Blog

Jane and the girls had a very sociable day today with the gang and kids coming round this morning and the next door neighbours and kids (and grandma) coming round this afternoon.  esther proudly told me she’s eaten nothing but cake and 2 satsumas all day until dinner time.

I had a long day at work which was spent mostly helping/encouraging someone to extract a load of data from a spreadsheet before she went away from the office for a few days.  it was quite important because i need it for something else i’m getting hassled about.  but unfortunately, she went before sending me the final results.  i waited at my desk until 6pm before i found out she’d left an hour before.  d’oh.  not sure what i’m going to do on that one.

As most of you will know, we’re coming back to the UK for Christmas this year, with the girls leaving New Zealand a week before me so they can spend longer with friends and stay for a few days up in Nottingham with Jane’s sister.   I suggested to my boss that i could perhaps also go a week earlier than planned and schedule a range of meetings in london with telecoms operators, analysts and the regulator. 

There’s no cost to Telecom really as it’s only $50 to change my flights and our kind friends are letting us stay in their house in Twyford. Once i’d checked there would be enough people around that week to meet with, he was happy for me to reschedule.  Which means we’ll all fly out to the UK together.  We arrive on the 14th December and i’ve got meetings from the Friday onwards.  So that also gives me an extra weekend for catching up with my chums too.  hoorah.

the girls had a busy day today.  i could tell because they’d not made much progress on the jiggy.

apparently they’d been out shopping all day, buying shoes, and visiting the dentist and generally having holiday time fun

this evening we were feeling a little tired, especially our temporary lodger Tim who’s still suffering from jetlag.  so we decided to go for a walk.

we took him to this rock, which is the Schnapper Rock that this area is named after

then we walked round to the cemetry where it chucked it down with rain.  but it was fine as we dried out at home whilst eating chocolate brownies. good

super sad about the oil spilling on the gorgeous tauranga beach where we stayed at easter last year

Dave:  law and economics seminar this morning which i went to rather than a breakfast with the opposition Labour Party.  The breakfast was good though apparently, so that might have been the better option.  i also had lunch (and ice cream) with Buzz.  i’ll let jane tell you what she got up to with the girls

We had a lazy morning and then went and did a few chores and bought a holiday jigsaw. This afternoon we took Kezia to a doctor’s appointment as she has a sore throat. We have some antibiotics to use if it doesn’t get better in a day or two. I mowed the lawn and we made a good start on the jigsaw. Lots of rain this evening.

Bye

bruce the fish died today.  that was sad.  here’s what he looks like in case you can’t remember

he’s been being a little weird all week, but particular so this morning.  by lunchtime he was gone.  so we extracted him from his tank and gave him a little burial over the back of our garden.

kezia suggested we sneak his body in to the cemetery, but we didn’t think that would be allowed.

as it happened church today was about death.  but not goldfish.

kezia had a swimming competition after church and beat her personal best times in two of her races. she beat her time by 6 seconds in one which she was very pleased about, especially as she was in the same race as some people who were in the top swimming class.   unfortunately she missed one of her races as the race marshals weren’t very good, so that was a shame.

the rest of the day we played in the garden, fiddle about with the pool a bit more (be sooo good when we can actually use it).

and mid afternoon our house guest Tim arrived.  and this evening we’ve been watching all the rugby.  Go the All Blacks.

this evening we think Kezia might have tonsillitis so that’ll be a trip to the doctor tomorrow for jane :-(  She seems ok about it though.  And so does Kezia.

another weekend of domesticness which is kezia’s favourite thing (shown here wearing her pedometer on her pyjamas for a school challenge she’s doing)

jane went for a run, i completed our visa forms which we need to submit on Friday and we did some box sorting in the garage which then needed poking through the new loft hatch.  we’ve nearly filled the roof but haven’t made much in roads in to the box pile.  ooops.

in other news i went to the pool shop with kezia and we bought a new long pokey stick, some replacement pipes for ‘Barry’ the pool cleaning machine and a pool thermometer.

the pool is actually not too cold despite it not being particularly hot outside yet.  Kezia is the temperature monitor and said it was 20 degrees which might be true as it wasn’t unpleasant putting the pipes together.  we’re going to get a man from the pool shop to talk us through how everything works, give us a valet and replace the sand filter with glass (nope, i’ve no idea either)

we had our new couches (sofa’s) delivered today too.  which made for excellent sitting during the rugby games this evening.  kezia and i watched the Wales / Ireland game and we all watched the first half of the England / France one, and just jane and me for the second half.  we found ourselves wanting france to win which was interesting.

