Blog

We’ve been here for ages and have nothing to do.
Esther playing on her Rubix cube

 

the girls went to school as usual.  kezia had an inter school maths team competition which involved maths and running.  her team didn’t win, but they didn’t come last either (kez wasn’t sure of the final result).

 

pearl went off to the kennels for three weeks today.  she had a nice walk with jane first though

jane did her last mainly music this morning and her last pre-school french this afternoon.  it’ll be nearly full time at kristin when she’s back so she’s stopped doing both of those

 

then this evening there was last minute packing and sorting and toe nail painting apparently before we drove to the airport

where we said our goodbyes

i missed my photo society meeting this evening but one of my friends there kindly sent me an email to say the judge was another meany and i didn’t get an honours for my melting ice cream picture which is a shame. hey ho

right, time to make my sandwiches for tomorrow.  see ya.  the girls might update later as their travels progress.

It’s madness, everyone (except daddy) is rushing around looking and finding things they need to pack. We haven’t had dinner yet and I’m really hungry – everyone’s too busy packing.

it was/is esther’s birthday today.  she turned 14.  imagine that.  14.  years.  amazing

she still had to go to school though

meanwhile jane spent the day zooming around trying to get ready for going to the UK tomorrow evening.  so much to do.  as well as thinking about her job which will start the day after she gets back and making sure i’m all sorted in her absence.

i worked from home today so i could watch a conference video stream, and also so i could work on a consultation document which was published this morning.  looks like it’s going to be a big piece of work over the next 6 weeks.  i could do with life being a bit less stressful at the moment but that’s ok.  just need to make sure things are planned nicely rather than left to the last minute.

esther had burger fuel burgers for tea.  that’s my mum talking to us on the phone in the middle of the table

then we watched some Apprentice.

kezia brought home some art

the sad news which i didn’t mention yesterday is that my good friend and coffee/chips buddy Warren passed away suddenly yesterday morning.  that’s incredibly sad but it’s been awesome how our group of friends has dropped everything to support Warren’s family.  Funeral is on Friday.  a sad week i think.

 

anyway, that’s where we’re at.  all so exhausted we can hardly talk!

lots of things happened today.  this evening i went to the photo club as they’d got a couple of models in to do some lighting demonstrations.  i noticed one of the models was wearing red doctor marten boots.

 

i was on sound this morning so was at church early for setup

then this afternoon jane and kezia went off to a swimming competition

kezia won one of her races pulling away from the crowd in the last few metres like she’s meant to!

esther had a second birthday ‘party’ and went to the cinema to see despicable me 2 with some chums from school

after dropping esther off i drove down to bayswater for a walk round the marina where i’d not been before

was nice to use my new lens which did pretty good

this evening jane’s gone out to see Debbie

here’s a shag who sat obligingly close for me to take some photos

they’ve got quite nice feathers up close

from bayswater you can look back at auckland

and you get a nice sideways view of the bridge which we walked over last week.  you can see how flimsy it all is!

  

here’s some of esther’s homework

and here’s the church sound desk. church meets in the gym

look at that cake.  amazing

after such a busy week we decided to skip kezia’s early morning swimming so we could all have a lie in.  imagine jane’s delight when my alarm went off at 6am anyway.  oops

kezia and i went to see despicable me 2 today which is excellent.  3d is superb.

meanwhile esther was busy having her birthday party

she and three friends went to eat yoghurt in takapuna then had a mooch round the shops

they came back and decorated esther’s cake

then ordered some pizza

and watched lots of videos

it’s a sleep over so kezia is sleeping in our bedroom cupboard rather than being in all the excitement upstairs

   

 

pearl was a bit confused

Yesterday I did the beep test
My legs are really sore now
🙁

jane wanted to see what the drive to the school she had her interviews at would be like in rush hour so she left home just after 7 to take on the motorways of auckland.  in fact it ended up being the quickest run ever as there seemed to be no traffic around today!

even my drive in to work at 8am after kezia had left for school was really quick.  so it wasn’t a very realistic test (i think lots of people were either on holiday or off sick – just seemed a really quiet day)

anyway, after much consideration she decided to go with the job at kristin which is the local school where she had a few hours previously. they have said they will write in to her contract that they will give her enough hours over the next 2 years which will allow Jane to get full NZ teacher registration, which is a fantastic result!

i had a really busy but productive day at work too.

and at lunch we met up with recently escaped colleague Simon to catch up on latest industry goings ons and some fries

then this evening kezia had swimming, and there was much emailing and texting.  and then some celebratory grape juice and chocs for jane. followed by some Apprentice watching

It’s all happening work wise for me. Very cryptic but more will be revealed soon.

In other news Kez had swimming club night and swam really well with one PB and one “perfect swim” according to her coach.  Dave and Esther approached the end.