Special Missionaries

We've been very blessed the last two years with awesome missionaries from our church, serving in our area.  Missionaries are volunteers for two years, and we are part of the Australia Melbourne Mission.  Missionaries can be in one area from anywhere between 6 weeks to up to 6 months or more, before they are transferred to a new area in the same mission.

There are some missionaries which you just have a special connection with.   We loved Elder Hosman and Elder Sargeant so much, and the boys were devastated when they were both transferred back to the mainland at the same time.  

We got to catch up with Elder Hosman a couple of times when we went on a holiday to Melbourne, and were so excited when we heard Elder Sargeant was transferred back down to Hobart, as it meant we got to see him while we were there for a few days. 

Elder Hosman finished his mission a few months ago and is now back home in Arkansas and Elder Sargeant finished his mission just a few weeks ago.  It has been fun to become friends with their families on Facebook and Instagram, and we were so excited when we heard that Elder Sargeant's Mum and Step Dad were coming from New Hampshire to Australia to pick him up. 

The day that they picked him up, the three of them flew down to Tassie and we felt very lucky to be able to spend some time having tea together,  before they flew to Sydney for a few days, before going back home to the USA. 

It was so fun to meet his Mum Therese and Step Dad Dan, as we had been talking for so long on Facebook and Instagram. 

We had a lovely tea together and had a nice time catching up.  Therese blogged about it on her blog here.  Thank goodness my boys were behaving that night! ;)

The boys loved seeing Elder Sargeant again, and we couldn't believe that he was just about to go home and would no longer be known as 'Elder Sargeant'.  Its always hard to call missionaries by their first names once they get home.

 

 

Thank you Therese and Dan for sharing your son with our family. We will miss him now he's no longer in Australia, but it's so fun to keep in touch via Facebook and Instagram.  Thank you for taking the time to come to Tassie and to spend some time with us. We loved meeting you in person and hope that one day we can visit you in New Hampshire :)

Still Remembered

I always love hearing from Aaron's past students and am amazed that more than three years later they still talk about him and miss him.  This week one of his past students wrote this on his Facebook wall:

Miss you Kingy!
What I would give to go back to the days you would pull me out of a class I was having trouble in and tell me to put my head down or you would do it for me!
If there was a teacher I could of sat down and had a beer with when I'm 18, it would have been you!
Never forgotten!

I commented that he would've loved to have a Pepsi with him.  It means so much that past students take the time to still say and do lovely things, because it reminds me that we aren't the only one missing him, and it makes me realise that he won't ever be forgotten.

One of Aaron's past students Shaun has been so kind to my boys over the last three years.  He and his Mum often drop off AFL figurines for my boys as they are collecting them.   The other night they dropped by to drop some more off, and Kobe had the best time kicking the footy with Shaun for ages. 

When I put Kobe to bed that night I asked him if he knew how we know Shaun.  He said he didn't so I told him that Daddy used to be his teacher.  He was surprised and I told him that at Daddy's funeral Shaun was very sad and that even though he doesn't go for Hawthorn, he wore a Hawks tie and took it off and put it in Daddy's grave.

Kobe's eyes lit up for a second and said 'and it's still in there!?' as he was excited to know there was a Hawks tie in the ground with him.  His lip then started to quiver and he said 'let's stop talking about this now because it's making me sad', and he started to cry. 

It's so nice that Aaron is still remembered, and that my boys can see what an impact which he made on his students, even years later.

Our Easter

It's turned out to be a very quiet Easter for us this year, with Mum being in Melbourne as my sister Nicki is due to have her baby (after only finding out at Christmas time when she surprised us with being pregnant - it's been the quickest pregnancy in history!) and the rest of my family going away.  I looked at tickets to go to Sydney to spend some time with my brother Chrish as he's also alone at Easter, but the prices were very expensive, so we will go up another time when we can get cheap tickets.

Last week we went up to the cemetery to decorate Aaron and Noah's graves for Easter.  The boys make me smile when the have running races right past Aaron's grave. I'm sure he would be smiling down too and loving that they are having fun, even though they are visiting their Dad and brother who have passed away.

It's so sad to see two new children's graves at Noah's tree now. Before it was just Thomas and Noah there for so long.   The boys put some hanging eggs in the tree.

On Thursday Aaron's Dad and step Mum came to visit and dropped off some Easter treats.  It's always nice to catch up with them.  They will often comment about how each of the boys are like Aaron in different ways.

It could've been easy to just treat this weekend like any other weekend, since we aren't doing anything with our family this Easter, but I decided to make it a bit special and cooked a special brunch for Good Friday.  The boys were very happy as they love any excuse for pancakes.

I had been keeping my eye on the weather forecast as I was hoping we would have some nice weather so we could get out and about.  The weather is really cooling down, but we were blessed with a beautiful sunny day, so I told the boys we were going to the beach.  I have been feeling bad for Milly who is home alone a lot during the week when we are all at school and work, so I decided to do something that she could do with us.   She was just a little bit excited when she realised she was coming in the car with us.

On our trip we spotted this billboard and just had to take a photo.  The last week or two my EAL (English as an Additional Language) students who I teach have been talking to me about Easter.  Most of my students are Muslim and I love it when they teach me about their celebrations, and their families are happy for them to take part in Easter activities, even though they don't celebrate it.

