Category: Uncategorized

i’m not entirely sure what the girls got up to today.  they were certainly around this morning for the plumber who installed a replacement water tap and a new end to our main sink tap which was all drippy.

i think they saw some friends in the mall in the afternoon and esther bought some little speakers so she can listen to music from her mp3 player in her room.  i think that’s possibly one of the early signs of adolescence kicking in – she’s getting ready to spend hours in her room.  thankfully the speakers aren’t very loud.  although jane and kezia were invited to a disco in the dark earlier today so they must be at least audible

in sandwich news, i went back to the same place as yesterday and as i walked through the door the asian lady behind the counter shouted “ham and cheese toasty sir ?”.  so i’m now officially a regular.

tomorrow is very exciting as the girls are having a sleep over across the road meaning jane and i can go out for the evening !  So we’re off to the posh restaurant on the local beach – hoorah.

did you know that hokey pokey ice-cream is the nation’s favourite ice cream ?  well it is.  there’s even graphs to prove it from the paper (great choice of image to illustrate someone eating an ice cream)

Debbie brought a tub of it over on sunday night.  it’s made of chunks of honey comb i think

but the serving suggestion seems to be on a pile of baked beans

 

i went to work today.  highlight was being given a cheese and onion toastie in a cafe rather than a cheese and ham one.  they swapped it when they realised their mistake though.  exciting hey ?

meanwhile the girls went to Lizzie’s house to look at her new puppy and talked about secondary schools (a source of some anxiousness at the moment).  then fish and chips for tea.  And esther has been creating more board games whilst jane gardened and kezia Simm’ed

 

weather has been hot and humid but quite overcast and even a bit rainy.  it was 20C when i left home just before 7am this morning.  so there.

I’ll tell you what i’ve heard about jane’s trip with the girls today.  jane can then comment in the comments if i got it wrong !

 

(photo of Blue Maomao from here as we don’t have an underwater camera, nor did any cameras go on the trip)

You might remember that we visited Goat Island just after Christmas.   We promised we’d go back another time and do some proper snorkelling.  Well, the girls went back today along with Wendy and various children.

From what i gather they had a fab time snorkelling. they saw blue maomaos (as shown in someone else’s photo above), snappers and what sounds like a puffer fish.  They even swam across to Goat Island which involved swimming in water too deep for jane to stand up in.  Shame i missed the fun, but someone has to earn a crust.

and on the subject of crust, esther and kezia made us pizzas for tea

here’s something I found in yesterday’s national kiwi newspaper (the business one, not the dreadful tabloid affair).  it’s a reader’s letter.  it’s wrong on so many levels.

apologies this is a bit late – miscommunication between jane and me about who was to do the family blog yesterday !

so yesterday the girls came in to town late morning and we went to lunch at a lovely cafe in Ponsonby Road which is near my office.  it’s a right posh street with lots of cafe where the rich famous and beautiful can sit and be rich famous and beautiful.  it’s the sort of place you can sit around and listen to people selling their ideas for TV shows or book deals and that sort of thing.  anyway, we went there.  and it was nice.

after walking me back to work the girls went to Mission Bay which is one of the nice beaches near the centre of town. they went to hire a Trandem (three seater tandem bike as used by The Goodies in the TV show).  the shop was open when they arrived, but by the time they’d waited for a short rain storm to pass the shop was closed so they came home

On the way home in the evening i decided i should do some exercise, and a good stomping walk was what i needed.  i realised i’ve been missing my 90 minutes of walking that used to make up my day when i worked in central london a few years ago.  by the time i got home i’d given up on the idea but jane convinced me to go. so i did.

and so i had a high speed, very warm stomp round the nearby university campus, only getting lost in the bush just once, but quickly finding my way back to the proper footpath.  i’m going to try to do that a couple of nights a week. it’s your job to keep me in check !

i took this picture looking back at our house from the university grounds.  we live in the darkest house that looks like it’s sunk in to the ground near the middle of the picture (with the green grass area in front of it, triangle roof and triangles windows

i’ll not tell you what we’re planning on doing tomorrow as that’s now today due to this post being a day late !

apologies for the lack of update last night.  i half wrote it but forgot to tell jane i’d left it for her to finish off.    you can look forward to double on tuesday instead (assuming i didn’t delete the one planned for last night (nz time)

this morning jane and i got up quite late and we just got to the 10am church service on time.  esther and kezia were up earl(ier) for some Skyping with friends back in the UK

we had to plans for after church (the bbq we were planning on going to had been cancelled) so came back home for lunch.  unfortunately we then hit a wall of despondency and despite all the beaches and walks and other things NZ has to offer we failed to come up with anything we could all be bothered to do … until jane suggested we go to see fantastic mr fox at the flicks.

a quick internet search on flickrs.co.nz revealed that it started in 10 minutes time at our local cinema so we bought our tickets online (with reserved seats) and arrived in time to catch the last of the trailers before the film started.  we even had time to buy some maltesers and have a wee !

the film was really nice and features jarvis cocker singing which was a bonus.  and those who have visited the Roald Dahl museum will also recognise a mock of Mr Dahl’s writing shed in the film.

Then this evening Debbie and her daughters came over for a barbie, and a game of pictionary.  in fact the girls are still playing board games and jane’s chatting in the kitchen.  i need to get to bed so i’ve been excused to updates the blogs before i retire !

tomorrow is work for me.  jane was meant to be going to the beach with the people who used to live in our house, but they’ve just got a puppy so there’s a change of plan.

by the way, the picture above is of the 3 moths that julie asked me to photo in her comments on an earlier post.  except it might be a cicada rather than a moth.  and there’s only one because we know moths can’t count – they are rubbish at mothamatics.

