Last day of work...again!

Yup, just closed shop at the Otautau Medical Centre...forever. Well they'll still be there, I just won't be back. Well, that's what I keep saying anyway. A patient just told me today they're glad I keep having one more "last day". I do think I'll be back once in a while just to help out and for that country doctor experience. And the drive out there isn't bad either. Check out our springtime lambs on flickr...too cute. OK so maybe I'm sad to leave Otautau where I've spent practically the first two years of my first real practice, first years of marriage and first two years in New Zealand. Who wouldn't be sentimental!? But from now it's on to bigger and better things now that the Balance lifestyle centre is really up and running and work at Vercoe and Brown Medical Centre (another private practice) starts up in March.

But first, we're off to California, yippee! Hope to see as many of you there as possible. There's no fixed plan, but I'm feeling spontaneous so start thinking up ideas. Would love to get out surfing, climbing, coffee shopping, climbing, etc!

We had a good Kiwi Christmas and got invited to friends from church for Christmas lunch so didn't even have to cook! We went surfing too and the dolphins joined us! It was amazing....too bad the pictures didn't turn out of the dolphins but here's some of our friends, Wayne and Kim in their kayaks.

Then we found a hidden beach over the hill from Riverton. Somehow we never knew it existed until now. Here's what it looks like.

And here's a great little beachfront cottage for sale. Are you sure you all don't want to move to New Zealand?

The day before Christmas...

It is close to 70 degrees out and that makes it a hot summer day in New Zealand. It's still doesn't feel natural to have Christmas in the middle of summer with not a flake of snow in sight so we've decided to bypass Christmas altogether this year. We're quite pleased not to be contributing to the excessive commercialism this time of year but wonder if we should spend just a little to help the economy.

Well the Safari book is done and if you haven't seen the pictures yet, you can email me or facebook and i'll send you the flickr link. The photos are amazing!

We're both on call this Christmas Eve so will probably have a quite night at home of Scrabble (and looking at our pictures of course!)

We miss all you lovely people on the other side of the world and hope your Christmas is a peaceful and happy time. We wish more than anything you all would have a greater understanding and love for God in the New Year and that you would have a joy that is limitless!

Heaps and Heaps of Love from us,

Amy & Kimball & Kiwi (da bird)

South Africa Safari and Faith's Wedding

Hi all! We're back from Africa and had the most fantastic time ever with Melissa & Mark and the rest of the gang at Faith Lukens' wedding to Charl in the Kruger National Park. Pictures coming soon. We have thousands to sort through and plenty to delete...

In case you haven't noticed, we're now on facebook! Check there for pictures etc. We'll get back to posting here when we recover from jetlag (is it age or does it take longer than I remember to get back on a normal sleep pattern?).

Thanks to Faith and Charl for the great idea of a destination wedding. We hope the rest of you single people get the hint and plan your weddings in fabulous destinations around the world. We like this!

I'm on a roll!

Here's the latest family photo taken last July(from Jon's summer camp pier).

Kiwi, the bird

Our lovely "Kiwi" is growing up to be a circus clown. She can still only say "Hello" "How are you?" and "I don't know" but we're working on her repertoire.



She loves bath time and the smaller the bowl the better she seems to like it. It's so funny to see her try to squeeze into her drinking water for a bath but we had pity and got her this bowl (though she would still rather bathe in her drinking water!)

Glenorchy

Just another fun memory of the Glenorchy trip we took not too long ago.




What Kimball does in his free time!

Moke Lake, NZ

Even though it's been ages since Jeff and Fab came to NZ, I don't think I've posted these pictures of a cool bike ride to Moke Lake (just past Queenstown on the way to Glenorchy).



What a perfect day for it!