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good news, kezia has moved up a section within her swimming group so she’s now in Tadpoles A.  that was her target so she’s done good.

i worked from home today which was great.  i did have one real world meeting, but that was at an office just 10 minutes drive from here (quite near the swimming pool if you know where that is).  The meeting itself was ok, although the chap i was meeting was a bit forthright in his opinions!

jane had a couple of lessons in school today and i took kezia to and from school.  esther had a good day too i think and they all went off swimming

this evening we watched a couple of episodes of North and then jane and i watched a film. and now it’s now.

the picture above is from esther’s concert last night.  it was in the school performing arts centre which is where we have church.

and this evening at 10.30 our phone went and it was the UK bank which had our ISA telling us they’d solved the problem and we should get our money early next week.  so that’s very good news

there was another nice sunrise this morning so i took a couple of pictures as i walked to work and spotted a new footbridge has been put up since i took similar photos a week ago

everyone seemed to have a nice day today which is good.  kezia went to a friend’s house after school and we all went along to esther’s school this evening to watch a music concert. 

esther was playing her violin in a chamber orchestra and we got to hear the band she’s been invited to join with her trombone.  the rest of the bands were loud rawk guitarists.  but were mostly very good

i had to take some portraits of colleagues at work today for our team intranet thing.  here’s one i grabbed of Simon as i sat down.  i’m quite pleased with that.

 

it’s difficult not to mention the chilliness taking hold of our house.  but i won’t (today at least)

esther got her school report today and i think it’s good.  i only say ‘think’ because i can’t really understand it, despite reading the instructions.  jane says it’s good though and she knows things, so that’s good.

my presentation went well this morning.  much positive feedback.  hoorah.

jane got told by another french teacher at her school that her kids had nice french accents

and the girls both had their violin lessons and kezia her swimming.  esther and jane had a walk at long bay at some point too

it was fish and chips for tea and i’ve spent a while on the phone to britain trying to get the funds from an ISA i closed 6 weeks ago where the first cheque got lost in transit so i asked them to pay it directly in to my UK bank account but they’ve kindly sent me a cheque again despite them agreeing not to.  ho hum.  still, they are very nice about it.  i suspect we’ll get a call in the middle of the night giving us an update as they’ll not quite get the whole time difference thing

definitely feeling cold now.  meant to be 7degrees tonight.  and it feels cold in our cardboard rented house.

 

I saw this boat which seemed to have got stuck under the lip of the quay wall as the tide came up.  i had a really busy day at work – mostly spent preparing for my team presentation tomorrow morning.

esther did tennis, jane did some lessons (which went well) and kezia had a chum back after school.

and then this evening we had our life group

not much house things to update really: 

the vendors of the house we’re buying have said we can move in when we like because the place they are buying is empty.  but still looking like end of july from our perspective if the house we’re renting doesn’t sell. we’re back to two open homes this weekend.  so still no exit date from here which is a shame.

meanwhile the selling of our UK house to the current tenants is in the land of solicitors doing their solicitory things.

and that’s that.  time for bed.  see ya

you can tell when nothing much happens in our life as i name the blog post with the day of the week.  it might be boring, but it’s not wrong.

anyway, it’s starting to get a bit chillier here now.  there’s just a hint of it at the moment in the mornings and when we’re heading to bed, but we’re promised a cold snap tomorrow.

the girls had good days at school.  esther had some tricky maths homework and kezia was able to do her school current affairs quiz on the ipad as it’s all online now.  inappropriate question of the week was ‘How do police think Emma Longley may have died in London?’ The correct answer was drugs overdose, and she wasn’t called Emma either which made the google search to find the answer a bit trickier!

jane had a good day at work and i spent the day catching up on UK regulatory activities over the last 6 months in preparation for a talk i’m giving to my team on wednesday morning.  more cramming tomorrow then hopefully job done.

Hi. Jane here. Today was a good day. We went to church this morning and then to Tracey’s after church for morning tea.

