in pieces

Leigh's birthday was last month, so I'm a little late getting this out,(yup that's a soccer "MUD" cake) and I also wanted to make a post about the friends that Leigh and I have made here this past year. Most of them came to Leigh's birthday - So here's killing two birds with one stone. We pooled our money together and got Leigh his own beer brewing kit. Not the yucky "box kind" you can get at the grocery store that gives most people headaches when they drink it, but the real honest to goodness beer - an "art form" for sure. Similar to wine making...so tedious! There's already a batch going. Sarah and Justin got Leigh the rest of the Grolsh bottles he needed so he was happy about that! Most of you in Canada know our friends Simon (L) and Ben (R) from YWAM. Ben will be married by the end of the year to a Canadian girl from Edmonton, and Simon is.... well just Simon - and that's why he's awesome! We had a lot of fun at the ...

Hallowe'en isn't celebrated here in Australia, and for that I'm actually thankful. I miss seeing the kids dress up (they look so cute!), carving pumpkins is great fun...and who doesn't love trick-or-treating? But I find I actually struggle with the history of the celebration. From what I can understand, it started around the same time Jesus came 2000 years ago... T he Celts celebrated the New Year on November 1st, marking the end of summer and the harvest and the beginning of the dark, cold winter, a time of year that was often associated with human death. (this info received from this link) Celts believed that on the night before the new year, the boundary between the worlds of the living and the dead became blurred . On the night of October 31, they celebrated Samhain, when it was believed that the ghosts of the dead returned to earth . In addition to causing trouble and damaging crops, Celts thought that the presence of the otherworldly spirits made it easier fo...