HOOOOOOOOME!

I find myself drawn to children's books when I'm in a different country.

What people choose to teach their children and HOW they choose to teach their children is very interesting and it helps me learn a lot about a culture.

Here are the books I bought (all at second-hand shops) while in New Zealand.

"The Bad Day ABC" by Hilda Offen

Christie rating: *****/5

"The Beast In the Bathtub" by Kathleen Stevens

Christie rating: *****/5

"TV Kiwi and The Cat" by Lyn Williamson

Christie rating: ***/5

but one of the only books we could find that had a kiwi bird in it!

"Pat The Beastie" by Henrik Drescher

Christie rating: *****/5

Well, it got above 100 - and we lasted through it!

I pulled out the dresses and cooled off a bit -

and had a browse through a couple of Ross stores and TJ Maxx looking for some items I wanted for our Switzerland trip (I learned some things from our New Zealand trip!)

Allistair (and everyone else) followed us from room to room.

Claude is more of a Daddy's girl, and

Allistair is very much a Mama's boy.

 He just wants to be as CLOSE as possible.

Touching me is best, but if I'm moving around too much, NEAR ME is acceptable most of the time.

Allistair helped me pack up a bunch of binders (nine!) to ship out to various churches around the country - hooray!

Juvy, enjoying people time by sleeping:

Greg got some love!

Allistair, Greg, Juvy, Claude

Claude, sleeping all flipped over

Stephen with sticking-out tongue!!!

Look how cute and shiny he is!

Claude, claiming my new sweater:

Silly babies!

When we got to church on Sunday, I was thrilled to see these huge air conditioners!

We learned last summer (when the volunteers in my classroom were sweating through our clothes every Sunday) that the a/c system in our wing of the building was the wrong rating to cool the entire large space, so it wasn't possible to keep my room cool.

But we're doing a revamp of our current campus, and a/c is one of the things to be upgraded!

Hopefully this summer we won't be drenched in sweat when we leave (high temps make it more difficult for kids with special needs to manage their behavior and stay calm, too, so it's bad for lots of reasons!)

This past Sunday, I was calm, cool, and collected when I left.  Yay!

We also had no ceiling, and some of our students (and their families) were a bit freaked out by the tubes and wires hanging down.  But nothing fell! 

We had some gorgeous beautiful weather before we left again.

We were VERY happy to be home, and slightly overwhelmed by the idea of taking off on another international adventure in a week an a half!

The 19 hour time difference between Arizona and New Zealand was a bit of an adjustment.

It took about a week to emerge from a zombie-like, over-emotional state of fog and poor memory.

But somehow we returned to ourselves and were successful at preparing for our next trip: Switzerland!

We are back from both trips now, and I'll be posting all the photos/videos from our Switzerland trip on upcoming days, so keep checking back to experience that beautiful country along with us.