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jane had a good day and is in good spirits which is excellent!  potentially the hardest part of the day was going to visit Shirley, our friend from our small church group who has been diagnosed with cancer and probably only has a few weeks to live. 

what looked like being a highly depressing visit actually turned out to be really positive as Shirley is using her last days to tell people in the hospital about Jesus and is looking forward to ‘going home’.  so a strange mix of emotions there.

and this afternoon some estate agents came round to look at our house to come up with a plan for selling it on behalf of our landlords.  If they decided to go for an auction it could be another 6 weeks before the auction date then a few weeks before the move in.  so we’ll perhaps not move in to our new house until end of July after all.  we’ll see.

i had lunch with buzz (looking rather stretched above).  we had Korean food which was really nice so we’ll definitely go there again.  here is kezia’s weekly news quiz if you want to have a go

meanwhile mum’s bus tour went from Blenheim to Dunedin (i think) via Christchurch.  she texted me this evening to say she took a photo of the sun going down over mount cook, new zealand’s highest mountain in the southern alps.

she’s in uncharted territory (not unchartered territory though as she’s on a guided bus tour)

church this morning was excellent, and then we went to a cafe with some new church people

a house up the road had a few freebies out front

after that we did a drive by of our new house which has pleasingly got a sold sign up.

 

after lunch we did a fantastic geocache really near our house then drove up north to go to a kauri park.  however we got sidetracked at a motorway lay-by which we’d past loads of times but never stopped at.  it turns out there was a waterfall down a path so we went for a walk to find it

kezia found this koru

 

here’s the waterfall

after dinner we played some rumikub and then did some skyping

here’s a couple of curiosities from our walk.  someone had put a cable tie on a couple of dangly branch things which was nice.  and jane and esther kept building path traps for kezia and i to fight our way through

meanwhile mum texted to say she’s had another nice day, but didn’t give me any more details to pass on to you.  although she was going to have roast beef for tea.  that’s all i know about that.

today was a gorgeous day so we had breakfast on the deck.

esther spent the day at snow planet skiing today at a friend’s birthday party.  apparently she went over a number of jumps and would consider herself ‘proficient’ at skiing.

meanwhile we went with kezia for a meal at gulf harbour (kezia stole one of my chips), then went for a walk in Shakespeare park

here’s a pukeko with a chip in its mouth

we also did some geocaching

 

 

then we rushed home, did some really quick tidying then whizzed off to kezia’s concert.  she did a fine job as can be seen on this video clip (oops video didn’t work, oh well)

when we got back home a man came round from the estate agents of our landlords to start thinking about how they can sell our rental house here in NZ.  that’s good news and all part of working out when we can move in to our new house.

 

here’s a chap with ginger hair who played us a guitar tune (with an out of tune guitar).  his hair was quite amazing, and even more so when he sat in the sunlight!

meanwhile my mum spent most of the day in Wellington then got the ferry across to Picton.  She was meant to be going to Christchurch but that’s been rescheduled to Blenheim as her hotel had probably fallen down or something.

here are some oyster catchers for you

and then this evening we had an hour long skype catch up with our good friends Ruth and Steve which was excellent.

it was jane’s last day of term today so she’s laughing.  the girls have got an extra week.

and esther got good feedback from her teacher on some work she did as well as her performance since moving up to his class.  she’s very pleased.

i’ve been completely exhausted today so my project for the weekend is to catch up on sleep. and organise all the paperwork (virtual and physical) from the last week’s whirlwind

not much house news today.  next step is to agree a date to finish up renting here which will become the settlement date.  if we don’t get a date then we’ll move end of July anyway and just have to pay the rest of our term.  hopefully it won’t go that way.

i walked past the tunnel today at lunchtime which is progressing so well it’s going to open a few months early.  nice job.

and i realised i missed an update on mum’s travels yesterday so here’s two days worth:

yesterday she was in rotorua, the bubbly mud and geyser centre of new zealand.  she had a nice hotel room overlooking the lake and they had an afternoon off so she went for a short stroll.

today’s she’s been on a long bus ride from rotorua down to wellington. she saw more bubbling mud ponds as they left and then snow on mount Ruapehu as she went by.  you can hear a bit more on the mountain here as it’s just ‘woken up’ a bit more:

http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/video.cfm?c_id=1&gal_cid=1&gallery_id=117810

cheesy video from the estate agent’s website grabbed for posterity.

house tour (48MB i think)

today’s big news is we won a house.  but i should also say that we got esther’s interim report and she it is excellent.  in fact the word excellent is used liberally throughout.  so that’s jolly good.

here’s a quick summary of what happened today with the house.  fast forward if you can’t be bothered to read it all. 

And between every step you can insert ‘did lots of praying’!

