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well, if you guessed we’d spent the day unpacking then you’re correct.  although we did venture out to church in the morning, and jane went to our old house to put the bins out.  and get some fish and chips.

mobile coverage in the house is very flakey, so it looks like the previous owners have set up a 3G signal enhancer. but this means my Telecom mobile and broadband wireless dongle thing won’t work in some rooms as it’s swamped by the Vodafone signal.  And in some rooms it’s the other way round.  so that’s something to work on.

otherwise i’ve been busy setting up technology and juggling furniture whilst jane has been helping the girls and sorting the kitchen etc.

it’s been a really lovely day so we sat in the garden for our lunch and morning tea and it was almost too hot!

i got bitten by a mozzie at our old house before we left and my hand has really swollen up.  ideally i’d take some antihistamine’s but we don’t know where they are.  d’oh.

otherwise, we really love our new house, which is great news!

No broadband until possibly Thursday and no vodafone mobile so apologies for short update

The packers only had a small van so did four trips in all.  Debbie did sterling cleaning work in both houses and we can hardly move from boxes

[the view from our old house as i sat waiting for the movers to turn up]

The girls went to Wendys house during to day and a man from Aberdeen move our trampoline.

[a fancy parrot outside our old house]

Now we’re off to biffy’s for dinner whilst esther goes to a church party.

Write on my mobile phone during a brief gust of signal

[now updated with pictures]

I’m writing this from my iPad in our old house so apologies for the lack of pictures! Hopefully yesterday’s photos have appeared on a post below so you’ll know what things looked like yesterday at least. [photos now added!]

[telecom ceo left, john key right]

Today has been a funny day. I drove in to work and was at my desk by 6.45 to get various documents out before I spent the day in a meeting room doing a video conference with the rest of my team. I was meant to be presenting a section of the day with a colleague buy she was off with food poisoning so it was left to me. But that all went well so hooray for that.   

And at lunch prime minister John key came to our office to launch a new charitable foundation which is pretty cool. It was quite amazing to see so many people in all the public spaces in our new building. Pictures tomorrow.

Whilst I was mucking about at work Jane was supervising the packers. Most things are packed. No where near as thoroughly as when we moved here, but still a good job I think ( though to be honest I’m only judging by the outside of the boxes rather than how they put stuff inside ).

There was some confusion over whether things would be loaded on to a lorry and left in a car ark over night, but Jane pout a stop to that so it’s the big move tomorrow.

Jane got the key to the house early afternoon but only went in at 4ish once the cleaners had gone. There’s still some more cleaning to do but generally they’ve left it in a lovely condition. I drove straight there from work which was exciting.

Then we headed back to our old house, load up the car with stuff from our corral ( with some help from Debbie ) which we dropped off at the new house. Esther loved exploring every nok and cranny. And kezia met us there a little later after her friend dropped her off from swimming.

This evening we had takeaway at Debbie and warrens and are now sitting in our freezing house dreaming of tomorrow in our lovely warm new house!

I’ll slot pictures of this day back in to this post tomorrow if our new broadband gets installed in time!

See ya

 

here’s what our house looked like on thursday evening.  by now it’ll be even more packed

i’ll give you a proper update when we’re properly back connected

you can see our ever expanding ‘corral’ area below of stuff we’re moving ourselves …

well, it all happened.  we bought a house.  everything happened very smoothly – at 9.30 the bank phoned to say they’d set up all our loans and sent the moment to the solicitor and at 10.30 i got a call from the assistant solicitor saying all was good and we were now the owners of a nice shiny new house (currently with people in it for one more day)

my day consisted of a 2 hour meeting which i was chairing and a 4 hour video conference (which i wasn’t chairing thankfully) and a few other meetings in between, so was rather hectic.  meanwhile jane welcomed the packing people who were two people who looked about 12 according to jane!  they worked 8 until 3pm and one of them is coming back tomorrow to finish off.

jane had coffee with her chum alex and generally felt like she was a spare part

 

this evening we ate beans and toast off the floor (well, off plates which were on a flattened packing box on the floor).  they’d packed the tin opener though unfortunately so esther and i drove round to debbie and warren’s so we could borrow theirs’.  they chuckled at our choice of beans: ‘heinz beans, english recipe’

