Johnboi Nonoa

Last week on my tiki tour of the North Island

I stayed with Kaye Kaye Nonoa

as I do often do.

The Nonoas are my favourite family

who mostly live in Templeview.

Jordan has married lovely Landy.

Audrey has married manly Kelly

and just given birth to Vandross.

I thought Vandross was the pregnancy name.

I thought wrong.

Jesse has married macho Q and they have

the stella Sienna and Piripi.

Deej is humming along caring for children.

Housty married slick Sila

and has the most delightful son, Khaleo.

Then the youngest is Johnboi.

Recently Johnboi sang in public for the second time in his life

at his school assembly.

Awww it's that sweet.

 

UPDATE: Last night, 15 Jan 2014 my husband and I attended Johnboi's setting apart as a missionary for teh Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.  For the next two years he will serve in the Australia Melbourne Mission and be known as Elder Nonoa.  I'm so excited for him!

a normal

Saturday at last.

I mean that as in this is the first Saturday I've had at home for ages.

And normal it was.

It was blissfully hot, I walked into town

town being a few shops and the bank

a walk being less than a kilometre

worked up a glow

spent money and all I came back with was four Christmas cards.

Speaking of Christmas cards

this is the photo Louly and I created for the NZYF Christmas card

I love small towns.

When we didn't have enough boots, I ducked into ATS to borrow a couple of pairs for 10 minutes, then Louly went across to Hammer Hardware to borrow the tinsel. Gotta love shopkeepers who let you borrow their merchandise instead of buy it.

I know we are late with getting our Christmas cards ready but with the last month I've had it's a miracle I remember that it's Christmas at all.

But back to my normal Saturday.

I repotted all my tomatoes and cucumbers, there was even a tiny cucumber starting on one plant. I drove into big town to get lamb pallets just to fatten Clary and Penelope Darling up that little bit more and just as I got back into the car Sarah txted to offer a spot of lamb slaughtering for the afternoon. I declined cause I'd just bought the food - once that's finished though.....

Now I have a pantry full of baking ingredients and I'm going to get off this couch and make cookies - not Christmas ones just my usual Pooh's chocolate chip ones.

Yesterday at work we received a book about Marshmallow Farms, I love it!

Did you know that marshmallows grow on farms? It is marshmallow season at the moment and they will be ripening in the sun, turning from green to white and then the tractors will come and take them away to the marshmallow factory so we can have yummy, powdery marshmallows for Christmas.

Louly's boyfriend, Greasy he is a marshmallow contractor.

Go have a look at the marshmallow farms website and buy the book for your favourite kid!

One odd thing of late is the number of mice we are catching and by that I mean in a trap. Four to date and it's not their usual time for coming inside. Wonder whats up with that??

far from normal and back again

Today during sacrament four really big jolts occurred.

3.9 at 10.23am
3.5 at 10.25am
3.2 at 10.29am
3.1 at 10.30am
3.3 at 11.46am
3.5 at 12.05pm

It's bizarre being in an earthquake with 300 or so people all in the same room. The speaker hardly missed a beat, nobody ran from the building, nobody even murmured although I was holding on the pew in front of me and was not going to look around to see what anyone else was doing. I was talking to Bishop afterwards and he said you should have seen everyone's faces. From his seat at the front of the chapel he can see everything and there weren't too many shiny, happy faces after that swarm.

That 12.05 one was during Relief Society class and was so surprising, I think we all got a huge fright. Some mothers got twitchy to go to their children, other more experienced mothers said no, they will have hardly noticed and they will come here if they are upset - none came. Our chapel was at the epicentre of these babies.

Today's earthquakes were like the earth slipped suddenly, big jolts, the earth giving way somewhere and not that far below the surface. They are centred only about 7 kms below us.

But then after our soup mingle outside in the sunshine (and howling wind) away from the brick chapel, it was time for Mei's baptism. A reminder that life goes on and normal occasions like birthdays and baptisms go ahead earthquake or no.

