Thanks for Praying // Fullness of Joy

Some of you may have been aware of the fact that my father recently (Thursday afternoon) had what we thought was a stroke and was rushed to hospital in an ambulance. The doctors say now that they don't think it was a stroke after all but they still want him to have an MRI scan. So that will be happening sometime in the next few days. He is home now, having come home from the hospital on Saturday just after lunch. He feels perfectly fine and looks perfectly fine now, so we are praising the Lord for that!

I know that a lot of you were praying for him over the last few days. A massive hug and thank you to you! We really appreciate your prayers. :)

Grandma and Grandad are here at the moment. They came down to help with Jana but they have been such a help with Daddy in hospital as well! Grandad and Mum are the drivers now because Dad's not allowed to drive until at least after his MRI.

*completely changes topic*

I was wondering what people's favourite Bible verses are. I thought I would share mine (and the reason it's my favourite) and then we can have a bit of a conversation in the comments about our favourite Bible verses. I know there are so many lovely ones to choose from, but do you have one that you kind of keep referring back to and love to read just because?

Here's mine (just to start us off). It's Psalm 16:11.

"You will show me the path that leads to life, in your presence is fullness of joy."

I've always thought that it's difficult to be completely filled with joy until we get to Heaven. I know that in Heaven is complete and whole joy (there will be no tears or sadness there etc) but can we ever have complete joy on earth? We can be happy and can rejoice in the Lord and be joyful, but I don't think we can actually be completely happy and completely joy-filled until we come into the Lord's presence. Do you see the difference between joy-filled and joyful?

So yeah, basically I love it so much because my middle name is Joy. It seems to me that the verse is saying (to me personally, anyway) that in His presence is Fullness of Joy. Where I am made complete. Because my name is Joy, do you see? So on earth I can never be complete because we can't have fullness of joy, but in Heaven we can. :) I'm not sure if that makes sense or not to you, but it makes sense to me when I am writing this!!

So, what is your favourite verse/passage of Scripture?

Giveaway

Sayna from Shining Arrows is hosting an awesome-as giveaway right now!!

Head over to her blog to check it out. :)

Farewell!
Bonnie

More Photos

When you saw the title, did you think I had heaps more gorgeous photos of Jana? Well, I am so terribly sorry to disappoint you so much, but I don't. *sad face* 

What I do have is more photos from the bicycle trip. Photo credit for most of them (I think) goes to Laura and Caleb's dad. Thank you!

Eating tea in the coolest part of the campsite. Left to right: Danella, Laura, Caleb, me.

Danella and Laura cooking the tea while I do something random in the doorway of the tent and Caleb supervises.

Filling up our waterbottles at the fountain in Leeston.

"Is this a good place to set up camp?"

Danella and I making tea.

(Sorry, these photos are in completely the wrong order, lol!) This is us eating icecreams in Leeston before lunch. :) Dessert before dinner, you know.

The cooks

This picture requires some explanation. You see, when we had eaten tea and set up the campsite, Mum and Dad brought the family to see us and our campsite. This is Ben in the canoe on Lake Ellesmere. (Mum and Dad brought the canoe with them, we didn't bring it on our bikes!)

The campsite with lots of bikes strewn around. Wow, we are so messy.

Campsite status: Partially complete

As I said, the photos are in completely wrong order!

I hope you have a wonderful Waitangi day!

Life with a newborn

For those who don't know it yet, our wee baby sister's name is Jana Gabriella Pearl. (Jana rhymes with Anna.)

She's two days old now!

Here are some more miscellaneous pictures Jana-related. :) I'm sorry, I can't help myself taking photos and putting them here for all the world to see! She's so cute!

Mummy and Jana

:)

Her crib in the baby's room

A random mobile above the bed

She's asleep... aww...

I feel so mean posting all these adorable photos..  I know you must be so jealous that you don't have such a cute two-day old sister! But I can take and post even more now because she came home with Mum from the hospital this morning!

She's A Day Old

Here are some super cute photos of a super cute little sister, now a whole day old. :)

My sweet little sister asleep in my arms :)

She cuddled right in close to me... awww.... cuteness overload!

I love you, Jana!

New Baby Sister

At 5am on the 3rd of February 2014 (incidentally, that's Mum and Dad's wedding anniversary!), my baby sister was born.

She weighed 7 lb 12 oz, and is really cute!!!!



It's so exciting!!!!!!!!!!!!