(very big version of the stitched picture above here)

bit of a lazy start for me, but jane was up early to go running with her friend (then again on her own) and the girls did some skyping.  by the time we all were back in the same place (and i was out of bed) it was plenty warm enough to have breakfast outside. so we did.

and then, the box people arrived to take away our empty packing boxes.  there then followed a day of box lugging / rearranging to create a ‘wall’ of stuff, and me trying to mend jane’s computer which is still suffering the side effects of a fatal virus which meant a full rebuild before we left the UK.  jane’s now got a fantastic wall of boxes, but her computer is as sad as it was when we left 🙁

after our afternoon of tedious doings, we headed out for an early evening picnic at Shakespear Park, about 30 mins drive away with our friends the Dunnings.

it’s a fantastic location as it’s on a peninsula and the beach looks back towards Auckland.  so you effectively get to see the back side (ooer) of Rangitoto volcano (see earlier post) and the harbour side of Auckland.

and the beach itself is lovely with a great grassy area to sit between the car parking area and the beach itself.   i really like that layout as you don’t have to get involved with all that sand stuff unless you want to.  but you can still keep an eye on the kids.

esther and kezia had much fun with Maisie and Robyn in the sea (that’s not them in the picture below, but it is the Sky Tower on the horizon).

then we all went and played cricket.  i surprised myself and the rest of my family by actually not being totally rubbish. 

it’s funny how nz has made me a bit more joiner-inery. and it was funny how wendy (buzz’s wife) threw the ball at her husband’s head rather than the stumps when she was bowling !

i was convinced it was going to rain and ruin our picnic, but it turned out great.  in fact there was quite a dramatic sky as the night drew in.  i think we were there until about 8.30pm

tomorrow is church in the morning and we’ve got some friends coming round in the evening.  the afternoon was to be a bbq for people interested in starting an Albany church homegroup, but it turns out most people are still on hols so that’s been deferred.   so who knows what we’ll get up to.

here’s an octopus we found on the street (held by hand-model buzz)

to celebrate our three moths in new zealand we went out for a meal in a local eatery.  it was very nice. 

we did a bit of bird feeding on the way there.  i was particularly concerned that the pukekos would get their share and jane accused me of loving pests as i also love myna birds.  anyway, we had a lovely meal with the usual games of consequences and jolliness.

afterwards we walked home by the new school which is being built near our house and came back through the cut through where we saw this fantastic chewed doll

In other news the girls had their last swimming lessons then went round to a friends house for the afternoon.  and i had two meetings in cafes and we went out for lunch to the local Thai restaurant, so i think i might literally burst.  a bigger belly will help my swimming trunks stay on better though which will be handy in the crashing waves next time we go to the beach.

tomorrow the box people are coming tomorrow to (finally) take away all our moving boxes which should mean we can start to organise the garage and possibly get a car in there again.  And in the afternoon we’re out with the Dunnings.  so there.

see ya

i’ve had a busy day at work which is jolly good, although i came home with a massive headache.  a few people have had them recently so it’s either a strange brain eating virus, or the weather.  probably the latter as it’s quite humid.  Or ‘close’ as jane called it.  the weather is always quite close though isn’t it ?  anyway …

i mentioned on my post yesterday that i didn’t know where the practice was.  luckily jane went running at 6.15am with the church administrator (think that’s her job title) and she mentioned my locational ignorance which lead to her phoning the leader who then emailed me (and the rest of the band apparently to remind them they had a practice).

anyway my ‘audition’ consisted of me playing one song with the band before their proper practice, then being asked a question about whether i always played with a pick (answer ‘yes, mostly, but i don’t have to if you don’t want me to’).  and that was that.  i was then told i could play with the mixing desk if i liked which i did for a bit.  for those interested it’s a 40 channel desk connected to a rack of effects units – mostly EQs and compressors.  after watching a couple of songs being practiced i went home.  Apparently someone will email me, and if i passed the test i’ll get to go to a meeting of musos planned for February.

not quite what i was expecting. but then i probably should have expected the unexpected. Then i wouldn’t have been surprised.

And in parallel news the girls had a good time at their swimming lessons again (they did butterfly today), then went to the Dunning’s for the afternoon where they spend most of the time in the pool at the school where the girls went for their day visit back in Easter.

Work for me tomorrow involves at least two meetings in coffee shops.  The girls have their last day swimming and then friends and chores in the afternoon.

hoorah for it nearly being the weekend.

it’s our three month anniversary of when we arrived in new zealand.  can you believe it ? 

it feels like yesterday and years ago at the same time.

anyway, i’ve had a good week at work, finally getting my teeth in to a new piece of work which is actually quite interesting (well, as interesting as you can get when you are talking about telecoms regulation).

meanwhile the girls had their swimming lessons and this afternoon went ten pin bowling with our friend’s from across the road.  Then they came home and built some cards using some equipment delivered by santa

and in special news you’ll be interested to know my bus home from work has gone a very slightly different route for the last 3 evenings.  interesting hey ?  you can print this paragraph out and file it with jane’s bin bag post (which i suggested she wrote, so you can blame that on me too) !

tomorrow is more swimming for the girls then an afternoon with the Dunnings.  Work for me, then in the evening i’m meant to be going to a church band practice. only no one has told me where or when it is, nor what we’re playing.  not sure if they are trying to tell me something …