On the Road...

We've finally left Christchurch and are on our way to the garlic farm. We certainly loved our stay in the city with outr flatmates, and would never give up the opportunity we had to see this:

It was the annual 'World Buskers Festival' in town before we left and we caught these characters doing a little performance. As you can see, they are from mother Russia and had the incredible accents to prove it. They said thing like, "Hello! We are from the Russia to come and make stunt for you to have see. Hello." or "For why do you not all clap when we make scary giant two heads together man?"

They were interesting and probably made a great deal of money balancing on eachothers head in spandex.

Despite the overwhelming reasons to stay, 1. Half naked acrobats, 2. "Welcome to Daytimer, you're speaking with an extremely bored person." or 3. The leaky water heater that had to be attended to hourly like a child, only metal.....We decided to head out to seek our fortunes amongst the vast plains and mountainous regions of New Zealand.

Our first stop was a little place called Repco, cause we needed new windshield wipers. But then we were off, like a herd of turtles. We saw Emily Falls:

And Lake Tekapo:

The stars at Lake Tekapo were something from an episode of 'Star Trek: Deep Space Voyage.' Utterly amazing. We were star-struck.

We are still on our way to see "Garlic-Man' and are spending the night in Wanaka. Just a little lake town near Mt. Aspiring National Park. We have taken some more pictures but don't have time to post them all, so go to the Flickr site and czech them out.

Next time I'll have some farming pictures. Emily WILL be dirty.

PS: Emily is very offended that people have the audacity to suggest that she is afraid of dirt. She LOVES dirt. She LIVES for dirt. Dirty is her middle name.....FYI.

4 Months.....

Today is 4 months since we got married. It seems like a lot longer than that, perhaps because we picked up ourselves and took off for NZ. Sometimes, it doesn't seem like it's really happened, but she's always there when I wake up.....

I have certainly learned that marriage is not easy, not that I expected it to be. It is an everyday decision to be selfless and generous and nice. It is far too easy sometimes to make the world revolve around me. Maybe it's the same way between me and God too, always being about me, what I want, unless I make a conscious decision to make it about Him. Truthfully, those decisions don't get made very often.

I love Emily. Sure, we argue, and I find I that I can be too critical sometimes, and it is a shame because she then changes from a bright and beautiful soul, to a reserved and guarded person, at my hand. She forgives me every time, over and over. She definitely is a hand of Jesus in my life. My prayer is that I can reciprocate that in hers.

We are so happy together, which is good because we spend about 23 hours of every day together, and during that other hour, we are in different rooms of the same building. Don't worry, we are a great distance from murdering each other.

She always wants me to think she is funny (even if she's not), and I always want her to think I know what I am doing (even if I don't). We laugh a lot, usually at each other. We have also decided the names of our children: Burger Time, Tater, Jackson and Catherine, so if you knit, you can start making personalized beanies. But only start knitting now if you are really slow, because it will be a while before these ideas have flesh, believe me.

We end our tenure as "Customer Service Representatives" on Friday, and take off toward the antarctic, but will probably only make it to the bottom of New Zealand. If we only had one of these. We will be FARMING! I even bought a plaid wool sweater to wear whilst tending to the gardens ahead of me. I will be sure to get pictures of the meeting between Emily and dirt.

We will do our best to keep you updated. We foresee some amazing stories and look forward to sharing them with you.

So many Hoidays, so little time...

There is certainly a lot to talk about since our last post, but first things first:

Ladies and Gentleman, please show your excitement for the 2006 Waszup League Fantasy Football Champion


Thank you Everyone, your applause warms Josh's heart. There are so many people that Josh needs to thank. First and foremost, Josh wants to thank his Mom for the birth and rearing with such awesome skills. And Josh wants to thank God for giving the ability to navigate a championship team through the perils of a 16 week fantasy season. It certainly wasn't easy, but Josh owes his success to his players. Coach couldn't have done it without you guys!
Peace and Love!

Ok, now that the important things are out of the way.

We bought a car! Check it out:
It's a Subaru and we like it. Leather Interior,
tape adapter for the iPod, steering wheel and misc. mirrors INCLUDED in the set. (I think it was the 24 piece set). Actually, we bought the iPod tape adapter the next day, but it doesn't seem like much of a deal with that excluded. Emily doesn't like it when I drive, but she doesn't like walking everywhere either. The whole 'being a passenger on the other side of the car' thing doesn't suit her, or my nerves, very well. Check out the flickr site to see a pic of her pretending to drive.



And then there was Christmas Day. Not quite what we were used to, seeing as we were camping amongst the premier trailer park in New Zealand. It was pretty perfect. And czech out our Christmas Tree:


Was it illegal to cut the branches off of that tree and decorate them? Probably, but who are you, the fun police? Our Christmas trip was highlighted by a night under a rain-fly rudely interrupted by the unmistakable sound of a hedgehog digging in the 'Cookie-Time' bucket. While unbelievably funny at the time, the 'hedgehog in the cookies' bit had easily worn off by the time 6:30 AM rolled around and the little ones (see above picture) thought it was an appropriate time to awaken everyone from slumber (which we only experienced for about 4 hours) to enjoy Christmas morning. They definitely enjoyed their christmas, even though it started early. We didn't do any more camping, seeing as it doesn't get dark until 9:30 PM and we were ready to go to bed around 4.

All in all it was a fun Christmas. It made us really enjoy having each other and appreciate our families and friends at home.

And what about New Years? you ask. Well....
This creepy movie combined with a margarita or five vaulted us into the new year before you (na na, na na, boo boo) in stellar fashion. And I only fell asleep once before midnight! It was quite an unassuming evening, which was just fine with us.

Work is winding down and we are arranging our plans for the next couple of months. We plan to travel around the country, working on farms and in hostels for a week here and a week there. It will be an exciting time of transient, nomadic, hippiness. I'll stop shaving and Em will ridicule my beard. Should be fun.

Until next time.....