early start as usual on a sunday for kezia’s flippa ball practice which starts at 7.30am. i volunteered to take kezia today as jane did so much tidying for my work chums yesterday. so jane went for a run with her friend mara instead.
after church tracey, john, debbie and warren and various children came round for morning tea which nearly lasted to afternoon tea!
And then i spend the rest of the time ‘revising’ for a team meeting on tuesday where we’re going to get grilled on about 700 pages of legal and regulatory documents to make sure we’re all up to speed on the latest developments. i did most of my reading in esther’s room as it was out of the way of everyone else. her new desk is great, as is the view from her room !
during the day we kept popping out to clean the pool and let a bit of water out.
the girls are out at flippa ball whilst i’m doing final reading/admin, then having an early night as i’ve got a scary presentation to do tomorrow morning 🙁
weather is getting a bit chilly and we may even have a rare flurry of snow tomorrow
James (pictured above) asked if i’d like to go paintballing with him and various chums (who it turned out he actually didn’t know either). i thought that would be a good plan (despite having no desire to be shot at or shoot anyone else for that matter).
it wasn’t totally dreadful.
i left home at 8am and got home at 2pm. which was 4 hours longer than expected. i was stuck though as we all went in one car so no one could leave early.
meanwhile jane and the girls madly tidied the house for 6 hours not knowing when i’d be back (they also went food shopping at some point). they were tidying up for afternoon tea because i’d invited two families back from work. at one point it did appear like i may not actually get back in time to be there, but all was good.
and the girls did a fantastic job at tidying which reminded them of the misery of open homes which we haven’t had to suffer for the last month.
then when everyone had gone which watched gulliver’s travels (the recent version). all anyone has eaten today is party food.
another busy day for everyone. jane had to do some admin stuff for the orchestra group which she helps with at school and i had a mad day of impossible deadlines which went completely mad half way through the day when someone added another things to my list. still, everyone is equally as busy at work so at least i’m not being singled out!
the girls had good days at school. and i think esther had school swimming lessons as well as both of them having normal swimming lessons after school. and there was a bit of skyping going on too.
i drove in to town again today. less than 30 minutes door to door. excellent.
big news of the day is esther gave a speech at her school open evening for new pupils. she was excellent and the teacher who went on after her said it was ‘outstanding’.
kezia and i were in the audience as jane had a parents evening (which also went well). the only downside was the size of the podium!
kezia and i arrived early so we had a good look round the school (kezia will be about to enrol for the school this time next year so we were a bit early). Lauren was our guide at one point and i have to say the school put on a good display to encourage parents to send their kids here.
kezia got to hold a rabbit
we got home about 8pm and whilst the girls were having a snack before heading to bed i spotted this cockroach crawling along the wall. we’ve not seen any in this house yet, so it was a bit of a surprise (and the walls are nice and white so it showed up well). cockroaches here are common like earwigs in the UK – they don’t bite or spit or anything bad. they just are quite big and move really fast
esther loves insects so she tried to catch it by its tentacle, but it darted off. so she caught it with a plastic cup and a piece of paper. but when she lifted it down she had a quick peak under the paper, and old cocky whizzed out and sat on her hand (after whizzing around on her arm for a moment or two)
she screamed, kezia screamed and jumped away. and so did i i’m afraid to say (although mine was more like a scottish jig than a full on girly run-away). esther remained calm though and plopped it back in to the cup and threw it out the door. we spent the next few minutes in fits of laughter. mostly at my expense i think
sorry about yesterday’s brief post by the way. i was feeling quite sick and in bed.
i decided this morning it would be a good idea to work from home, so i drove in to the office to get my laptop and various papers. i drove back in daylight and the mist was stunning as i dipped in to the valley where we live. it was a 38km round trip, i went so early i missed the traffic on the way in and was against it going back, so that was good.
[yawn, commuter tale]
here’s a view from the garden overlooking the creek
here’s a bird i saw in the garden whilst working from home. don’t know what it is though as our bird book is in a box somewhere.
here’s the trumpet review
and to close, here’s a poster we saw at esther’s school (not made by esther)
esther got a really good report from her violin teacher so that’s good. kezia jumped off the school climbing frame and landed on a friend and hurt her own foot. the teacher phoned this evening to check she was ok which was nice (and she was).
jane had a good day too i think. she only got a few more days left on her full timetable.
i had another silly busy day. i drove in which is so much easier than getting the bus, and i’m guaranteed a seat which is good. i was in the office 7.05am to 6.05pm today. one of the elders at church came for a coffee at lunchtime to chat about church things so that was good. otherwise still madness.