• got up earlier than normal as couldn’t sleep
• did some work / emails until 8
• chatted with the selling agent who lives on our road so popped round to explain how the auction would work and discuss some of the legal changes we wanted to the documentation
• did another check of bank balances to check for deposit money
• did another check on my calculations of our highest bidding position
• did a work conference call 9-9.40
• just as i was about to leave got call from our letting agents saying our landlords want to sell our current home (we knew this already of course) and that would complicate (ie reduce the chances of breaking our tenancy before November).  We’d already factored the worst case of paying rent here and a mortgage in the new place in to our bidding price, but letting agent didn’t sound too hopeful.
• drove to the auction house
• entered auction room 30 minutes in the to the auction to find they’d only got to number 4.  we were number 17
• took up a seat on my own half way to the back at the edge.  tried to work out who the other serious bidders were going to be (we knew they’d be one other family bidding)
• did lots of emails/read the Guardian newspaper on my phone whilst waiting for our lot to arrive.  was over an hour later than expected
• 5 minutes before our lot was called i look at my home emails and see an email from our landlords sent direct to me saying “don’t worry about the termination date, i’m sure we can sort something out”.  Don’t adjust our bidding ceiling just in case, but relax a little bit
• lot 16 is called.  a 7 bedroom property in a posh street near us.  expecting it might fetch big bucks and set high unrealistic expectations for lot 17.  bit no one bid, so quickly we moved to lot 17
• heart rate increased as auctioneer extolled the benefits of buying the house.  i knew the benefits, i wanted to get bidding
• opening bid came from the other people
• ping ponged up in $10K increments between me and other bidders
• stopped at a figure which i’d bid.  seemed to be good as no one else bidding
• then agents said ‘can you bid $1K more’?   i asked why.  she said ‘so you’ll be the highest bidder’
• realised my last bid had been missed so jumped up another $5K
• two more ping pongs of $5k and it was just me left. going once, twice. bang.
• auctioneer says “i’d love to sell it to you for that price, but it’s no where near the vendor’s reserve’.  my assistant will come and talk to you”
• vendor’s agent says “what’s the highest you’ll go?”
• i don’t answer the question but say i’ll offer $20K more
• the vendor is on the phone and isn’t having it.
• vendor’s agent comes over and shows me the reserve that i must at least meet.
• i say (genuinely) i can’t bid that high as it’s higher than my reserve i up my offer $20K and add $1K to make it sound better.  Still comfortably within budget too.
• more phone conversations, they agree to lower the reserve to meet my offer
• the agent calls it out, it gets put on the screen
• auctioneer then throws it to the floor to see if anyone will improve on it
• they don’t.  hammer falls.  people applaud (hoorah)
• we win a house
• i’m surprisingly calm
• we fill in paperwork as the day’s auction proceedings end
• as we fill in the paperwork and the room is cleared someone behind me goes over to an old piano and slowly plays the hymn ‘How great thou art’ in the background (i totally forgot about that until later this afternoon)
• the agent then went to the vendor’s house (our new house) to get their signatures, and then caught up with jane later in the day for her signature
• i drove in to work , found a perfect car parking spot, then later nipped up to the local bank to transfer the deposit money

here’s a bird i saw outside the window of the auction room

Settlement (completion) date is to be decided.  but it’ll be between end of May and end of July, depending on when we can get out of our lease here.

Thanks for everyone who helped us practically or prayerfully along the way.  it’s not over yet, but it’s certainly legally binding!

exciting 🙂

I’ll post more details later but for now it’s enough to let you know that we won the auction and now have a house! Moving date to be agreed.

esther spent the day as a zoo helper today.  i know she fed some zebras but not sure what else

jane had a ‘lock down’ drill at school where they pretend someone has been taken hostage and everyone hides in their classroom.  i’m sure that gives kids nightmares.  originally it was going to involve armed police officers (without bullets i suspect) who were going to re-enact an actual hostage situation.  but in the end it there were no police or guns.  good.

this evening we’ve spent working out bidding strategies for tomorrow morning.  think of us around 10.45am – 11.30am tomorrow

my mum’s now in rotorua.  having been to the waitomo glow worm caves and a maori evening with dancing and singing and looking at the village in the forest and dinner cooked in a big pit.  gud grub apparently (mum txt spk)

i didn’t get much sleep last night and left home at 6 to get to the office early (at my desk by 6.30) so i could leave early.  the day at work was really busy with various meetings, a training course, a load more work assigned to me (good)  and a 2 hour session with some lawyers on the 30th floor of a building down town

i left early to meet the building surveyor at the house we’re thinking of buying.  he was very complimentary about the house and said he couldn’t fault hardly anything which was good going !  Carl, a friend from church, came along with me for moral support and also to give us an unbiased view.  it passed his test.

and this evening we got our mortgage pre-approval and swapped various emails with our lawyer and our the estate agent.  and did some preparation for international money shuffling.

the auction is thursday morning.  wonder if we’ll be brave enough to bid.  gulp

jane’s had a manic day too as it’s been parents evening.  all went well i think and she got to meet Tim Finn as his son is one of jane’s pupils.  she got back quite late from that. 

here’s kezia news quiz.  as cheery as ever for a 9 year old !

my mum is staying in a hotel in auckland this evening as her tour comes back through town.  i spoke to her this evening and she seemed in good health having had a nice time in the sun at the waitangi treaty place today.

today has been mostly about mad work and houses

we found out we can’t get a mortgage on this house with our bank as they won’t touch leaky homes, so that solves that one. 

And we also found out we could afford the nice place we saw yesterday.  so we’re working through various monetary things to see if it’s worth bidding on thursday

meanwhile i’ve got one of my busiest weeks ever at work thanks to the Commission sending us an urgent information request that needs to be completed by friday

 

jane had an ok day at work which looked like it was going to go a very bad way when a parent wanted to speak to her about her son.  but the call itself was ok and she had support from her bosses so all ended ok.

and my mum seems to have had a rather eventful time.  she’s been right up to the top of the north island to where the pacific and tasman seas collide.  it was a similar tour to the one i did with andrew back in january (see here for pictures)

however, i got a text mid afternoon saying her bus had broken down on 90 mile beach, which is a beach you can only drive on for a couple of hours each day as it gets covered by the sea.  i got text updates as her bus was towed at high speed by a mad bus driver in an attempt to beat the incoming tide.  the last text i had from her this afternoon said she’d made it to the garage in her bus and was just about to have a cuppa.

‘what a hoot’ she said.

today’s pictures are of kezia’s bedroom.  she took them to show her teacher how clean it is.  she also lost another tooth yesterday.  bye