there was an amazing purple sunrise this morning and this amazing rainbow on the way home (photo from the bus)
jane had her mainly music thing and did some teaching. i picked up some new projects at work as one of my colleagues is leaving.
esther had violin but kezia was feeling a bit ill this evening so skipped hers and went to bed early. Esther and i played some Wii (I lost).
jane’s gone out to a book club thing this evening.
Dave went to work.
Jane went to her church job and did some teaching.
Kezia went to a school rugby competition.
After school I went to tennis.
I made this icing dog at school. I ate it :-p
and I did a maths test.
although jane and i were only away for one night it felt like we’d been on holiday so there was a bit of a ‘back to work’ feeling this morning.
the girls had school then kezia had swimming. jane did various house things i think and may have gone to school.
this evening jane has organised a ‘new songs workshop’ for singers in the church worship team
and i spent an hour on hold trying to speak to the NZ tax people. they were quite helpful when i did speak to them but as soon as i’d hung up and looked at the information i needed it was suspiciously missing from the online account so i’ve got to phone them (and wait another hour) another time. ho hum
finally, well done to you people of britain who put on an excellent olympics. nice works sirs
we woke to lots of cloud and rain so went along to the breakfast place for, er, breakfast
we checked out then went to a lovely little old house / antique shop with a car, dog and an intelligent bird
then we drove down the hill to the most amazing junk / curio shop ever
then it was back up in to the ranges again to do a lovely walk by a river
it’s a nice flat walk through quite dense rainforest and a few massive kauris, so we’ll add that to our tourist trail for international visitors
we had our (late) lunch in titirangi then went for a drive around
we ended up a little beach, then drove on to a boat launch and watched a boat launch.
sadly then our time was up and we headed back to collect the girls then get back on to everyday life
(via a christian fruit shop that sells “fresh” flowers.
jane and i had a weekend all to ourselves as janine and james kindly insisted on looking after our girls for the weekend!
after dropping the girls off we drove in to parnell for a late breakfast and then a wander round the shops
when we got back to the car the battery was flat as i’d left the lights on. ooops. we phoned the AA and waited. and in the time it took for the AA to come we’d sorted out various domestic organisation things we’d wanted to discuss during the weekend, so it actually turned really well!
we needed to give the car a good run to recharge the batteries so we drove an elaborately long way to Piha where we had a rather windy and a bit chilly walk
then it was over to our hotel for high tea, then snooze / book reading / olympics watching until dinner at 8pm.
we had a little walk round the grounds too before the rain and wind swept in.
this is the bar / high tea area.
here’s the clouds clearing away
and here’s our room with it’s bizarre flaps so you could talk to the person brushing their teeth from in the bedroom
this being new zealand we bumped in to some friends in the hotel who we’d met a few times at friends house. we were sat next to them at the dinner table so it was hard to pretend not to see each other!
it was jolly good!
Jane and I have a rare weekend without the girls thanks to James and Janine. We’re staying in a very posh hotel and it’s lovely. We’ll tell you more when we’re back tomorrow evening.
i worked from home today as i had a medical checkup early afternoon.
jane had her ladies prayer meeting and then went to see buzz and wendy’s new house/farm which sounded great.
girls had school then swimming in separate locations.
i went for a healthy walk whilst kezia was swimming. just what the doctor ordered.
there were some all blacks in the office today for some phone promotion. they were doing various obstacle races with a phone to show how indestructible it was. the most famous ones were dan carter and piri weepu.
otherwise work was good.
kezia had her 90 minute swimming lesson.
one of her friends lives in albany so we’ve started to do a lift share with them so that’s good.
esther’s team won their netball this evening. it was an exciting game according to jane
here’s where i had my lunch today. i sat on the yellow chair and ate food off the bowl on the green tray. the orange tray was from a previous occupant
i had my annual review this afternoon. went very well. some good phrases like ‘top notch’ and ‘everything you worked on turned out great’. yay!
we had a team coffee this morning and then i was back in the same cafe in the afternoon to meet up with our friend neil who sells life insurance to talk about, well, life insurance.
then this evening i went out with warren. we had cakes.
jane had mainly music, and then a work job planning thing and then school. and the girls had school and then violin
big news this morning was a volcano had erupted 250km south from us in the middle of the south north island. it’s far enough away not to worry us and the wind blew the ash cloud eastwards. exciting though. and no one knows if it’ll happen again. there’s some nice headlines in this article
i walked to work via the olympic fanzone. it turned out to be a rather small fan zone with just two people in it. there was a sofa looking at a different tv but it was only big enough for two people. here’s the medal score board from this morning. did i mention the aussies have been supporting NZ ? this is quite a funny
jane had parent interviews at her school. esther had tennis.
and it was light when i arrived in auckland this morning and when i got home. yay.
this evening i walked down to the sea whilst esther was tennising. that was nice
this volcano, just 15km last blew up 600 years ago and is dormant. that’s good.
(updated – volcano was in the north island. i knew that, but clearly my typing fingers didn’t!)