Author: dave

i used my work volunteer day to help with the giant poppy art thing in the Auckland domain.

the morning was spent carrying and placing and uplifting and replacing hundreds, possibly thousands of heavy metal discs.  there are 59,000 in all in the poppy to represent the number of New Zealand soldiers killed or maimed in the first world war

we were exhausted by the time the art was complete at 12 o’clock having had nothing to eat or drink all morning

my poppy blew off at one point and it stayed there the rest of the day

we popped by after our quick lunch to say good bye to the organiser only to find they had a run of angry people as the 12 o’clock finish hadn’t been advertised well enough and people still wanted to write on a metal disc.  but they couldn’t as the art work was ‘complete’.

the organiser said “oh excellent, you are from Spark, you’ll be used to dealing with angry members of the public’.  nice to know i work for a company with a reputation (i don’t think that’s what she actually meant but it made me chuckle)

this chap is the artist.  he placed the last disc.  a time lapse video of the creation of the poppy will be played at the ANZAC ceremony in Gallipoli tomorrow.

esther and kezia were in a big musical ANZAC thing this morning at school.  kezia was singing and esther tromboning

jane did millions of school preparations

and Noey had proper lessons at school and we taught her how to cut a sausage at dinner time this evening

some nice interpretations of ‘less we forget’ below.  there were some great drawings of horses, and at least one talked about soldiers severing their country.

i got to the Domain at 7.30am to avoid the traffic (only partially successful) to take some pictures of the ‘field of crosses’ as the sun came up (also only partially successful due to the sun already being up)

here’s jane’s new top

i had a last minute request to take a picture of our CEO and various MPs today.  quite stressful to get them all lined up but each time i do something like this i get a little braver.  next time i’ll spend longer getting them organised!

jane had a busy day at home and the various girls had school.  Noey just had a day of fun with friends

esther and jane went out to watch a New Zealand Symphony Orchestra concert which was excellent apparently

i got honours for my image ‘the sharpener’ this evening.  kezia got two highly commendeds, but i don’t have her photos on my computer, sorry.

our new homestay arrived today.  she’s called Noey and is from Thailand.  she is kezia’s age and is with us for four weeks.  she flew in today.

jane did millions of house work today

our new microwave arrived and just about fits in to the slot where the old one lived.  we’ve jammed it in with some place mats but will have to do a proper install at the weekend

i got sent 2 dollars in the post as a refund for a failed vending machine incident

and esther had choir and big band after school and both girls had music rehearsals before school

hello.  nice sunrise out of the bus window this morning

esther came back from her trip which was good.  she was counting species up an active volcano.  all good fun

i had a busy day and met up with for lunch with my good friend Buzz

kezia had a good day at school and my shoes finally appeared in auckland thanks to a human chain of colleagues of a friend in our old village.  nice to have them back!

jane and i went out for the day today.   we went to anawhata which is a remote bay on the westcoast down 10km of unmade road

it’s quite a a trek down to the beach (and back up) but we had the beach to ourselves which was nice

kezia had orchestra before school and choir after school

and esther had a nice (but cold) trip up the tongariro crossing measuring bushes.  she’s back home tomorrow

jane was up early to take esther for school to drop her off for her geographic trip to tongariro crossing

jane and kezia took pearl to a labrador club walk

while i walked up to church and back

then later this afternoon i went in to auckland for the Block Party at the Cloud

where a P&O ferry left and a breakdancing competition started

mostly a day at home for everyone.  except jane that is.

jane went to the gym then walked pearl then went out to her book club so was busy all day

the girls just watched TV on their various devices and i edited a photo

this evening jane and i have been out to a 21st Birthday Party for two of our friends

and Anni emailed to say she’d made it safely back home and all her flights went well.  hoorah!

we were up early this morning to get Anni to the airport for 9am.  she (just) managed to get everything in her suit case and is now on her way home (via Singapore airport)

it’s been good fun having Anni to stay.  She’ll be missed!

after we’d made sure Anni was all checked in we left her by the departures entrance.

i’d taken the day off work for the girls last day of holiday so we drove down to Te Aroha which is an old spa town.  yet another place where they experimented with technology in the name of medicine so you could have a electric bath or be zapped with some very elementary x-ray machine (back in the day – not now)

we participated in the foot bath

although esther only removed on foot and everyone laughted at my legs (not shown)

we then went for a walk to see some waterfalls

stopping briefly to watch a small geyser which goes off every 40 minutes.

there’s a four hour return trip to the summit of the mountain which we’ll definitely do another time.  this time we did an hour long trip to a lookout instead

the geyser was between blows when we got back down

so we had our lunch in a bandstand and looked round the museum (no pictures allowed) and then looked round the small ‘town’ centre

driving back, we hit auckland at rush hour, but we arrived back in time to pick up pearl and some takeaways for our last meal all together before everyone is back to school on Monday.

yay, anni is back.  but only for a few hours as she’s flying back to Germany tomorrow morning

i got on the wrong bus this morning (deliberately) so i would have a different walk to work.  i’m glad i did

i still got to work at the usual early time and had lots of meetings and a 4 hour workshop of fibre installations

esther went to a fancy music person’s house and practiced her violin. the lady is accompanying her. it’s for a music assignment at school.

kezia bought a onesie

jane was phoned up by the homestay lady today and we’ve agreed to taking in a Thai student for four weeks from Wednesday.

jane cleaned out another cupboard and did some school work and ironed lots of my shirts

this evening anni told us of all her south island adventures and showed us her pictures

then the girls played pictionary

chilly start again this morning

jane got a new set of saucepans which she really loves

e & k had violin/viola lessons

jane visited a school chum

we’ve turned the heating on

and i forgot to mention the microwave broke at the weekend – just after the dishwasher came back.