Ah, and jane also did loads of tidying for our paying visitor who arrives from the UK tomorrow.

i worked from home today and it just so happened that kezia had her end of term assembly.  so i went along to watch

it turned out to be quite exciting as beyond the usual stuff of singing the national anthem, the school song and Paint It Black by the Rolling Stones (!!!) Kezia was invited up to receive her badge for being a safe going to school coordinator (or something like that)

unfortunately they spelt her name wrong on her badge so she won’t get the replacement until next term.  but it was nice to see her receive it. 

the reason i went though was for the choir item, seen (but not heard) here.

the rest of my work day was busy.

school has now finished for two week for esther and kezia and jane too which everyone is pleased about !

kezia gave me a little tour of her school work before the assembly.  here’s her picture of All Black Dan Carter.

and here’s Kezia’s raclette powerpoint if you are interested (in pdf format so it’s not quite as whizzy as the actual powerpoint, but 10th the file size!)

i had a meeting in albany this afternoon which meant i was home by 4pm, although i still had to do a bit of work.  jane’s gone to crafty chicks and kezia had a friend round after school.

sorry, no fresh photos today, but here’s a video made of photos taken by someone else.

i didn’t make this but i thought you might be interested anyway as it’s very good and shot in new zealand.

Mt Ruapehu Timelapse from Jared Brandon Productions on Vimeo.

really busy day at work for me due to a deadline for a consultation response to the regulator.  which i was contributing to.  then it was picking kez up from swimming. tea was pizza and Radar’s Patch 

i’ve had a headache for a few weeks which i think is just a stress thing.  jane suggested i did some exercise rather than going to bed so i had 45 stomp round the neighbourhood this evening.  i ended up with an even bigger headache, but it was nice to do some exploring.  slightly eery looking out across all the solar powered lights glowing in the evening gloom across the cemetry.  and here’s a toy in a gutter

some of kezia’s school friends went to the local stadium today and got to see the all blacks.  shame she didn’t get to go but good for those that did.  pictures here

less wet today so that was good

really busy day at work for me which saw me getting home after 7pm which was a bit of a shame.

jane’s having to prepare exams and things so they are ready for when the kids come back after the holidays.  she also met up with a school chum and a church chum

this afternoon some of the neighbouring kids came round and invited kezia to play out in the street with them so that was nice. 

very wet and windy today.  so wet in fact i had to empty some water out of the pool this evening (bashing my head on the washing line during the process)

i had my law and economics lecture first thing this morning .  it was raining so i decided to go straight there rather than going in to the office first to drop my laptop.  unfortunately i got a bit lost (quite impressive in auckland) and ended up wetter than if i’d gone with my usual plan.

when i did get to the office after the lecture my work laptop’s hard drive had failed so i couldn’t do any work for most of the day. usually this would be nice, but i’ve got so much i need to do by some short deadlines so it made for a pretty rubbish day (i did have a load of meetings though and it was back in action by the end of the day).

and the final org chart for the Telecom team i’m part of was published.  unfortunately my part of the organisation chart has changed slightly due to complaints from the lawyers (!) so although my job still exists, and that of two colleagues i work closely with, there’s now an extra person between us and the head of department.  so it’s effectively a demotion.  although the three of us will be able to apply for the vacant role if they decide to fill it in a few months time.

all a bit strange, but it makes things neater.  And there’s no salary reduction or responsibility change so it’s no big shakes.  typical lawyers.

sounds like the girls had good days at school, although jane seems very busy in her final week before the school holidays.