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i picked up esther from tennis this evening and whilst jane and kezia were at the gym/swimming we went in to auckland to visit the auckland gallery

there has been an exhibition on Degas to Dali on which shows a brief history of modern painting and tonight was the last late night opening before the show ends.  it was absolutely packed.

there was no filming in the exhibition but they are quite relaxed about photography/filming in the rest of the gallery.   we’d been in to the mirror cupboard thing before so whizzed in there on the way out

 

jane had a busy day at the church office but will need to pop in tomorrow too.

i had a busy day with lots of meetings, but that was all good.

Here is some food which Pack and Save thinks we miss. Things I have bought from this section (although not all in one go as they are v expensive) are paxo, bisto, baked beans, heinz tomato soup and shreddies.

Gareth and Amanda brought some rich tea biscuits and hobnobs to life group. Dave had a hobnob. We live on the edge here you know.

People went to work and school and Esther and her friendmade some goodies for a charity cake sale.

i was at church for 7am this morning for the usual set up and music playing.  there were some baptisms this morning which meant there was a big pool of water on the stage.

during the first song we managed to trip 3 separate power trips which was quite impressive.  less impressive was not realising 2 of the trips had tripped so we had to do some speedy re-plugging during the song.  but we managed to mend it in time for me to play the last two bars of the song!

jane the girls then went to the de kwant’s house for morning tea because their daughter was one of the baptism-ees, whilst i did created the podcast and did various domesticy things.

this afternoon kezia went to her friend Emily’s house and the rest of us went to buy shoes.  we all failed, although we did pick up esther’s school shoes from the cobblers.

this evening kezia had flippa ball.  bad day again though with a 7-1 defeat.

 

jane and i didn’t wake up until 9am this morning which was good going.

then, after some speed tidying of the house, we hit the road and drove up north for 45 minutes to our favourite cafe for a late breakfast

 

after that we went a bit further north, then west to a sticky out bit of land on the kaipara harbour to see what we could see. 

 

our first stop was Port Albert to see if there was anything to see.  there was a nice jetty, but not much else.

 

so we went further down the road to the atiu creek scenic reserve.

the views were great and we did 8 geocaches along the way.  there were another 25 to find i think if we’d been extra keen and willing to do a 4 hour walk instead of the 2 we did.  we went the yellow route above in case you are interested.  and if not, why not?  ok. you don’t have to explain.

 

as usual we were both too hot and too cold whilst walking and managed to avoid torrential downfalls of rain which happened only whilst we were driving!

after all our exhaustions we drove to the pakari hot springs which were amazingly empty. i suspect because of the rugby. we’ve got in to a nice routine now where jane and i get a private spa (which is only a little bit extra on the entry for the two of us) whilst the girls fling themselves down the flume.

 

after half an hour we got dressed and sat watching the girls in the outside pool demonstrating their under water handstands

whilst i write this the girls are skyping and mario-carting their cousins in a special late night stay up!

apparently Cookie the guinea pig is showing signs of perking up which is good.  she had a proper wash today and a nice blow dry with the hair drier, so she’ll be the envy of the other two guinea pigs. hopefully the good progress will continue.

i drove in to work today.  i’ve not been in the office for a week with the bank holiday, my day of leave, my sick day and yesterday working from home.  much the same though getting up early was a challenge. 

i had lunch with buzz and walked up to his office which is my old office, so that was interesting to see what shops etc were still there.

i got a new fibre router today as part of the trial.  it’s exactly like the old one, but with new firmware (it’s the thing on the left in the picture below)

jane went to her prayer group, school and gym

yay weekend

this cat has been hanging round the guinea big sty for a while and even had its face against the bar at one point.  but it’s not managed to get in and a flying cup of water saw him off.

unfortunately kezia guinea pig cookie has been a bit off colour so jane and kezia took her to the vet this evening and came back with a load of medicine so hopefully she’ll perk up.