 

i’m typing on the last operating computer in the house, and i fear i need to disconnect this one in a minute.  The ipad will be our life support for a few more hours.  I’ll preload tomorrow’s family blog post in case we don’t have t’internet.  Hopefully we’ll be back online saturday afternoon NZ-time in our new house.

see yas

busy days for all.  between meetings i spotted an all black having his photo taken with anyone who was interested.  there were quite a lot of people who were interested.

i had a pile of meetings but managed to grab lunch with a friend/colleague who was up from windy wellington.

jane seems to have done loads about the house and this evening i unplugged and prepared the washing machine and bumble drier for transit.  apparently the packers are coming at 7.30am tomorrow, and probably the same on friday before we move on saturday.

jane was also a heroine today as she rescued a friend’s daughter who had forgotten her bank card but only realised after she’d filled her car up with petrol.  d’oh! i bought a new DSL router as the old one kept rebooting due to overheating i think.  so that’s exciting.

i worked from home today as we had to go to the solicitors this afternoon to sign various documents for the new house.

i’d only communicated with the solicitor via email and telephone so we all had a guess what ‘sue’ would look like.  Jane said she’d be a man and kezia said she’d have a beard.   we sat in reception and the first person we saw walk by was a bearded man.  kezia proudly proclaimed she and mummy were right!

In fact it was a lady.  lots of signing happened then we went home

jane’s done some more house moving organising and went to the house to do the pre handover check (to make sure they hadn’t smashed any windows or anything) which they hadn’t.  she said the house was warm, but not massively so.  when she came back lizzie (who rented this house before us) popped round for morning tea, and this afternoon jane went for a walk with debbie.

this evening esther has had tennis and i’ve avoided the bedtime routine (including music practices) by having to work late to make up for the missed hour when we were at the solicitors.  And esther wrote some thank you letters.

so that’s us

kezia got her school report which was really good, so hoorah for her. Add esther’s diarama thing got really good marks so she was pleased with that

jane had a really productive day doing moving preparedness which involved mowering the lawn in a rare moment of dry weather and having coffees with chums. 

i transferred our final parts of the deposit to the solicitors, and got the solicitor to agree / confirm that it’s this friday we’re moving and not one in two weeks time like her letter said!

This evening there’s been lots of skyping and we’re expecting more mad weather. here’s a few people’s comments. so far so good here though.

it was a really stormy night and it looks set to continue for a few more days.  so that should be exciting!  most people don’t worry about the tornadoes, squalls and gale force winds so life goes on!

kezia had her flippa ball practice at 7.30am.  esther and i walked up to church for the last time from our current house and met them there.

 

after church we went to a cafe with various people from church (and i ate the chocolate brownie shown above).  Then this afternoon esther worked on her diarama (i suggested she took some tablets).  It’s of some early NZ settlers.  there are people spearing fishes, starting their own churches

and dying at an early age.

we had our last open home today.  last with us living here at least.  our landlords are selling the property by auction on the 28th July.  you can see the listing here whilst it’s available.   whilst that was on we bought some plastic boxes and went to the library.

then this evening kezia had flippa ball and scored a goal (a simpson first) and then this evening we’ve done various skypings and everyone is pretty exhausted

jane’s now on holiday so she’s project managing the house move. i think this will be mostly done over coffees with friends as she catches up with people she hasn’t seen for yonks due to being so busy with school.

esther woke up to find she had turned 12.  good for her

so the day started with card opening and present opening

after breakfast i whizzed off to get jane’s ipod replaced (which they did and gave her the latest version as a replacement because we’d paid for a special warranty thing).

 

and then esther’s friends sunny, lauren and amy arrived along with kezia’s friend heather.  after morning tea they went swimming then came back for a massive slap up fish and chip supper.  

after stuffing themselves with food they then went on the trampoline until it was time to go home

we then had a couple of hours of home work/computer mending (success for me!)

and then jane’s friend alex came round with her husband.  we went back to the fish and chip shop for another pile of fish and chips (the lady behind the counter was both pleased and a little concerned!)

kezia proudly pointed out she’d had fish and chips four times this week.  bad parenting. sorry

then this evening we’ve been to jane’s school to watch their production of Jesus Christ Superstar which was really professional. 

 

meanwhile it’s been a bit of a wild weathery day although we avoided the worst of it here.

 

here is esther pointing at her birthday cake.

(by the way, i’m now on google plus if anyone wants an invite – just drop me an email)