A lot of people asked what her name is. We have now decided on one officially - She is Jana Gabriella Pearl Smithies, in pronouncing it remember that Jana rhymes with Anna.

Isn't she cute!!!!!

Biking Trip Photos

Well, we're back from our biking trip and apart from a few stiff muscles, found it great. :) The weather was wonderful (so wonderful I'm now really sunburnt in spite of all the sunblock I used!) and we had lots of fun.

Here are some photos. They are all in a random order, sorry for that.

Parking the bikes while we ate lunch

Us biking down the road. I'm in front, then Caleb, then Danella, then Laura.

Setting up the campsite

More setting up the campsite

We set up the campsite!

The guy's tent

The girl's tent

A random hole in the hedge looking out to Lake Ellesmere

The lake

"No, this is how it should be done!"

Moral of the story - You should go on a biking trip sometime.

My 26 Thankfulnesses (5)

This is the last post in the series of My 26 Thankfulnesses. I thought I had enough alphabet letters to do 5 thankfulnesses per post, with one post of 6. For some reason, I have ended up today with only four letters of the alphabet left. I have no idea how that happened (maybe I can't count), but you will just have to content yourself with four thankfulnesses today.

W
Wet, windy and wild weather. On days like that you curl up beside the fire and read a book and eat lots of chocolate.
Wonderful friends who ring you and chat for over an hour just because they want to. :)
Wigs. We own about four I think. I find it fun to dress up every so often and wear a wig. I've worn the blonde one (pictured below) to quite a few different events now for some reason or other. It's always fun to have strangers look at you and wonder if your hair really does look like that or if you are wearing a wig!

EXtra-awesome blog readers!

Y
The colour Yellow. It's such a pretty, bright, colourful, sunshiny, cheerful colour.
Yesterday. I don't know why, but that word fascinates me.
Young children, especially younger siblings. Their antics never cease to be a source of amusement and joy.

YES! Being able to say yes to people. It's nice to be positive and nice to be optimistic.
Years. 2014 is such a nice year. Did you know that every letter in 2014 is even except for the 1?




Z
Zucchini. Although it's not my favourite food, I do like it in quiches and fritters.

Zzzzz's. It's good to be able to have a nice rest at the end of the day. Zzzzz.


Did you miss numbers one, two, three or four?

My Turn / Your Turn

This weekend Danella and I are going to be cycling over 100km in two days. Sound like a lot? It is. Sound like not much? It is a lot. Danella wrote about it here in her post With the Wind. (It was originally going to be last weekend, but then we moved it forward 7 days because I had another committment that weekend.)

Today we are packing our panniers (the bags that go on the bike to hold all our stuff). It is an interesting job, especially since we've never done it before. This will be the first time we have ever gone on a bike trip before.

Excerpt from my diary entry yesterday:

"I am looking forward to the bike trip with a little trepidation. If the weather is amazing and we get awesome tailwinds the whole time, I'll love it. If the weather is not so amazing and we get stuck with strong headwinds, I just hope I'll still love it!"

It will be an interesting new challenge. :) It's often fun to do something you've never done before.

I challenge you, while we are away, to do something you've never done before. It is up to you what that is. It could be learning something new on the computer, it could be writing and presenting your testimony to a friend, maybe it's just that you want to try a flavour of chocolate you've never tried. Whatever it is, jump out of your comfort zone. Do something different. Something you wouldn't have done unless I challenged you to.

I wouldn't be doing this bike trip of my own choosing - I'm doing it for an award (Duke of Edinburgh's Hillary Award) and I have to do this trip for it. Since I'm doing something I wouldn't normally do, why don't you pick something and do it?

I'd love to know what it is you're doing. Make sure you comment and let me know how it goes. :)

Meanwhile, keep safe, happy and enjoy the weekend!

~Bonnie

An Earnest Request

Just a quick petition - I know all you lovely readers are very kind, so I was wondering if you would mind helping my sister Abbie out. She has entered a horsey photo into a competition to win an awesome prize, but the competition is such that only the photo with the most votes will win. Sooo... can you please vote for her???

Go here to vote. (https://social.clarkemckenzie.co.nz/items/i-luv-you)

We're not sure if you are able to vote if you don't have a facebook account. If you can't, don't worry, we would love it if you asked your friends who have facebook accounts to vote instead. Or as well. :)

A big thank you from Abbie!