TOP GUN!

Lizzy's brother Mike and his girlfriend Hannah are with us at the moment. Mike absolutely LOVES Top Gun and so the lovely Bart, who teaches Top Gun at Luke Air Force Base, arranged for us to not only visit the base and see the F-16s, but fly in the simulator! What an awesome experience - for Mike it was like all his birthdays had come at once!

Mike, Bart, and an F-16

Lizzy in the F-16 simulator. She went supersonic!

Mike flying like a pro.

Hannah in the sim.

Mike sitting where Maverick, Goose and Ice-Man have gone before...

The Robinson girls at Top Gun

New Camera photos!

The last few days have been quite rainy - midsummer in Arizona is a bit like midwinter in England - you only go out if you have to. The thunder and lightning is awesome!

On one of these days Gareth gets home from work to find Dr Lucy and Nurse Daisy at work on Lizzy and bump...

Today it brightened up and we played outside in our pool

And here's one of our bougainvillea plants (for Lizzy's Great Granny in particular, but we thought you all might like it!)

The Baby - scan 2

A few days after we returned we went to see Dr Erikson and get baby checked out. Here's a little piccie...


The nurse also asked if we wanted to see the baby in 3D, flicked a switch, and suddenly we could see baby right in front of us - how weird! Even the nurse commented on how much the baby moved around (we're not sure that this bodes well for the future!), so here's the best picture we have at the moment, with a little blurring. Everything's fine with the baby - yippee!

ps - as an encouragement to all of you who have moaned about us updating the blog, we will soon be owners of a fine digital camera, hopefully making the process a lots lees painful for us, and a whole lot quicker!!

UK Trip Part 3 - The Wedding, the Conference and the Return

From Northumberland we went up to Edinburgh for Esther (Lizzy's younger sister) and Paul's wedding. It was a beautiful day - we were all in awe of Esther and Paul for pulling together such a great celebration in just 6 weeks!

From Left - Mike, Hannah, Anne, David, Paul, Esther, Richard (behind Esther), Anna, Ruth, James, Lucy, Lizzy, Gareth, Kate, Geoff, Barney and Daisy standing in the front.

(Geoff is David's brother, Esther's uncle, married to Kate and Richard is their eldest)

Ahhh...

From Edinburgh we travelled to Newark for New Wine North, a week long Christian conference where Gareth was leading worship. We camped with friends from St Thomas' Sheffield which was lovely and Gareth thoroughly enjoyed leading the worship there. British caravans are pretty small, though...!

Our last few days were spent saying goodbye, with a trip to Sheffield to see Gareth's brother and his family, as well as lots of our friends from Norfolk Park, the area where we used to live. (Again, no photos, having too much fun). Seeing our old house was strange, though through the wholoe trip we had such peace about where God had called us and that our home really was in the USA. We're really excited about all that he has in store for us here in the coming year, including another little person (see next post...)

UK Trip Part 2 - The Holiday

It was awesome to be on holiday in the midst of a heat wave on a beautiful beach. We flew kites, built sancastles, swam in the sea - you get the idea...

(Yes, folks, this is a picture taken in England!!)

We also celebrated David Curnock's 60th birthday with a splendid barbeque in the gorgeous garden at Bilton Barns, the farm where we stayed.

Clockwise from bottom - Lucy, Esther, Mike, Gareth, Anna, Ruth, Barney, James, David, Daisy, Lizzy, Anne.

UK Trip Part 1 - The First Week

We arrived in the UK on July 10th, the day before Gareth's birthday, so he opened presents in the fog of jet lag...

Then Lizzy's sister, Ruth, came round with Daisy and Lucy's cousins, Barney and Anna. We had afternoon tea in the garden - very English!

We then went to see Great Granny Curnock...

After that we set off round the country catching up with lovely people, but sadly completely forgetting to take anyone's photo... Apologies, then, to Kevin and Fran, Chris, Belinda and the kids, and Gareth's Grandpa and Uncle John in Reading; Emma and Gracie in London, Gareth's mum and dad in Croxley Green and Lizzy's Granny Ruffe in Surrey. It was lovely seeing you all! We were too busy enjoying the company to take photos, evidently! From there we went to Northumberland for a beautiful beach holiday (see next post...)