i went to the dentist today.  something i’ve been putting off for years.  i had to say i was dreading it, but the dentist was very nice (kezia and jane go to him too) and i passed the test so that’s done for another year (miraculously as i was convinced my whole mouth is falling apart)

jane did lots of teaching preparation and this afternoon had coffee with her chum

this evening was band practice for me. and now it’s now.

i spent most of the day sleeping which was handy as i spent most of the day not sleeping due to incredibly itchy bites from our trip to the sand dunes on monday.

jane did her church kids music thing and school.  the girls had school and then violin then kezia had swimming

esther had an ICAS science competition/ test thing, and separately got this silver award for achievement in science

 

this evening the house is full of church workship leaders as they are having an evening selecting new songs.

i had the day off work because esther had a teacher only day.  but then she ended up spending the day with a friend so i was going to go to work.  But kezia asked if i could go and watch her doing ‘Kids Lit Quiz’ as her school were in the Auckland heat.

so after dropping esther off at her korean friend’s house and a quick whizz round the supermarket, i headed over to school and to pick up my three allotted students (one was Kez) to drive across town to the posh public school where the quiz was held

the girls did really well considering they were amongst the youngest in the competition

kezia was in albany primary A (about half way down the right hand column).  not bad at all.   it turns out esther was nearly in it this year too but her team mates couldn’t attend the practices due to timetable clashes so she didn’t go.  that would have been funny.

jane had her church job and kristin.   esther had tennis tonight so i picked her up (after a hand over of kezia in a carpark as our paths crossed on the way back from lit quiz).  esther and i ate posh burgers

 

this evening jane took kezia to a swimming competition.  kez got two personal bests.  yay

i’m feeling really fluey in the head so i’m taking tomorrow off sick.

after our picnic lunch we drove back up the road to where we’d seen loads of cars parked when we first arrived

it was the start of some tracks leading to lake wainamu which i’d heard about.

basically, the walk follows a stream round some dunes until it reaches a nice lake.  and in summer people swim in the lake

kiwi kez had her shoes off straight away (i don’t think she wore them at all on the walk) and walked down the river rather than the footpath

this was our first sight of the dunes.  they were big but we didn’t really get an idea of the scale at this point

so we walked up them and along to the other side where the lake is and found lots of people attempting to throw themselves down the dunes

if this was the britain you’d not be allowed to go anywhere near them as they’d be too precious and too dangerous. 

but this is new zealand, so ‘be lucky’!

we’d not taken anything slidey but that didn’t worry kezia who ran up and down a couple of times.  and even swam down at one point

we then dropped down to the stream round the other side of the dunes and followed the lake back to the carpark

 

there were just enough other people there to give us people to watch without it in any way feeling crowded

 

at the end of the walk we headed back to the place we had our picnic for some hot chips and drinks.  Kezia had a fluffy

 

then this evening we started watching a new DVD series having finished the Te Radar living off the land series.  we’re watching on ‘off the rails’ which works its way round new zealand roughly based on where old (and some existing) train lines went/go.

here’s a day in two halves because i took too many photos and have been a bit rubbish at editing them down.

  

the day started with some skyping of my dad, and jane went out for a run

then i went to pick up kezia from her sleep over party.  the party with in a life-style block which is a sort of mini-farm / small holding type thing which is popular.  they had cows

kezia said she only got an hour’s sleep so we were fearful for a tricky day, but actually she was fantastic. 

we drove over to bethell’s beach which is directly west of where we live.   it’s the next beach south from muriwai which is the place with the gannet colony we’ve visited a number of times.

anyway, the weather looked a bit dodgy so we went for a walk to see what we could see

and mostly what we could see was the sea. 

but it was very dramatic west coast big wave crashing sea.  with a great skies

to get to this beach we had to wade through a really fast flowing river which meant shoes and socks off and rolled up trousers.  the water was cold, but the black sand was fairly warm thanks to the sun so it was all good

we then watched the waves for a bit before climbing over a mini dune back to bethell’s beach and the car park

jane had made us a nice picnic which we ate on a picnic table

 

 

to be continued …