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very social work day.  it started with us taking a team photo of us doing lunch together.  so we all pointed at an apple.

then there was morning tea for a colleague who is leaving

and then we went to see my colleague Sasha get ‘admitted to the bar’ which means he became an official NZ lawyer.  Simon (on the right in the picture below) is an existing NZ lawyer so he was there in his official duty to put him forward or some such words.

there were plenty of photos then we went for lunch with the rest of the team

jane went in to school to watch a lesson again and had her new prayer meeting this morning.

the fibre guys started preparing our fibre connection in the street ready for Monday

kezia’s swimming lesson was in the sea today at Long Bay (as you do) followed by a BBQ.   Esther’s was at the usual place so i picked her up, then took her to a church organised fun evening at her school (with 150 kids turning up so things took a little longer to do than expected including waiting for ice creams.  hey ho.

kezia went to a school disco after her swimming and jane and i managed to go for a quick walk round the block during the hour when they were both out

we’ve not got much planned for tomorrow so hopefully we’ll have a lie in.  hopefully.

 

in harbour news, the last of the volvo boats were lifted down from their mending perches today and were bobbing about and racing around this afternoon

there was still a bit of mending going on.

jane was set for a nice day of skyping and coffeeing but ended up doing a full day at Kristin doing supply teaching.  which ended up being good as she’s got lots of revising to do before she starts her teaching proper so she could do it whilst supervising classes today. 

esther had tennis and then there was homework

and now it’s now

 

the other main news of the day is my brother had a baby at 5.30am after a dash across the country.  all very exciting.  everyone is well and the name is pending.  though we’ve been calling him ‘edd-e-boi’ since we found out he was a boy.

Boats are being lifted down today in preparation for Sunday, when they are off again.

 

Esther is back from camp where she had a great time.

Kezia has been practising her conducting skills ready for Sunday with the Auckland Philharmonic Orchestra.

I met the students who will be in my class and observed them with their old teacher.

Dave had a meeting about our new fibre to the home which will arrive on Monday and didn’t go to a concert, which he had tickets for, because he is too old and tired.

The thing Dave’s been working on for the last year was officially launched yesterday via a press release

http://www.tcf.org.nz/news/90f9d984-a9fb-48d8-941f-fb911c02369f.html

and

http://www.tcf.org.nz/news/2ecaac9d-5aa1-4b8a-8827-96c3cb3cd0b1.html?PathId=62117364-1a7d-41dc-a142-7ae8f2ca064a

” The Working Party that has delivered this piece of work needs to be publicly recognised for their efforts and my heartfelt thanks goes to all of them.”

Today I observed a lesson done in the total immersion style of teaching French, which I have to learn very quickly. Eeek. Then the rest of the day was spent at the church office.

Kezia had an interclub swim meet this evening and did very well in freestyle and backstroke.

Esther is still at camp, so no idea what she has been doing. I’m ashamed to say I’m not sure what Dave did either.

jane was meant to be going in to her new school today to watch a lesson of the class she’s taking over, but her boss got the timetables mixed up meaning jane suddenly had an empty day

 

so, after doing her exercise class (the bikey one i think) she rang me up and we decided to have lunch together down by the waterfront.  there’s loads going on down there at the moment as the Volvo round the world boat race is stopped up for a week in auckland

the boats are all there for people to see whilst they get cleaned up and mended before the next leg

so that was lovely.

kezia and jane did some shopping and then kezia had a violin lesson which was spent going through her conducting piece for next Sunday afternoon

 

and esther got dispatched to her school camp nicely.  she’s back on wednesday

a lady came round to pick up a bedside table we sold on trademe and it was one of kezia’s old classmate’s mum!  small world.

and this evening we’ve got our life group.

i was at church for 7.15 this morning as i was on sound again.  that’s my last time for a while i think

there were some strange things going on, but i think we ended up with the a good sound.  after that i went straight on to a training session on recording the talks so finally got home around 1.30pm rather exhausted (so i had a little sleep)

jane helped with the kids group at church and they went to the library whilst i was at my training thing.

kezia’s team won their flippa ball game again.  kezia got 2 goals of their 6-1 win. 

and this evening i went for a walk with warren to get up to my 10,000 steps

at some point in the day we managed to sell kezia’s old desk for $1.50 on an auction website and the people came and collected it in the rain (and gave us $2!).  we saw them 15 minutes later when we left for flippa ball still trying to work out how to fit it in their car.

and this afternoon jane has been helping esther get her kit together for her school camp which starts tomorrow.  we don’t know where the camp actually is, only that it’s three hours drive south east near where that boats crashed on to the reef a few months back.

exciting stuff.

