the big mall near our house and saw this t-shirt in one of the nice Australian clothing stores! It's actually a really cute store, but SUPER expensive - I think this kid's t-shirt cost over $40....really?!!! So, unfortunately, we didn't get it, but HAD to take a picture - who knew?!

Thursday, December 22, 2011

David and Jane's house

So this post is actually a continuation of the previous kangaroo post. These pictures are from that same day that we saw the wild kangaroos, but were on my phone, and I just now got around to loading them onto our computer! Needless to say, I'm WAY behind on the blog!! I have A LOT to catch up on! Anyway, they're wearing the same outfits as our Christmas card, because we also took those photos on the beach that day before heading out to the Blue Mountains to David and Jane's house. Besides seeing the wild kangaroos, David and Jane's son, Ben, gave the kids a little ride on his motorbike. It looks really SCARY in the pictures, but let me to tell you, he went VERY slow and was super awesome with them! Even if they would've fallen off (which they wouldn't have), they wouldn't have gotten hurt. You know me, I'm ultra protective anyway, so you can imagine it was fine. The kids enjoyed feeding the ducks in their yard

Lance holding on for dear life! Hilarious!! He wasn't sure he wanted to do it until Grace did (she couldn't wait to get on and even said after her first ride that he could've gone faster - oh my!)
Grace is ready to go!
Thanks Ben! That was very sweet of you! This is the "oval" they rode around in.

Wednesday, December 14, 2011

Wild Kangaroo Sightings!!

A couple Saturdays ago, we were invited to go and visit the house of someone that Josh works with. His name is David and he is actually the "old" plant manager at the GM plant in Sydney. He and his family are moving to Melbourne in January. They live in the Blue Mountains, so this was our first time to head over in that direction! They live on 5 acres and everyone in their neighborhood has about that much land. We were not in the city anymore!! We started out at their house and had a fabulous BBQ outside. They have two dogs, a cat, horses, chickens, and ducks, so the kids had a great time!! David's son, Ben, who's 13, is really into motorbikes, so we went to an open area (the oval) in their neighborhood where Ben gave Grace and Lance some rides on his motorbike - they had a great time! After Grace's first ride, she says to me "He could've gone a LITTLE faster!" Oh MY!!! He was really great with the kids. After our walk, David and his wife, Jane, knew of an area where you might be able to see wild kangaroos! They usually tend to come out around late afternoon/evening when the day starts getting a little cooler. They knew we would LOVE that!! So we drove over to that area and started walking around. Right away we saw about 5 of them walking around - it was AMAZING!!! There's just something about seeing them in the wild and not in a zoo! As you can imagine, I was DYING!! We took some pictures and I will try to see if I can download the video I took. What an amazing memory! They're super tame and people don't seem to bother them at all. It was really special. Thanks David, Jane, and Ben for an amazing day!!There's one hopping down the road.
Jumping!!
I got a close-up
Here you can see about how close we got.
There were some campers around and they came right on up - it's like seeing a deer, but WAY cooler!!!

Monday, December 12, 2011

Lance's last Mainly Music class

Lance had his last Mainly Music class (the same idea as Kindermusik) on Friday. He loved going, but had to "graduate" since he'll be in Preschool next year!Having his morning tea
Graduate certificate
standing up with the other graduates
receiving his gift and certificate!
getting his "shaker" on!!

Grace's Christmas program

They had a "primary" grades Christmas program at Grace's school last Wed. morning. The white shirts are the 2nd graders. They sang Hillsong's new Christmas song "Born is the King". She's in the bottom right hand corner.

The 2nd graders
Where's Waldo?? See if you can find Grace in this picture - ha!
Kindy - 4th graders

Tuesday, December 6, 2011

Minnesota Address

In case some of you are still wondering.....we have a Minnesota address that you can send mail to and we will receive it! We would LOVE receiving Christmas cards (it's one of my favorite parts of December - I love seeing all the fun pictures and reading the letters to see what everyone else is up to!) ;) I just wanted to let everyone know, so you don't think you have to send a card all the way to Australia and pay for extra postage. Thanks to General Mills, they take care of that for you! Our cards are on the way - we hope to hear from you, too! :)

Josh and Raquel Malin
1 General Mills Blvd
M01-EX
Minneapolis, MN 55426


We are blessed!

