Spring is definitely here! Oh oh oh - - - HOW I LOVE SPRING! The trip to Hamilton today was just fantastic! I LOVED driving through the most beautiful scenery, with lush, green rolling hills dotted with sheep and little lambs. Seeing different colours starting to bud through trees - some green, and then all kinds of other colours, was so amazing!!! The green is sooo fresh and lush and the variety of LIFE that comes to seemingly dead trees mind-boggling! And then the daffodils everywhere - WOW!!! I don't remember enjoying God's creation so much when I was younger. As a matter of fact, I remember one elderly lady telling me once - after we'd been in Tahiti a couple of years (she was receiving our newsletters) that I needed to learn to "stop and smell the roses" (which obviously I wasn't doing). Maybe it's that I am getting older - or maybe just that my heart is getting more tender - I wish to think it's the latter :) - but all this BEAUTY deeply touches my heart to the point of crying (for joy). It is like God speaks directly to me through nature. Spring to me speaks of HOPE and LIFE! No matter how dead. barren and impossible a situation seems, there CAN BE HOPE, NEW LIFE and indescribable BEAUTY!!!!!!!!!!! AWESOME GOD!!!!!!!!!!!!!! By the way, we didn't get lost today - thanks to Nathalie :) - and the school looks great! I really liked what I saw of Hamilton and wish we'd had more time. The shopping there is definitely WAY better than here in Tauranga :) I guess we've got to go back there some time.