Thanksgiving in Australia

Don and Carol Jackson were stationed with us on exchange in Australia, and will be there through the middle of next year. Carol is renowned for her cooking and entertaining large numbers of people with even larger amounts of gourmet cooking. Her deserts are outstanding, and being the good Charlestonian she is, Pecan pie just happens to be a specialty.

They also invited Fiona's Dad and Cecilia over and they gave rave reviews. Fi missed it by a few days, but I am sure she will get some leftovers. Also notice how Jet (in the red shirt) managed to make it into all of the pics below? He is a former USAF type living in Leura with his Australian wife, Maggie. Could be a trend.....

Fiona's Dad, Mario, and Cecelia give the good housekeeping seal of approval to everyones efforts with the meal....especially Carol and Don. 

Dave Kelly, Don Jackson, and Rob (Jet) Starrett getting into some kind of trouble in the kitchen. Notice that each one seems to have their fingers in some part of the food.... 

Carol Jackson overseeing the Thanksgiving Down Under Feast she put on for about 20 people  

Thanksgiving Day, 2004

Fiona and I went to Monty and Lebette's house for T-Day, and it was awesome. We brought a few things, but Lebette really out-did herself. There was enough food for an army, but the four of us seemed to make a pretty good dent in it. We finished the night off with many rounds of Scategories, Apple Pie with ice cream, and Pumpkin pie with cool-whip!

After an evening nap, made very easy by the Turkey, Fiona and I left at 1230AM for the Atlanta Airport. Fi is now winging her way back to Oz for Marrio and Gabby's wedding on the 4th. She will be back on 11 December, just in time for Christmas and a visit by most of the Yorks from New York (Mom, Dad, Bro, Sis-in law, and their kids, David, Will, and Emily).

Now if I can just make those leftovers last until Fi gets home....

ZY

Monty and I working the Turkey over.

Fiona and Lebette cooking up a storm 

They had marching bands, baton twirlers, elected the Homecoming Queen and King (oh and of course Football players). Lots of fun!! 

Trying to stay warm at the Prattville High School Homecoming Game 

Haunted Hay Ride

Last night we traveled with our friends, Monty and Lebette into the country part of South Montgomery. We went on the "Haunted Hay Ride" which was put on the by the Seniors of the local high school, and spent the best $5.00 on a 45 minute, 8 mile hay ride through the forest. It was very well done and pretty spooky in places, especially when horses charged up to the tractor, or when the "hill billies" lifted me off the hay ride and painted on my face. If you have ever seen the movie "Deliverance" you can picture how they were dressed, and they were even playing the banjo song from the film, in the background! They painted my face with black face paint to make me look more like a "hill billy", and the female hill billies tried to hide Zev away in their "barn". Halloween is next Saturday- Zev and I plan to spend it over at Monty and Lebette's house, handing our treats to the local kids that come "trick or treating". It should be a hoot. Hope everyone is doing great! Love Zev and Fi ;-)

Mid-October Update

Howdy,

All continues to go swimmingly..... We don't have any new, exciting pictures to post this week, and since my PC suffered a fatal melt-down, the oldies-but-goodies are not available. At least everything was backed up and the internet company that did the damage is going to buy us a new computer. So....stand by for the next photo.

Fi is doing great at the law firm. She is too modest, but I am sure she is totally impressing her employer! She is also working most nights on Uni as her LAST set of final exams rapidly approaches. By Thanksgiving she will be done with her law degree....she is pretty excited about that.

Mario and Gabby's wedding is fast approaching ( 4 Dec), and Fi will be leaving 27 Nov for 10 days in Sydney. Unfortunately, I will not be able to take off from school, but I will be there in spirit. It is also great hearing from all of the family so often. Estamos muy contentos que Mama Lola le gusta sus revistas.

More good news is that Mom and Dad York will be visiting Alabama for Christmas, with Deven, Lauren, David, Will and Emily close in tow--We are looking forward to it. It will be quite the York Christmas. A few other friends may make a cameo....Mike S, Liz P, and who knows who else over the next few months.

It has alo been great to hear from a lot of old friends over the last month; Brian, Curt, John-Francis, etc. Keep the emails coming.

Signing off for now, all our best,
Fi and Zev

6 months!

G'day everyone!

We hope that you are all doing great! Tomorrow marks our sixth month Wedding Anniversary and we can't believe that we have been married for only six months because so much has happened between April 11 and now! We feel like we have traveled so much and met so many wonderful people and had so many great experiences, we really have been so blessed this year and are so thankful for all our blessings!

