Eight kids and counting!!

Well Friends, you have all been so patient in waiting for our next post. We have done so much!! Last post, we were in Auckland on our way to the airport to fly across New Zealand down to Dunedin where we have been staying with the lovely McLay family. They have 8 children, four boys and four girls and they are heaps of fun! Starting from the oldest: Susan (19), Reuben (18), Isabel (16), Esther (14), Naomi (13), Josiah (11), Andrew (2) and last but not least Luke (1). We have had a blast sharing our cultures with one another such as learning new songs and realizing we all grew up with the same kid songs in bibles school, learning new words, talking about different sports, and teaching each others' accents. It is quite entertaining. :)

We have been mostly helping with housework (cleaning the windows, weeding the garden, etc) and looking after the two littlest boys, Andrew and Luke. The first full day of our stay we walked around the town of Dunedin with the two boys while Naomi got braces. We went window shopping, checked out some neat buildings, went to the Cadbury chocolate factory (definitely got some souveneirs there!) and had a good look around finishing at the train station! It’s a cute little college town built on the side of a hill.

The McLay’s live in Balclutha, which is about an hour south of Dunedin. The Balclutha area reminds us a lot of Montana with rolling plains and large mountains! This makes us feel right at home here, but also a little homesick. :) Our new found friends live on a beef and sheep farm with 2,500 sheep, which they are in the process of sheering. So we got to help them round the sheep up, and herd them into the barn one group at a time to be weighed. The world record for sheering a sheep is 45 sec, but usually takes an average sheerer 2 minutes, I think. So, do the math and you can imagine how long it would take them to sheer all their sheep, separate the wool and still run a large household! Phew! We stay pretty busy out here! There is not a dull moment! :D

They live about 2km from the coast so we have gone to the beach a couple times even finding crabs under the rocks and sneaking up on a real life, wild penguin!! The water is colder down here in comparison to the north island, but still just as beautiful! The kids were in a school track event, which here they call Athletics. So, we took a day off of work to go into town and cheer them on! Go team! They all placed in at least one event! Yay! We're pretty sure it’s because they had their own cheerleading squad. ;) We have really just been enjoying being a part of this family, watching the little boys, playing red light green light on the hay bails with the older kids, teaching them some good old line dancing, and just being silly! Who said we have to act our age? :)

In a bit we will post about our great road trip adventure that filled our time last week!