Here's the turkey! As you can see, it was so small it fit into my 9X13 pan - we didn't even bring my roaster over here. It's a good thing, too, because this is as big of a pan that would fit into our oven anyway - Ha!! It was very good and only had to cook for almost 3 hours - low maintenance! Here's the spread! Turkey, mashed potatoes, gravy, stuffing, carrot souffle, and fruit. We were going to make cranberry salad, but realized you can't buy cranberry jelly over here! Also, didn't have the french's onions for green beans. This 1st year will definitely be trial and error for us, as now in hindsight we wish we would've planned ahead a little better. Next year we're going to invite a bunch of Australian friends over to share in an American Thanksgiving celebration (probably on a Sat, though!) We will also maybe know some more American students studying at Hillsong college who would enjoy a home cooked Thanksgiving dinner. With a little more planning ahead, just wait - next year will be great!!
We went around the table and said what we were each thankful for - the rule was to say 2 things, but it turned into more like 10 things each!! We have a lot to be thankful for and our number one is loving God and having Jesus in our hearts! Our families and friends are very missed and thought of often. We hope you all had a wonderful Thanksgiving over in America!

Happy Thanksgiving!

I know I'm a little behind on getting the Thanksgiving pictures out, but better late then never - right?!! We actually DID "celebrate" Thanksgiving this year - kind of! ;) It was just another work day Thursday here in Australia, but we really wanted to have a "turkey dinner" anyway, so Josh came home a little early to help me finish preparing dinner. He had made the the stuffing for the turkey the night before and taught me how to prep and bake the turkey. Our turkey was very small for two reasons: 1. Being that Josh and I were basically the only ones eating it (4 if you count the kids) we didn't want too many leftovers. 2. Our tiny little 7 lb. turkey cost almost $40 and really, you wouldn't have found one much bigger anyway! Yikes!! We tried to hang on to some traditions, but it was tricky! We made our usual "oreo turkeys", but had to make some changes. Since there aren't any candy corns, we had to use smarties for the feathers. Oh-well, the kids thought they tasted great!Here are there finished products - they did pretty well!
Oh, you're probably wondering why Lance's face is painted like a tiger! Well, that day was our last day of Hillsong Sisterhood for the year, so the kids had a party. The girls had to dress as princesses and the boys as princes/knights. Apparently there was face painting, so he was a tiger knight! I have pictures on my phone, I will post later......basically, he wanted to keep it on until daddy got home to show him! Ha! There was lots of growling at our Thanksgiving!


making their oreo turkeys

Friday, December 2, 2011

Christmas Traditions

Every other week, Grace's class has "news" week where they have to stand up in front of the class and give a presentation or talk about something for 2 min. or so. A couple weeks ago, they had to talk about a Christmas tradition that they have at their home. Grace talked about different things, but we always bake and decorate sugar cookies, so she decided to make some for the class. Fortunately, my cookie cutters got packed and shipped here for the move, so we had Christmas shapes to cut out! The big Christmas tree she decorated specifically for Mrs. Stephens - she loved it! :)
working on her cookies for the class

Teddy Bear Picnic

At storytime at the library, Lance had a Teddy Bear Picnic day! Everyone had to bring their favorite bear, of course Lance picked his blue one! He enjoyed listening to teddy bear stories, coloring, and having a snack out of the picnic basket! It was cute, but we really miss you, "Ms. Mickie"!!! There's no one else like you! Storytime just isn't the same anymore....

coloring

Daddy/Daughter date

We've started a tradition of Josh taking just Grace out on a special daddy/daughter date! We think a dad's part in his daughter's life is very important and special (well, a mom's is, too but they're just different!) :) Grace was beyond THRILLED to do this and she was able to pick where they went to eat and what they did afterwards. She chose Outback Steakhouse (yup, they have one here - which is hilarious!!) for their ribs (definitely a midwest girl at heart) and then bowling!! She asked me to help her choose what to wear and everything. It was really cute! At first, Lance wasn't very happy about this, but he got to hang out with mommy and watch a movie at home - Kung Fu Panda it was! :) Good times were had by all.
Even had to have a purse - hilarious!

Lance getting in on the action.