Hail and SNOW!

Freaky :)

It was so funny, we were packing up from church on Sunday night, when these decent sized hailstones totally BUCKETED down for like 5 minutes straight :) I had just made it undercover when it started, too.

Then on Monday afternoon, just after I reached the bus stop to go home from work, these tiny little mini hailstones poured down :) Two days, two times hail...

THEN TODAY there was SNOW on the ground in the morning, and it SNOWED on me this afternoon!!! Admittedly it didn't stay there, BUT IT STILL COUNTS!!!

Yeah. Pretty sad highlights, but highlights nonetheless. My SAGALA kids were nuts again tonight. One of them has the habit of sulking when he doesn't get his way, his little brother likes lying on the ground pretending he's hurt or crawling under tables, and the oldest one likes mucking around and being stupid and bugging people and not listening. Not cool. And apparently I'm the only one the crawl-under-desk kid actually talks to... did not know that.

So we need to work out points for discipline. Ideas are always welcome :)

Ikea - the international experience

Last... Saturday maybe? Me and Jaimie and Louise, Janne, Jill, Heidi and Sarah (most of the current Ignite team) went on a road trip to Ikea! Me because I needed house stuff and the Igniters cos they were bored :)

Seeing as it was dinnertime we crashed the restaurant first to eat. Such a good choice.

We all have Ikea in our respective home countries. And we'd all been there before. And as we walked through the line at the restaurant, grabbing our plates of Swedish meatballs and making our way to sit at a table, Jaimie (from the UK) summed up what we were all thinking.

"It's funny - how we all come from all over the world, and yet we come to Ikea and feel like we're coming home."

And it's true. If I shut my eyes, maybe for a while I was back down in Slack's Creek; a stone's throw from the Salvos Lifeworks Centre, eating Swedish meatballs and wishing I had an empty house and a lot of money to decorate. I think the last time was that time with some of my friends (in Oz) - Kate and Laney - where we found this cool table where the chairs fit into the corners, not along the sides...

And the only thing that brought me back to reality was the distinct absence of Solo from my soft drink options - not cool. But it was sweet to walk around somewhere familiar buying cool quilt covers and pillows, and enjoying the sense of commonality with a Norwegian, a Dane, a Brit, 2 Germans and a Canadian - however briefly it may have lasted.