kezia had her first choir club at school today and she seemed to have really loved it and has been bouncing around the house singing.
she didn’t win the ipad in the story competition though which i think she’s quite sad about because she’d been planning what she’d do with it when she got it!
esther has been busy writing her speech for thursday evening’s open evening and has got 50 something bites on her legs and arms and neck from some little fly thing which must have taken a shine to her. we’ve given her an antihistamine tablet to calm things down a bit
i had a sillyly busy day at work and i’ve got a really sore but tingly tongue and throat so i hope i’m just tired rather than going down with some lurgy.
jane was out early with kezia this morning for her flippa ball training. esther and i had to pick her up at 8.40am so jane could be at church by 8.45am. we arrived a bit late though as we got lost and i thought i knew the way but i didn’t. but luckily esther did.
jane had to be a few minutes early to church as she was helping with one of the little kids groups. that went well i think.
after church debbie, warren, laura and thomas came round for morning tea, and then after lunch tracey, john and lauren came round so john could quote us for a variety of odd jobs. then esther and lauren went to play at amy’s house whilst jane tidied the garage and i did some money admin.
then this evening kezia’s flippa team won their first match of the season 7-0. i think it was the first ever match for the other team but a nice start to the new term!
jane only has one more week with her full timetable so i think she’s going to be pleased when that’s all out of the way!
jane got up fairly early for a run then we had breakfast. kezia poured a few too many cheerios
we all headed in to town for the opening day of the new wynyard quarter which is a new big open area down on the water front
it’s what all the building work is i’ve been taken pictures of for the last year, and of course ‘that bridge’ i take pictures of in the morning
it went up and down a number of times in the few hours we were there, so they were obviously giving it a good testing (or showing off)
there are loads of walk ways, an event centre, food outlets and generally loads of spaces for just hanging out
the place has an industrial past and until recently was covered in diesel and concrete storage towers. there are still a load of real ones left, but they’ve kept a few old ones in the new bit as features
it’s great to have this new area in auckland as it was lacking much of a waterfront feature due to the gas tanks in this area and the shipping container port further along. the shipping port is still there although they’ve also made some funky outdoor spaces near the main boat dock place
it’s all been done in time for the rugby world cup which starts soon
they even got some trams whizzing round the place, 30 years since they were decommissioned.
this thing was quite impressive. it’s a spy camera helicopter thing driven by the guy on the left, whilst the one on the right watched what it was seeing through his sunglasses which were streaming the video from the on board camera
we got back just after lunch and then went out to do various shoppings. kezia and i went to the mall to get a freeview satellite box which isn’t as dreadful as i feared despite the rock bottom price. no recording feature of course, so we have to remember to sit down at the right time if we want to watch a program, and no fast forwarding through the adds.
and the other big event of the day has been attaching the pool cleaner to the pool filter
and i even went out with a long brush to sweep some of the dirt in to the path of the ‘barracuda’ as it went by. my brush made an amazing spacey sound which i’ll have to video sometime. but i did get to use my brush as a depth gauge and it’s about a foot deeper than i am tall in the deep end. pretty deep
here it is without the cover on. still too chilly to consider going in, but we’d hope the weather would start to warm up around end of October/November perhaps
this evening it’s been roasted chicken cooked excellently in the new oven by jane and some pictionary.
here’s some springy grass
and here’s a tug boat having some fun (we only caught the end of this)
jane decorated a mini cake at her crafty chicks evening last night. so we did more birthday cake singing this evening and the week of my birthday is officially over.
i had a busy day at work again which is good, and sounds like the girls did too. i met everyone at swimming after work so jane could go home and get on with life whilst i read books on my ipad until swimming was over. then it was dinner and half of March of the Penguins on a stuttery DVD (second half saved for another time)
the house we rented until last weekend was up for auction yesterday. we got some feedback from the nice estate agent who sold us this house (and who works for the same firm). apparently no one bid over $500K which is waaaay below the official valuation and even waaaaayer below the price the owners originally asked us for. Clearly the leakiness factor was priced in to people’s bids and we did exactly the right thing by not pursuing things once we’d read the building report.
we did have a nice email from the letting agency though thanking us (well jane) for cleaning the house so nicely so that’s good. we’ve got a form to fill in to get our bond back which will be handy.
are you interested in the exchange rate? i am. in fact i’m a little obsessed. when we came over for our reccy trip it was about $2.80 to the pound and people said that was poor. since then it’s gone down hill (literally) and earlier this week it hit an all time low of $1.86 to the pound.
anyway, things bounced back a little yesterday and today. so that’s handy.
