January 3, 2015

We spent Christmas Eve with the other senior missionaries having dinner together and playing games etc. Christmas day was quiet, we got to FaceTime all our grandkids in Idaho, so that was fun. Our kids were good to post pictures and videos for us, so between that and FaceTime, we almost felt like we were there! Here's a small glimpse of the family fun:

Snow football, Lydia held her own with all those boys!

Annual trip to the Pancake House. Most everyone was happy to be there:)

Can you tell this little girl is from Texas where snow does not conflict with swimming attire...

Since it's summer down here, and this will probably be the only time we will ever celebrate Christmas in the summer, we decided to go to the beach... just because we could. Pretty much everyone else in Sydney had the same idea!

I put this picture in because I love these trees! They are some kind of pine tree, really cool to look at!

Right after the Christmas holidays we spent four days at a big YSA convention. We shared a room with the Family History missionaries. Why the leaders of the convention decided to invite SElf-Reliance and Family History to be part of a youth convention is a mystery to me. We marketed ourselves very well though, thanks to the Family History missionaries who, in their former life, were used to marketing their products, so they were good to teach us about how to do it! Serving a mission has exposed me to lots of new ideas and skills; I've learned a lot about things that I didn't know about or do in my previous experiences. The teaching skills set I learned from being a teacher have served me well working in Self Reliance and I've always been thankful for what I already knew coming into this job. It has been invaluable and allowed me to hit the road running instead of spending weeks learning the skill set required for this job. Here's a couple of pictures from our time at the convention:

I added this picture so you can see the poster we made (with help from the Family History missionaries-- they have great graphic art skills and some pretty cool programs related to that).  Notice my husband is the star of the photo!  Our theme was "If you give a man a fish you feed him for a day, teach him to fish and you feed him for a lifetime" hence the fish swimming about. Thank heavens for Amazon!

The Family History presentation. 

These people were taking our interest survey that helps people decide what to major in as far as career choices go.

We were at the YSA convention through New Year's Eve. We wrapped up our presentations and packed up our room and were out of there by early afternoon!! We joined several other senior missionaries and went downtown for dinner and then went to the roof of the building (29th floor) that the downtown senior missionaries live in. We watched the fireworks from their roof which was perfect because we didn't have to battle the crazy crowds down on the wharf. The older I get, the less I like battling my way through giant crowds. Plus, it's really hot down here! Standing in the sun and humidity with thousands of people is just not my idea of fun:-). Our rooftop view was a little ways away from a front-side seat, but it was worth it to see the fireworks with about 50 people who lived in the building, verses thousands of strangers down on the wharf!

We got our prime seats before dark. The tree area below is Hyde Park and the building is the ANZAC memorial. Directly in front of the park on the waterfront, way in the distance, is the Opera House, it's the little white double-domed building. 

The police were out in force!  The terrorist-hostage situation of a couple of weeks ago had everyone nervous about security.

I obviously didn't take this picture; my little pocket camera just isn't this good!

Love and blessings to all of you and yours. May 2015 be the best year ever!