 

here’s some dancers (see comments at the bottom of the post)

usual saturday earlyness with both girls at their weekend sports by 8am.  here’s kezia’s swimming pool location.  it’s a heated pool and at this time of year still has its sides off.  she’s only got 2 more saturdays doing this then her training moves to tuesday after school at the millennium institute which is closer and better for jane in the gym

knowing there wouldn’t be many more chances i headed over to the local shops for a walk round and i was not disappointed

here are just a few of the excellent signs i saw

this was written in classic ‘eats shoots and leaves’ style

and on the butchers window was a poster for a missing cat.  a dark thought crossed my mind …

  

enough of that.  

jane took esther to her tennis.  esther won the doubles (yay) and had a close game on her single match.  each week she gets better and she absolutely loves it

we regrouped back at the house and after a bit of guinea cuddling we went in to town to go to the pasifika festival which is a celebration of all the pacific island cultures in new zealand

we thought it might be a bit more touristy, but it was actually a celebration for each of the pacific island communities to get together and have a great time

it was free to get in and once inside the place was split in to 10 villages of 10 different islands, all with something different going on.

 

kezia enjoyed these men so much she wanted to take some photos (oh dear).  i asked jane if she liked the oiled men, but thought them too slick.

we shared a water melon ice cream thing

kez and i just ate the vanilla ice cream and fruit due to our lentern restriction

it was so busy though.  quite amazingly so.  and hot.  we were there for 3 hours or so and just managed to walk round the entire site and watch a few bits on the way.  you could easily have been there 10-5 and not seen anything

and there were some great characters to watch

about that video at the top – about half way through we realised that the gender of at least some of the dancers wasn’t as clear as we initially thought …

nice walk to work this morning after yesterday’s rain.  sunrise over the silent auckland port. silent due to industrial dispute.  hey ho.

jane had a full day of supply/relieving at her old school today. 

and the brilliant news is she’s been asked to teach a class for the rest of the school year which means she’ll be on the payroll and therefore more likely to get more supply work.  nicely.  it’s just 4 hours every 7 school days, but that’s ok. 

kezia had her school try outs for interschool swimming.  unfortunately she had a goggles malfunction which meant she had to borrow some but they didn’t fit properly so she didn’t swim well and so she didn’t get in which is a shame.  but she doesn’t seem too disappointed. 

both girls have had swimming this evening during which time jane went to her mad gym class.  some class members stopped at one point so the whole class got punished!  and she does this voluntarily.  i think she’s enjoying it though (she’s now finished the trial 10 days and has signed up properly)

 

then this evening we decided what we want to do tomorrow.  we had three options so we did a weighted vote things.  you’ll have to wait until tomorrow to see what it was

it was raining this morning so i drove to work which meant i didn’t walk enough steps during the day to achieve my challenge-me goals.  so i went for a walk this evening with esther then on my own.  there was a lovely sunset over the creek viewed from the cemetery

there seems to be a craze for kids to drawer all over our road with big chalks.  they soon get washed away (the drawings, not the kids) so it’s no bother and reflects how little traffic there is on the road.  and there’s always something new to see!

the girls had school then esther had tennis lessons

 

jane met her friend alex and the house looks very tidy and clean so i suspect there was much cleaning activity today too.

jane had a dejavu day today as she was ‘relieving’ (doing supply teaching) at her old school.  everything was just as she had left it and there were using her resources and things from when she was there.  Hopefully they’ll be a bit more supply coming her way, but it depends on budgets etc.  such is the modern way.

meanwhile i walked a long way to work to try and get my step count up for my physical challenge at work

i walked by these silos which contain highly flammable things.  in the UK these would be surrounded by CTV cameras and security patrols.  here they’re not bothered

there were also fishermen doing their fishing and catching actual fishes. imagine that.

and the sea was nice and calm.

big activity at work has been choosing our team photo for the Challenge Me challenge thing.  i’ve come up with a couple of suggestions and i think we’ve narrowed it down to one.  i’ll share it with you once we’ve made the final decision.

this evening esther and kezia had violin then kezia had swimming.  jane was going to go to the gym whilst kezia was swimming but she needed to talk to kezia’s violin teacher about the conducting thing so she wasn’t sure if she’d make it.  maybe next week instead

also this evening i picked up a vital wire for our church sound system which i asked someone to modify.  unfortunately we’ve no way of testing it until sunday morning so i really hope it’ll work …