Zev is doing great in school- he is a natural talent and has performed very well in his tests, I am extremely proud of him!! We have also been involved in a lot of activities that we have never done together before, such as skeet shooting on the base range and pistol shooting on a range near our house. I really enjoyed the pistol shooting but have some more practice to do with the skeet shooting. I am not used to shooting at moving targets in the near and it really takes a lot of skill and practice to shoot the clays because they are either moving away or towards you. Luckily I have a wonderful and patient instructor in Zev who is also a very sharp shooter with the clay targets, and we had a lot of fun just being out on the ranges.

I am on the last push of my Law degree, I only have to sit (and hopefully pass!) my final exams which I will sit here in Montgomery in November and then my degree will be completed! I have also started working on a temporary position with a law firm in downtown Montgomery as a paralegal. Although it is a temporary position, I work every day and I am gaining so much from the experience. The law firm that I work for is the largest law firm in Montgomery and is called Beasley, Allen, Crow, Methvin, Portis and Miles. Quite a mouthful of a name and quite a big firm! I am currently working in the product liability section and find the people I work with to be very friendly and down to earth. I am happy that I found a job here.

Well, as always please take care and keep in touch! We love receiving your emails and updates on what you have been up to!

Keep smiling!

Love Fi and Zev ;-)

Our family in beautiful Canandaigua, New York! 

Hello everyone! We hope that all our family and friends and doing well. This picture was taken at the Pottery Loft Cafe in downtown Montgomery, last Saturday night. We brought a bottle of Australian wine and a cheese platter, and sat down to paint some tiles. The tiles will be fired in a kiln and we pick them up in a few weeks. We really loved the courtyard out the back. All the best, Zev and Fi.  

Our house and yard were covered with leaves and small branches.

The pine tree that fell across our driveway. Luckily, it missed the house by 3 metres!

Still without power but doing ok!

Hello everyone!

I am writing from a friend's computer because it is 6pm on Saturday 18th Sep and we still do not have power at our house. We have not had power since Hurricane Ivan hit on Thursday morning. Hurricane Ivan was not as bad as expected, well at least in our area, and the only damage suffered was a long pine tree that fell down along the length of our driveway, which the realtor is due to come and chop up one of these days. There are branches and leaves everywhere though so we spent Friday clearing our driveway and yard up and trying to conserve as much of our fridge energy as possible! The most amazing thing is that we have been able to put to use some Australian appliances that accidently got packed as part of our household goods from Australia! The Lord works in mysterious ways, I tell you because Zev dug out the "Tiger" generator that I bought him in the Middle East and was able to do some creative electical work to get it fired up so we could plug in our Australian made lamp and have some light and listen to the radio on our Australian made radio! Today I bought five bags of ice and we stuck that in our fridge, and we are praying to have power by tomorrow. We are so grateful that we were not as badly affected by the hurricane like the people further south in places like Mobile were. Anyway we hope that you are all well too and we thank you for your calls and emails to check to see that we were ok during the hurricane. We will send pictures as soon as our power is back up!

Love The Yorks.

Hurricane Ivan

As I write this, Alabama and other regions in the South are gearing up to prepare for Hurricane Ivan, due to impact our area sometime Thursday evening. We feel pretty well set up where we are and can only wait out until the hurricane hits and hope that the damage to our area is not too severe. It is probably best if you try to avoid contacting us over the next few days just to ensure the telephone lines etc are free. We will contact our parents in their respective locations in the event of an urgent situation. I (Fiona) have never experienced a hurricane before but we are taking all the steps necessary to sit this one out and the best thing is that I have Zev home for the next few days! Yay. Take care y'all!

This was taken on our glider ride in beautiful Hawaii! 

Zev in our kitchen! 

This picture was taken just down the road from our house- in downtown "Old Prattville". the suburb where we will. We are standing on a bridge that crosses the Autauga River and behind me is the old cotton gin mill, which is was established by Daniel Pratt, the namesake of our town.  

Here we are sitting on our back balcony in Sweet Home Alabama, our new home for the next year. Our backyard reminds us a lot of our backyard in beautiful Glenbrook in the Blue Mountains of Sydney Australia. The only difference of course is that there are lots of squirrels in our Alabama backyard as opposed to possums and cockatoos that we used to see in Glenbrook!