Mostly after that people were doing chores, pottering, playing on the computer, planning lessons, filling in forms, tidying, practising, putting out the bins etc etc.

Esther has been wanting to get rid of her high up bed for a while. So she cleared the desk bit and Dave took a photo of it to put on trade me. Hopefully someone will come and take it away soon and then Esther will have half of our guest bed until we move and then we will see what sort of bed will go well in her new room and get it for her.

Kezia is out at the mo playing a rather late Flippa ball game for her new team. I’ll wait for the result before publishing.

 

NEWS JUST IN:  The new team won 1-0.  Kezia was in defence and stopped at least once goal.  And dave was super brave and chatted with some different parents.

lately our usual saturday routine is to get up a later than week days, spend a couple of hours messing about whlist cleaning the house and getting a bit tetchy with each other (especially in the final 30 minutes) then heading out for the rest of the day.  today was no exception

our destination today though was the dome valley which i’d been keen to go to for months. 

we started with morning tea in a cafe and a game of chinese chequers (which i won).

hey guys muddy boots outside please

we walked to the lookout which was 40 minutes up hill.  this was halfway.

 

when we got to the lookout there was a maori chap there who told us about various wildlife and its meaning for maori people.  he was just a chap on a walk, and he had an amazing face covered in tattoos, so it was nice talking to him so we could look at his tatts without appearing rude!

there was a geocache under where we stood to take these pictures, but we couldn’t get to it because of the various people around

so instead we headed back

we recorded various bits of video on the way in the style of a documentary of new zealand we’ve been watching as a family.  no idea how it’s come out

 

once we got back to the cafe we had our picnic in a cafe park at the side of the busy motorway, actually did manage to find a different geocache then drove back a long way via state highway 16

we stopped to admire the view at one point.  quite amazing

this is the big harbour to the north west of us

 

we had about 30 minutes when we got home before we went out again for a fish and chips suppa / open evening for Mainly Music where jane helps out

all the young kids brought their mums and dads along for some eating, chatting and a demonstration lesson

then after that we went straight to janine and jame’s house for a church ‘dinners at eight’ although there were only six of us.  the girls came with us and played in the other room with their friend there so we didn’t even need a babysitter.

 

 

the weather forecast says we’re in for some shocking weather over the next few days as autumn starts to finally kick in.  should be fun

jane had a nice day at school and a trip to the mall, and swimming with the girls was nice

i had an email from my mum to say she made it home safely back to blighty, so that’s excellent

we had some new chairs delivered at work

and i’m now going to play scrabble on my ipad with jane

and you can read about our balmy weather here before it all comes to a chilly end

esther got invited to join her school band with her trombone which is exciting.work was really busy for me, but that was ok.

the girls had good days at school.  and then on the way home i picked up my new ipad2 which is very exciting.

and this evening kezia and i walked down to debbie and warren’s house to pick up a parcel.  then we walked back.

it was nice and sunny today in auckland although other bits of new zealand are blowing away in the wind. 

that’s all i have to tell you today.  byeee

i worked from home today as i had to re write a massive document.  it all turned in to a bit of a disaster due to the number of edits and timings and Word being spectacularly difficult, but the end result was ok i think.

more big rain today so i drove kezia to school and picked her up half way on the way back.  then jane took the girls for their logistically challenging violin and swim squad sessions.

jane had school and went along to Mainly Music, helped tidy up and then went for coffee with her chums.

this evening we had a call from the estate agents who are selling the house we’re currently living in to say he was expecting an offer from some people tonight, so that’s positive.  The people still have to sell their own house and probably get a building survey so it still might fall through.  if it works out, we may be free from our rental contract in time to move in to our new house which would be handy.

unfortunately we still have to keep doing open homes (although only one day this weekend) in case this sale falls through or someone comes up with a better offer.

the picture above is another from Sunday and is of some cows fighting each other for a small piece of grass in a big field.  how like life.