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i was at church this morning for 7am to help with the set up, and then played bass in the morning service.  it was a good lively set of songs too.

jane and the girls skyped jane’s parents this morning before church

then this afternoon we did more home stuff as esther’s still a bit under the weather

we dropped kezia off at a sleep over around 4pm today then drove over to a little village on the water we hadn’t been to before. 

then this evening the three of us and the irvine’s went to an excellent japanese restaurant where they cook the food on a hot plate built in to your table

at various points they also flicked food in to people’s mouths and chucked knives around and set things on fire

 

all very exciting.

kezia’s not great at sleep overs so hopefully she’ll not phone us up in the night and ask to be brought back!

 

God save the queen

jane and esther were up early for a cycle round devonport with their chums. esther has been a bit under the weather with a cold so we all agreed we needed a day at home.

so the girls did various electronic screen based activities and i spent hours trying to work out my UK taxes (or at least working out what i needed to find out before i can do them)

this evening we all went round to Janine’s house where we had hot dogs, hearty soup and good chatting.  the grown ups had planned to watch a DVD but we all enjoyed chatting so much we forgot until it was too late.

 

today is the first day of winter and it’s be a nice day for it.

jane did shopping then met her friend mara, then did some school work

this evening there was swimming for the girls and gym for jane

i had some good meetings at work and managed to slope off work at 3.30pm as it’s a long weekend and i was in at just after 7am

Today I reached the bottom of the ironing basket and look who was lurking there! Dave wore him to band practice but no-one noticed (or dared comment anyway).

Dave was in a long meeting at work today. The girls went to school. Kezia has been selected for the kids’ lit team, so was very pleased.

Netball this evening – Esther’s team lost sadly.

i worked from home today as i had a really sore throat. got plenty done though so that’s good. (no photos though, sorry)

jane had her ‘mainly music’ group this morning and a lesson this afternoon.  she spent the rest of her waking hours doing reports.

both girls had violin after school.  esther’s practicing her exam pieces.

kezia and jane went to the millennium  institute this evening for swimming/gym.

jane had her morning of church music today and i think went in to school (we’ve not caught up yet – but i did get an official email from her as music coordinator so i know she did that bit)

i walked to work and saw this giant pile of sea bollards next to a fishing boat

i’ve managed to pick up a new project at work which could be fun

 

this evening i picked up esther from tennis.  she was the only one in her squad to turn up so effectively had a private lesson for an hour.  the teacher was impressed by esther’s improvement and said she might benefit from more private lessons

 

kezia and jane have been out at the millennium stadium this evening for swimming/gymming.  and now it’s now.

i went in to kezia’s school this morning to teach her class about taking photos.  we had a great time i think.  the kids heads didn’t explode whilst i whizzed through my 120 slides (although some looked pretty close to it).

and then they went out to take some photos and got some really good shots by the looks of things.

jane took esther to school then headed over to the gym before spending the rest of the day marking i think

 

i spent the rest of my day working from home, although i did phone the tax office at one point.  they have a thing here where you can request they work out your tax for the previous year, but it’s a gamble because if you ask them and they find you owing you must pay it.  so they give you an online tool which allows you to work out whether you are likely to get a refund or not before you ask for a proper calculation.  And they make it clear you can decide not to request a calculation if you think you’ll owe them tax ! 

 

life group tonight.

church at 7am for me to set up sound stuff.  8.15 for the girls.  service was good and i got some good feedback on sound.   i was also showing a guy who used to do sound how to use the new equipment which went ok.

after church wayne and eleanor (they are the british couple who own the bach on waiheke island we stayed at nearly a year ago). 

then jane was off with kezia for an afternoon of swimming races – kezia swam, jane timed.  kezia came first in one of her races.

she was just back in time for a bit of tea before i took kez to flippa ball. Unfortunately there was only 6 in their team and they need 7 plus reserves normally.  they lost 8-3, but not bad seeing as there weren’t enough of them and they all played all the way through.

in amongst the day i’ve been working on my photo presentation for the kezia’s class tomorrow morning.  And doing the church podcast (the lady who was rostered to do it had even more troubles than i did). 

and i’m feeling like i’m going down with the cold kezia had.  aspirins and bed.

the girls guinea pigs have grown rather large.

jane and esther got up early to be at devonport with their bikes by 7am for a nice cycle around the area with our friends biffy and malcolm and a bunch of other cyclists.  they had a great time

it turned out kezia was ill yesterday so was up in the night feeling rather sorry for herself, so she spent all day in her pyjamas watching telly, and playing games on the telly and using the computer on the telly.

i spent most of the day preparing slides and photos for kezia’s class on monday.  i’m speaking to them for half an hour and currently have 122 slides.  i may need to do some refining tomorrow.

esther and i did pop out this morning to drop off some old computer stuff at the e-waste pickup facility which was visiting albany this weekend.  it’s a very popular and excellent service – you just put all your old computer junk, tellies, video players etc in the back of your car and just drive by their temporary collection point, they open your boot and life everything out and sort it in to piles for recycling

then this evening jane and i went out to ‘dinners for 8’ which is where 8 (semi) randomly picked people from church meet up for dinner.   we had a great time.

another exhausting day

much excitement this morning as i drove across town for a breakfast presentation by John Key (the prime minister).  the telecoms industry group had a table booked and my boss couldn’t make it and passed the invite to me. 

the occasion was the morning after the budget where the prime minister and the finance minister give speeches to the party faithful in auckland and wellington respectively.

i could tell it was going to be eventful when i saw a group of protesters and journalists arriving at 7am with their placards and loud hailers.

i walked through the protesters without any trouble, but once we were inside it sounded like things got a bit more exciting (by new zealand standards) and the prime minister was delayed whilst the security concerns were dealt with

 

he ended up arriving about an hour late. 

the protests were reported as rather more dramatic than they were in the local paper. 

The finance minister separately commented on the lacklustre protesting down in wellington

but then he stayed around at the end just chatting.  i bumped in to a chap i used to work with in my old Easynet days called Sean (left most in one of the photos above) and we were chatting until we realised we were the last people left, with just us, John Key, his private secretary and two security bods. 

so we spent a rather pleasant ten minutes chatting to the prime minister about all sorts of stuff economic and personal.  he’s just so laid back.  i kept thinking ‘oi, shouldn’t you be running the country rather than speaking to a couple of english chancers?’.

jane had her prayer meeting this morning and i think she was teaching this afternoon.

the girls had school – kezia and i found a piece of music last night which a school robot is going to dance to.  it’s this (yay for spotify finally being available in the UK now).  and her friends liked it so that’s good

this evening esther had swimming but kezia didn’t have hers as she was being tired/ill.  but actually seemed very lively later on

 

then this evening we had our neighbours round for a slap up roast. jane asked if they’d put a shower cap over the dips they had brought.  but apparently it’s  a specially designed food covering thing. 

but a shower cap would be a good alternative