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my day started with me giving a presentation to a dozen colleagues at work.  all went well despite some technical difficulties

work continues on the work kitchen and a lady came round and spent much of the day killing a mealybug infestation which had taken up residence in the plants behind my desk.   then this evening i’ve been trying to work out where all our money goes each month in preparation with a chat with the bank tomorrow as they want to know everything it seems

  

jane had a good day at school and had a coffee with her chum fleur which was jolly nice for them both.

kezia went to a new friend’s house after school and then we all went for a quick walk / scooter round the ‘hood

and now, once again, it’s really late and we’ve all got full days ahead of us tomorrow.

not much to report today.  i got a chocolate fish in the internal mail

kezia fell off her scooter on the way home from school on her own and grazed her knee.  she bravely scootered the rest of the way home without any problem then felt the pain as the savlon was applied.  she was ok to go to swimming squad this evening though.

otherwise everyone still exhausted with life.  long school terms without half terms in the middle makes for tired kids (and teachers)

it rained a lot last night.  here’s a building on the way to work reflected in a puddle.

everyone is as busy as normal so our paths crossed as we ate lunch and helped with homework then jane and i went out to our church life group.  and now it’s now and we’re all really tired.

the rain has increased the humidity too, so although it’s only low 20s, it feels like 30degC !  we should enjoy it whilst it lasts

at last a bit more visible progress with the new wall at work.  it’s rather close to my desk, but i might get this secret entrance via a half built cupboard.  it was surprising how many of colleagues chose to walk through this today.  i was impressed.

 

and of course it was too good an opportunity to miss, so i put a narnia sign which people enjoyed

 

otherwise everyone else had busy but tiring days.  esther got accepted on to a zoo trip which will be 2 days in april which i’ll tell you about near the time.  and jane’s classes were a bit tricky probably due to the rainy lunchtime.  anyway, the upshot was everyone was pretty grouchy this evening, not helped by everyone needing to use the same computers at the same time in the same room.  oh well.

anyway, everyone is in much better moods now so that’s good 🙂

we left home at just after 6.30 this morning to get a decent parking spot for the tryathlon

we didn’t do too badly and had our breakfast watching the sun rise over the bay.

this little inflatable dingy went back and forth between a boat and shore, delivering bikes and some children.  on one trip it brought a big baby’s buggy with an actual baby in.  thankfully it didn’t drop overboard !

anyway, the girls did great, despite esther having nerves before hand

kezia was fearless and ran with a chum Emma from school

i didn’t quite have my camera sorted for esther, but did better with kezia.  here she is after the swim

i didn’t see the cycling for either of them due to where i was standing and how jane and i divided our child catching duties

 

at the end of morning we collected the bikes and boxes.  esther’s had fallen in a  heap but all was good.

we found new zealand’s smallest cycle lane as we drove home

we celebrated the morning with burgers and fizzy pop

then this afternoon we had my friend sasha and his family round for afternoon tea which was jolly nice.

now we’re all exhausted and tired.  there was a great sun set this evening, and of course we’ve been watching the giant moon !

we had kezia’s birthday party this afternoon.  her birthday was 5 or 6 weeks ago, but this was the earliest we had a free afternoon when all her friends could make it

there was lots of crafting and eating

 

 

jane’s friend alex came round for tea with her husband this morning too and that was really nice.  she’s from Chile but he’s a kiwi.  he grew up in auckland and years ago went on a school camp next to our house (near the senior school for those who’ve visited), and one of their activities was crossing the stream at the back of our house.

after all the party people had gone i took the girls for an adventure under the deck in the house to see if there was a way to get under the house.  if there is then we didn’t find it.  although we did find a lot of spiders and cobwebs.

early beds tonight as the girls have another tryathlon tomorrow.   see yas

it was still warm and sunny this morning as i walked from the bus stop to work, but by lunch it was starting to rain over and it was very wet this afternoon. we could do with it really chucking down with rain next week actually, so when the leaky home inspector man comes he sees the house after a down pour rather than after weeks of dryness !  we could do without the rain this weekend though …

anyway, there was a lot of st patrick’s day evening debris around this morning

  

and there’s been little progress on the kitchen move at work although the buckets and signs move about a bit

the girls had their swimming lessons after school and kezia got her certificates from her races yesterday

she’s very pleased !

then this evening i went to the supermarket with a big list and came back with various goodies for kezia’s belated birthday party tomorrow

 

kezia had a day out of school today for an inter-school swimming competition.  she came second in a couple of races i think. 

jane managed to watch one of kezia’s race which was in an open air pool a few minutes drive north from here which worked out great.  jane had quite a busy day as she had coffees with various colleagues as well as Wendy (Buzz’s wife)

 

this evening debbie, courtney and laura came round for dinner and chatting and we sat on the deck until it went dark.

happy saint patrick’s day.  It’s a big celebration here and i saw people in the irish bar near the waterfront as i walked by at 7.45am this morning.  This is an abandoned inflatable sham rock.  to be sure.

 

guess what ?  our landlords emailed us yesterday to say they wanted to sell the house we’re currently living in.  they emailed us directly to give us first refusal so we’re very quickly trying to become experts on how new zealand mortgages etc work to understand our options.    i’ll save you the details, but it looks doable (without having to sell our UK house) if the price is sensible.   

we’re getting an independent valuer to come round next week, and we’ll also get a check to see if the house is ‘leaky’ because it was built at the time and in in a style which has caused problems.  There’s a good explanation of what went wrong with building in New Zealand in the 1990s here 

kezia has had swimming squad, esther has had piles of homework and jane spent a day on a course learning about

 

by the way, here’s a good video from weatherwatch explaining how new zealand ended up getting affected by the tsunami and how the effects actually reached their peak some 30-40 hours after the first waves arrived !

i got a window seat on the bus this morning so grabbed a few shots of the sunrise as we whizzed over the bridge

i’m still not over how amazing the view is from the bus in the morning !

anyway, good day at work for all by the sounds of things

i had lunch with buzz which is always good fun.  and after school the girls had violin

and this evening we went for a family stroll round the neighbourhood a bit

the girls scooted of course

here’s a house being built near us.  it’s coming along nicely as they’ve got the outside walls on some of it

there are a couple of other things that happened today but i’ll tell you about them another time (remind me in a few days if i forget)

right.  bed