Circus Oz

Last Saturday, we went to see a show called Circus Oz. It's just like a traveling circus in a big tent, but their were no animals. It was a fairly small tent and is only in town for a few weeks. The show was really good and there were some amazing stunts! We weren't allowed to take any pictures during the show for the safety of the performers, but I did get some before it started.

These were inside the tent before we went into the main area of the show. They had a souvenier stand, clowns, face painting, and food vendors. It was actually a pretty amazing set-up for being so temporary.

These were a couple of pictures taken inside the main area of the tent. It was a little dark, so it's a little difficult to see, but you can get the idea :)

Of course, we had to get a self-portrait....they're my favorite! :)

For the past couple of months, we've been going to a church called PlanetShakers. The services are always good, but the church is a bit more charasmatic than we're used to and it's huge (thousands of people). We are still trying to figure out where God wants us to be. So, on Sunday we decided to try out a new church called Collins Street Baptist Church. It was a lot more conservative and quite a bit smaller (only about 50 people) than PlanetShakers, but the service was really nice. They have a fellowship time after every service where they serve coffee and tea and cookies. It was nice to get to know some of the people. One of the pastors used to work at PwC, so him and Anthony had a good conversation.

I got a couple of pictures off their website. It's a beautiful building and they're just getting ready to celebrate their 165th Anniversary!

This church is also very involved in the community. They do a dinner every Sunday night for the homeless in the City. They also use their top floors to house refugees who need help becoming Australian citizens, along with many more things. We have a couple of more churches we'd like to try, but we really liked it here. Please pray for us as we try to figure out where God wants us to be.

Things we miss from home

We have found that there are several foods that we miss from home. Some things we've tried here are just not the same. For example,ketchup (or tomato sauce as they call it here) and mayo are both really sweet and just don't taste quite as good to us. We've also found that there aren't as many choices in the grocery stores for different brands and stuff. We never thought we'd actually miss shopping at Winco :) We do miss their amazing prices for sure!! Everything is quite a bit more expensive than what we're used to.

So, we decided to make a list of all the things we miss. Here's what we came up with so far:

* Garlic Baby Dill Pickles (all the pickles we've tried here have not been good!)
* Crystal Light
* Tillamook Cheese - if you know Anthony, you know this is a BIG one for him :)
* Miracle Whip Light - they have regular, but it's just not the same! (my family will understand)
* Sugar-free Jello
* Cereal - Captain Crunch, Kix, Cheerios (they don't have much variety here & we love cereal!)
* Hot Tea - they mostly have herbal here - I really miss Constant Comment and Lemon Lift

We also miss McGrath's Fish House (from home) and Mikuni's Sushi (from Sacramento). Everywhere we've been so far has been really good though. We just haven't found a really great seafood place yet, but we're still looking! We're a little nervous to try the sushi places we've seen here - you want to know that the sushi is extremely fresh, so we'll see! :)

On the subject of missing home, this blog wouldn't be complete without talking about how much we miss our family and friends!! We miss you all so much! Thanks for all the emails, phone calls, and cards that we've been getting. It makes us feel closer to home! We are planning to come home for Christmas and we can't wait to see everyone! We are having a great time "exploring" around and seeing new things though. It's been such a great experience so far! Since we're in another country, we don't get to celebrate the 4th of July this year, but we'll be thinking of you all this weekend. Have a wonderful 4th everyone!! (And, happy 1st to all our Canadian friends!!)