Mei looked beautiful in her white dress. She bore her testimony of the truthfulness of the Gospel and her belief in Heavenly Father and her older brother Jesus Christ. The simple faith of an eight year old as she moves forward, crossing the thresholds of her life is a wonderful way of being reminded that faith and life go hand in hand and moving forward in the faithful footsteps of those who have endured much before us is the best way to go.

Don't think they had to sit in a member-built brick chapel from the 1950s with existing cracks in the walls though. I'm not scared of the earthquakes, I'm scared of the brick buildings falling down.

richie mccaw

himself is on TV telling us to take care of our mental health from all the earthquake stress.

At church today I was teaching Relief Society about faith. Standing before a group of about 30 sisters and talking about the earthquake in an oasis of clam and positivity was uplifting. We are all so grateful our families are safe and though all of us have suffered some damage, some of the sisters are visiting our ward because their chapel is closed until it can be repaired and some still are living with family because their houses are very damaged, there is a feeling of learning from the experience and counting our blessings for the simplest of things or maybe the commonest of things.

The blessing I count are;

• sunshine and clear skies;
• running water and continuous power;
• a car to get me where I need to go and roads that for the most part are safe - though I didn't like going over the Sabys Road bridge today as it looks like a rickety, third world, one lane, flimsy thing of a bridge but fantastic to take my usual route to church.
• people, my friends - local ones who are sane and safe, those further a field who are supportive and understanding (and send care packages!);
• a warm bed and a roof over my head - as shaky as my house seems at times, it is a good, solid building and I adore my polar fleece sheets - had I had to leave my house, the thing I would have missed the most would be my bed.
• food in the cupboard - even though there are shortages in the supermarkets, everyone has been very reasonable about taking only enough. A Christchurch friend lost her temper on the Friday after the earthquake when she had to go to a work function even though her house was cracked and she had to take her two boys with her. She was the only Christchurch fool to go and all other people at the function where from outside the Earthquake Zone (a grand name for what was Canterbury). Talking with an organiser, my friend asked if she could take an extra couple of bottles of water. The organiser asked why, and my friend looked at her with disbelief and said "because they are rationing water at the supermarket". This organiser woman had no idea, she said "oh, you must have been in the quake, all this talk about aftershocks is overrated, I've been here since yesterday and I've not felt one". My friend sucked in her breath and said "yes I was and we have food shortages in Christchurch". To which this woman laughed. Having recounted this it doesn't seem so bad, just thoughtless but the above combined with having a cracked house, children that need to be in the same room as you at all times, worries about what is going to happen next or if there will be enough food*, it was infuriating and insulting and ignorant. Unfortunately this isn't the only occurrence of this type of thing. Anyway I'm grateful that all this earthquake stuff will end, some time or other;
• laptops to blog from bed;
• entertainment that is not about earthquakes;
• ordinary conversation about something other than earthquakes;
• conversations about the past two weeks;
• lambs that suck well;
• a job that is rewarding, validating and fun;
• people, I love the people I meet and get to know - how blessed am I that I meet so many people who are different to me and interesting and do amazing things;
• warm fires and not having a heat pump - evil, over rated things that they are;
• peppermint chocolate;
• fresh tap water;
• people, that I care about who let me care about them.
• my testimony and the consistency and completeness of the Gospel.

There are so many blessings to count, more than I can ever list. And I am thankful for every blessing, seen and unseen.

Oh yeah, Richie McCaw, he's being a good supportive Cantabrian - actually I'm not sure is a Cantabrian but he is a Lincoln boy.

P.S. That weird Dr Suess National Bank was being filmed one morning on my way to work so watch out for the scene where the guy is on the back of a ute. That's my road to work. V exciting.

* 200 million dollars worth of food was destroyed in the supermarket distributions centres on Sat 4 Sept. That's the South Island's supply of food for some weeks. The West Coast has shortages too.