Mother's Day

I woke up this morning to my wonderful husband making me a delicious breakfast! Not only did I enjoy it, but the boys thought it was pretty tasty as well. Matty was crazy about the turkey bacon. I think he ate 5 pieces on his own! After breakfast we went to church and enjoyed a wonderful service about True love. Then we headed off to the beach for the rest of the day.

We drove to Half Moon Bay and Matthew and Grayson loved the huge rocks on the beach. They were climbing all over them. I wanted to get a picture with the three boys, so asked Matty to pick a spot to take the picture and he walked us all the way up a rock over to this perfect spot where the waves were crashing behind us. It made for a really pretty picture :-).

Mama and Brody

We enjoyed a nice little picnic, built some sand castles, and played in the water until the boys were too cold to move. After that we loaded everyone back up into the car and drove to Memorial park  where we got to see some huge sequoia trees. It was so beautiful! Unfortunatley the boys were getting tired and cranky, so we weren't able to get pictures. Hopefully we will go back this summer so we can walk the trails and see a little more.They had some nice little camp sites out there, so we may try doing a camping trip soon.
It was such a beautiful day! Happy Mother's Day to all of the amazing Mama's out there!

Boys and I running through the water

Writing in the sand..We love Jesus!!

Matty and Grayson stomping down sand castles

Pictures

Dan and I wanted to get pictures of the three boys to frame as a gift for our Moms on Mother's Day. I found some adorable little overalls on clearance at Target in each of the boys' size, so I thought it would be so cute to take them downtown and get a picture of them in front of one of the old trains. Of course there never ended up being a good time to get down there, so today being our last day to get a picture and already having a ton of other things to do, we decided just to take them in our front yard really quick. It was super windy out front and the two older boys didn't want to stand in the grass because it is "too itchy", so we had to bribe them with candy in order to get them to cooperate. Brody loves to be outside so getting him out there wasn't a problem, but getting him to sit still was the difficult part! It took a lot of work, but finally we got Matty and Grayson to hold Brody's hands and keep him standing next to them long enough to get a decent shot. So here they are.....The last one was the best we could get. Brody kept trying to take off and Matty and Grayson were getting frustrated with him. They just wanted to get it over with so they could have their candy ;-).

 

~Danielle

New Zealand Dreaming....

As a few of you may know, we have had a dream to move to New Zealand for the past year.  In January we began wanting to make our dream reality, so we started looking into what it would take for us to move over there. After a few months of looking into it and praying about it together, we decided it was something we both really wanted and started the process of working toward getting our Residence Visas. The first step is applying for the EOI (expression of interest), but before you can even apply you must have passports for each family member. We got everything together for that and after about 2 months had passports for everyone. Once the EOI is filled out it gets put into a "pool" with all the other people applying for Residence.  The way that they select from the pool is based on a point system.  In order to meet the minimum requirements you must have at least 100 points. When we filled ours out we had 110.  The majority of our points came from Dan having an engineering degree which is on the Long Term Skills Shortage List (LTSSL). We submitted our EOI on April 9, 2011 and heard it can take up to 6 months to get selected, and if you are not selected within those six months you can apply again. After only a week and a half we were selected! This was extremely exciting for us, but at the same time really nerve wracking. There are so many reasons we want to move to New Zealand, but our family is here and that is what makes this decision so hard. After our EOI application was selected we had to wait three weeks to find out if it was successful. The New Zealand Immagration department (INZ) has to review the application to make sure everything was filled out correctly and that your points are accurate. We got a letter on Saturday stating that it was approved and now they will be mailing us the ITA (invitation to apply). We have four months to complete the ITA. Once we mail it back it can take several months to hear back from them. If our application is approved we will then undergo an interview, which will be over the phone for us due to distance. If all goes well with the interview and we are granted Residence then we have a year to move over there and activate our visas.
God is teaching us so much through this whole process. We have had a lot of doubts and "what if's" over these past several months, but we have been praying for God to open our eyes and ears to Him so we can hear His call for our family. We continue to learn that He is in control and we just need to be still and know He is God. We don't know what's in store for us, but we look forward to the adventure God has planned!  ~Danielle

First Post

It's April 25th at 9:48pm.... Here is our blog!  I hope you enjoy reading this post.  Also we are listening to Ascend the Hill.. you should listen to them.  That's all for now.  -Dan (the man)