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Here we are at Los Angeles transit cupboard

kezia went to school today but the rest of us were home (except when jane popped out this morning for coffee with debbie).

i worked from home and joined one meeting by conference call which came to an abrupt end when my phone ran out of battery

and soon we’ll be off to the airport so we’re early enough (hopefully) to get my seat allocation changed so we can all sit together.

so there we go.  see you on the other side

[still a couple of hours before we leave but i’ll soon need to start unplugging computery bits]

kezia had her prize giving evening.  no prizes this year, but she did us proud in the kapa haka group and choir singing.  and she looked very pretty!

after prize giving we went to Denny’s with her friend Logan and his family which was really nice

i was sooo tired today.  various people told me i looked tired and some of my meetings were a blur. doesn’t bode well for jet lag meetings on Friday in the britain.  ho hum.  i got an hour’s sleep before we went to kezia’s prize giving which seems to have done the trick though.

i’m working from home so i get a chance to pack my suitcase before we fly off tomorrow evening.  so much to do!

busy day with the ports today – starting with a trip to the bank to open their NZ bank account, then back home for a swim, then off to devonport for a mooch round the shops, some lunch and an explore of the tunnels.  this evening jane cooked us an excellent xmas dinner. andy and i went for a walk round the cemetery then everyone went to bed.

here’s the evidence:

 

 

 

 

i had a very nice time at the airport last night watching people arrive through this door.  it’s fascinating to watch peoples’ reactions.  and at around 1am our friends andy, gill, adam and luke arrived. we had a good drive home and they headed to bed.

this morning everyone was up fairly early having had various amounts of sleep.

the day started with various technologies (including trying to type my long wifi password in to ipods) before andy, gill and i went to pick up their hire car. 

Meanwhile adam and luke and esther and kezia went swimming.

then we drove over to Long Bay for a picnic.  It was incredibly windy but we found shelter behind some trees.

once we’d run out of beach fun we headed back home to regroup before driving in to Auckland to look at a couple of shops and have an ice cream

we met up with various church chums at 4.45pm and went in to the glow stick party

 

that finished around 7.45 so we had an emergency mcdonalds before heading home for beds.

here are some fruit trees on the way to the arena where the light party was held

jane took kezia to swimming at 8am this morning and i took esther to tennis.  it was a long morning, but esther won her doubles match (with a friend).  that’s her first win of the term so she was delighted!

then alex and malcolm arrived for a tour of the house so they know what to do when they are house sitting over xmas

esther and i delivered a load of leaflets for the church service tomorrow which was fun.  we got to see lots of different sorts of post boxes.

we also had to pick up some tickets from Janine so we went through the walk way that esther takes to school.  esther said “it’s just like walking through a rain forest.  i’m so lucky to get to do this every morning and evening”

otherwise it’s been all tidying and cleaning and packing as we’re rapidly running out of free time to do anything

kezia spent the day at her friend emily’s

and in a minute i’m going to bed for an hour before waking up to go to the airport to pick up our friends the Ports.

i got the 6am flight this morning to wellington, which meant 4am alarms and a 4.30am drive to the airport.

i went early so i could have breakfast with our good friend eugene who moved to wellington just over a year ago

the flight was amazingly still making for a very peaceful landing (i think Wellington have leant their wind to Scotland for a few days)

it was great to catch up on nearly a year’s worth of eugene’s news  (i haven’t been to wellington for months with work due to budget restrictions)

i was in wellington for a kick off meeting for my new team, and things look really good i think.

here we are deep in discussion.  i ran a little session in the morning which went ok too

after that we had bagels on the roof before a few more meetings

 

i even got to catch up with a really nice wellington based colleague who has just taken redundancy to become … a full time vicar.  excellent work sir.

before we knew it the day was over and we bundled ourselves in to a taxi back to the airport for another lovely flight back to auckland. then drove from the airport to the millennium pool to meet jane and the girls whereupon we went home for pizza and television.

esther did some more work at the church office, then came back with her friend lauren to swim in the pool.  later fleur and her daughters came over and there was more swimming

here’s the same view as seen in the morning but from the other side (you can see the ‘biscuit tin’ wellington stadium below and in one of the photos above

everyone is even more exhausted than yesterday thanks to long days.  we’ve got a big day of tidying ahead tomorrow (after swimming and tennis).  wish us luck!

sorry, really tired, not entirely sure what everyone else got up to, and lots of computer problems.  so here’s some telecom christmas tree instead.

busy day at work for me, then work drinks (i drank just fruit juice)

i think esther went to a school friend’s house for the day

and kezia had school

and jane possibly had her last day at Kristin and had to wear a fancy gown for prize giving.

i need to leave home just after 4.30am tomorrow to get the first plane to wellington for the day

this time next week we’ll be at the airport.  we’ve so much to do before then (including having house guests for a couple of days) we’re not quite sure how we’ll be ready.

 

one of my colleagues was 40 today so he brought in a cake to work and he and i went out for a curry at lunch.  unfortunately the cake, curry, coke and cookies came back to haunt me by early evening and i’m feeling a bit peeky.  at least i proved my temporary self imposed chocolate and fizzy drinks ban was working.  shame.  otherwise work was good.

jane had her worst class for the last time and took the car in to be repairs (amazingly still under warranty).   kezia had school and i don’t know what esther did.  i think she was going in to the church office again

after school they had their violin lessons and then kez had swimming.