Author: dave

i said i wouldn’t moan about the temperature in our house again, but it is very cold.  and there’s no real escape.  our chosen strategy is to go on holiday to somewhere even colder next week so we can appreciate it when we come back.  we’ll see how that works out.

a strange day for me today – i’d got a really busy morning planned which then got suddenly more busy by a request from our CEO via my boss for me to find out about Mongolia.  which i did.

somewhere along the line i also got asked to take a set of photos of one of our MDs getting interviewed for our internal company magazine and that was going to be tomorrow morning, but i’ve just heard that’s now on for friday instead.

and at lunch i met up with an old colleague form blighty who is over to speak at a conference.  i’ve booked him up to do a lunchtime talk down in wellington on thursday so it was a chance to catch up and talk through what he was going to say and check all was in order.  and i think it is/was. so that’s handy.

esther did a play at school which parents weren’t invited to.  but apparently some parents went to anyway much to esther’s annoyance as she would have liked jane to have come.  to add insult to injury the teacher thanked the parents for coming !

kezia got a letter and some stickers from Topz saying thank you for a picture she’d drawn and sent in.

and then after school they whizzed off to a sports shop to get esther’s birthday present which has now been put away until the day)

the great thing about showery weather is the rainbow potential

this morning church was run by the teenagers which made for a jolly start to the day.

then this afternoon we decided to dodge the showers and headed over to Long Bay

 

we dressed for the worst of the weather, but actually it was fine.

 

the girls had to take their shoes off to go through a river quite near the beginning of the walk (jane and i found a safe way through). 

here they are reshodding on a rock

we always see some nice birds flapping about, and today we saw this heron type thing (i think it’s a white face) and there was a nice king fisher on an electricity wire as well.

there were some quite amazing rainbows

 

we walked round a couple of bays but the tide was coming in

  

and the rocks were slippery, so we came back over the cliff paths

which were really slippery because of the mud and rain

  

here’s a cow

 

 

this evening we watched a family video (during which jane and i fell asleep) then the girls did a bit of skyping

 

and here’s a cool little spider we had in the house earlier.  he’s a jumping spider

i hope you don’t mind me showing you all these spiders !  our house isn’t full of them, it’s just i find them interesting when they come along as they are new.  don’t let it put you off visiting !  Nothing features is dangerous (other than the crocodile yesterday but he doesn’t live at our house)

today was a good day – despite some early misery of the over-tired and stinking cold variety (me and kezia!) we recovered the day and ended up having a fab time.

 

the girls had their strings ‘orchestra’ thing this morning and then we decided to go to Butterfly Creek which is a small place near the airport where they have crocodiles and … yup, you guessed it … butterflies.

 

we had a voucher from our charity voucher book thing so we got in cheap which was jolly good.

there were some weird shaped miserable fish (fush)

plenty of butterflies

 

little alligators

and big crocodiles

 

here’s the man that did the crocodile feeding.  note that half of his brush head has been bitten off.  And that he seems to have a piece of his shorts bitten off !

quite dramatic stuff

there were some great farm animals and pets there too

the girls spent ages stroking guinea pigs

here’s a tinsey pig

and here’s the lovely jane

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here are some cockroaches on a pretend toilet. it was at butterfly creek.  honest.

 

then this evening we’ve been out a Mainly Music end of term celebration type thing where kids who normally go to the daytime music thing got to bring their parents and some food for a picnic and some songs.  jane is a helper which meant we got to go and it was jolly good.  highlights for me were watching our friends Debbie and Tracey doing synchronised thigh slapping, and our friend Fleur doing her robotic dancing in the style of Pinocchio.

i’ll admit these last two photos aren’t my best work.  the one above is of the kids doing their musical things, and the one below is of tracey running round with a glove full of bees (pretend of course).  think of it as an homage to michael jackson on his anniversary

posted to the wrong blog !  now over here if you are interested:   http://www.funkypancake.com/oca-taop

it was a rainy day today as predicted by the emergency weather advisory which said it would rain.

i went in to town at lunch to buy a ticket for a conference at the end of August.  It’s a conference for people who work in creative media, which isn’t me.  but i thought it sounded interesting so jane has bought me a ticket as a birthday present.  hoorah

the girls had a try out for their new violin teacher today which went well.

 

there was an amazing rainbow this evening over the sky tower (taken at the same place as the moon picture yesterday).  my new office building is the green funny thing just underneath the sky tower.  we move there in november

i couldn’t decide which rainbow pictures i like best so you can see them all !