One day one of them said 'Mrs King, at the supermarket eggs, eggs, eggs' showing me that there are a lot on the shelves.  I asked one of my students who hasn't yet been here for a year if he knew what Easter was about and he said no.  My other students who have been here longer said to him 'chocolate eggs!'. I laughed and and said that we do give and get chocolate eggs at Easter, but thought it was important to explain a little about why Easter is a time that we celebrate in Australia. 

I explained to them that a lot of people in Australia are Christians, and that means we believe in someone called Jesus Christ. I explained how he died and that three days later he came alive again and one of them made me laugh when she said 'wow! It's magical!'.  I guess that's the best way to describe it to them who know nothing about what we believe, and also have very limited English. 

I decided to go to Greens Beach as we have never actually been there before, and have heard that it's lovely and it didn't disappoint.  The weather was beautiful and we enjoyed playing soccer, throwing the Frisbee, playing with Milly and just enjoying the sun. 

Kobe was the only one brave enough to go in.  I was surprised that the water actually wasn't that cold.

I love his 'rashie' because it has King on it and also the year I was born :)

I'm sure that dog Heaven is just a beach.  Milly loves it so much. 

We weren't lucky enough to see any of these on the way home.

We finished off Good Friday by watching a movie together.  We had a lovely day, even though it was just us this year. 

We have some boys who are excited about Easter Bunny coming tonight, and hope that my sister's baby also makes an appearance very soon!

Footy is (almost) Back!

It seems like it wasn't that long ago when we were complaining that the footy season is over.   Even though the season hasn't officially started yet, we were excited to hear that Hawthorn was playing in one of its NAB cup matches in Tassie and was excited for preseason to start.

When we heard they would be playing Collingwood, we knew it would be a massive game for Tassie so we made sure we got our tickets early. We thought it this sign that was put up at the Launceston airport was very funny and clever.

Jalen is not a lover of footy, so he stayed home while Harri, Kobe and I went along to the Hawthorn training the day before the game.

I guess because it was a NAB cup match and most of the main Hawks players didn't come down, people weren't as interested in going to the training, but it was great for us as there wasn't a huge crowd fighting to get players autographs.    I just think how lucky we are that the team we barrack for are in Tassie so often and just down the road from home, and it may not always be that way, so I don't want to miss an opportunity to take the boys to see them while we can.

I was devastated that Hodgey didn't come down, but Kobe was very excited that his favourite player Jack Gunston was playing.  He was lovely to the boys and had a little chat to them and was more than happy to sign Kobe's footy card. He asked Harri if the Hawks were going to win and Harri said 'maybe' which made him laugh.

As we were leaving a lot of the players were walking to their hotel.  Taylor Duryea and Ben McEvoy were lovely and stopped for a photo with the boys.
Dad hadn't been to a game for years, but when he got lots of energy in the few months before he passed away, he said he wanted to come to the game with us.   We kept thinking about that when we were there as he would've loved the atmosphere with the big crowd.  Mum came along to the game with us and it was a beautiful night.
We took this photo and posted it on Instagram and then saw on the screen that they were asking people in the crowd to hashtag their photos, so they could be displayed on the screen. I edited my photo and added the hashtag but didn't really think much more of it.

During the break after the first quarter we were shocked when we saw our photo appear on the screen!  It was funny to get text messages from friends and family in the crowd who also saw it.

 

It was a strange feeling having most of the crowd go for the other team, as we are used to most of the crowd in Launceston going for Hawthorn. Hawthorn was thrashed by the Pies but we had heaps of fun and loved the big crowd.

 

 The boys were excited that they could have a kick on the ground after the game had finished.

It was nice to run into these guys on the ground afterwards.  We are sad that they have moved away, so it was nice to catch up with them again. 

 

I still don't know who I am - taking the boys to the footy and actually loving it!  I'm sure Aaron's love of footy has been transferred to me somehow.  We are looking forward to the season officially starting!

p.s: every time I want to do a blog post and see how awful my phone pics look compared to my good camera, I wish I took my good camera everywhere but it's such a pain to take around and it's just so easy to pull out my phone whenever I want to capture something. I guess now I'm blogging about photos I've taken and things we have done, rather than taking photos to blog about, and I like it being that way.  I'm looking forward to the day when an iPhone takes photos as clear as my Nikon ;) 

A Busy Year

I knew that when Jalen was elected onto the Student Leadership Board at school that he would be busy, but I don't think I realised how busy he would be.   Being busy was the thing that almost stopped him applying for it, but we talked about how being busy isn't necessarily a bad thing and that there would be so many good things that could come from being on the SLB, so he decided to apply.

It seems like there is always something going on and it's nice to hear how happy Jay is to be a part of it.  He loved taking part in the staff V students basketball and cricket matches. 

Last weekend they all participated in the Relay for Life to raise money and awareness for people fighting cancer.
 

 We just stayed for a little while, and Kobe kept saying he can't wait until he can do it. 

 This week they had a SLB camp for two nights and three days. 

 It was fun to see photos of what they were up to on the school's Facebook page. 

It's nice to see him getting so involved with things at school this year.  I know it's going to continue to be a very busy, but great school year for him.