         

then this evening we went to abbie’s house for a fantastic mid winter christmas party.  we enjoyed it so much we’re thinking we should have one too !

and there was even a special appearance by santa wearing a rather festive jumper (just realised abbie’s husband had a similar jumper.  spooky coincidence)

the other fab thing of the day was kezia’s school assembly.  jane managed to get to it but had to leave before kezia did her fantastic thing unfortunately as she had to be back at Kristin for teaching things

but our friend Tracey was here and she took these photos.

sorry for rambleyness.   And also sorry for the website being down a bit earlier – there’s some maintenance work going on the server which should move it to somewhere more stable early next week, so expect a little turbulence over the next few days.  (thanks to Matt for all his excellent hosting work)

i was feeling a bit crook this morning but that didn’t put me off meeting a couple of chums from church in town at 7.30am for breakfast.  i noticed as i got on my bus at 6.45am that one of them had dropped out, but i still went along.  only to find the quiet breakfast cafe was in fact a heaving pub full of football watchers.  so i decided to skip it myself too and walked up to work

i did buy some cold tablets today.  just some of your night nurse/day nurse type things.  but i needed to show my driving licence as they contain some controlled ingredient that the new zealand drug lord ‘chefs’ use to make some serious street drugs.  so that was interesting.

and luckily someone at work brought in this giant box of fruit so i dosed myself up.  i may have fallen asleep at my desk during the day today too, but only for a short while.

 

anyway, jane had a good day at school and made a couple of kids stay in over break to finish their home work.  she’s trying to get a reputation for being firm but fair.  her day involved pain au chocolates with the kids at some point too.

 

here’s a house with a for sale sign on it near my office. but on closer inspection it wasn’t.

the girls are doing some end of term plays – kezia is about the environment tomorrow morning and jane is going along to watch.  Esther’s performance is on monday but the teacher says they haven’t practiced enough and they’d all get stage fright so parents aren’t invited !

here’s the moon balanced on sky tower.  i’m off to bed before the night time drugs kick in.  see ya

i had to be in work early this morning for a meeting with my boss at 7.45am, and i’ve just finished work thanks to an evening call back to some UK consultants.  Still, at least i’m busy.  i may knock off early on friday to regain the time.  i walked past these glasses on the way to the bus.  there was an egg sandwich on a fence but i didn’t take a picture as the light had faded too much.

[no one can claim they don’t get life details here on the family blog]

sad news of the day is that Robyn, the daughter of our good friends the Dunnings was rushed to hospital last night with what has turned out to be meningitis. She’s all medicined up and sounds like she’s on the mend, but any spare prayers would be welcome in her direction (and for her parents and 3 sisters – the youngest of whom is also under the weather)

there does seem to be a lot of lurgies about at the moment, but i guess that’s winter in a humid climate for you.  poor old robyn though.

all the ladies were at school today

and the lost dog’s nose that kezia had found a couple of weeks ago has been handed in to lost property because two of her friends have found a small pompom to take home instead (ask jane by skype if you want the full story which isn’t as interesting as it sounds)

highlight today was getting the girls’ school reports. both got glowing reports which was great (and another excellent excuse for a meal out soon).

We’ve also signed our half of the contract for new tenants for our UK house who move in in July which is good news.  And then this evening i went out for a health giving walk to a petrol miles away where we bought coffees and a hot chocolate and walked back again !  I think that was healthy.

new zealand are delighted to be in the international soccer competition.  and that’s really nice.  there’s no pressure for them to win as they’ve already won in the hearts of kiwis by getting there in the first place.  so that’s all nice and lovely.  and all the matches are really late or really early in the day so they don’t impinge on our life at all.    here are some brazillians at 7.30 this morning.

busy day at work for me and i met up with buzz and abbie at lunchtime to talk about whether we should put on a conference in september.  i think we might.

jane had her day off today (she gets one day off every 7 working days due to how the timetable works) so did lots of domestic things, drank fizzy grape juice with a chum at their mini prayer meeting and prepared funky lessons for tomorrow’s school on her laptop.

that’s our life.

today was spent mostly at church.  i was in the band today so was there from 7.30-12.30.  the service(s) were excellent though so the time seemed to whizz by

then this evening we went back to church for a baptism service where two ‘the gang’ were getting baptised (seen above with kezia)

i took a few photos which you can see here if you want

 

whilst i was at the second service jane went shopping for clothes.  here’s the result – a very grown up looking esther.

after church this evening the girls threw themselves down the stairs a bit to get themselves calmed down for bed

and then as i was putting off putting out the bins and filling in a life insurance application form my dad popped up so i could wish him happy father’s day on the magical skype.

that’s him up and above and me below with my camera.