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esther had a day of sports today at her new school, and her whanau won.  hoorah.  everyone was involved in everything making for some very long relay races !

meanwhile kezia also had a good day at school

and jane had a mostly good day at school, although some of her new classes might be a bit of a challenge

jane’s parents walked up to the local shopping mall and took full advantage of the air conditioning.  it’s really humid here which makes the already high temperature feel much hotter. 

i think the actual temperature has been high twenties, but it feels mid thirties due to the humidity level

it’s 22degrees C now and 95% humidity

jane’s mum popped in to the doctor’s this afternoon to get a prescription for some antibiotics and ear drops for an ear ache.  i think they’re doing the trick (as far as i can tell) so that’s good

here’s an old body from a cicada or something.  very strange.

after work this evening i went on a mini pub crawl with jane’s dad.  that was good

and now i’ve dragged our aircon unit through to jane’s parents room so they can enjoy a bit of coolness (jane finds it too noisey so i only use it to pre-cool to room, or when jane’s away !)

here’s a nice selection of utensils jane’s mum left out

goodbye

well, the big news of the day was esther starting ‘big school’.  she now goes to the local intermediary school.  meanwhile kezia has moved up a class

kezia’s now being taught by esther’s teacher from last year.  she’s in a composite class with students from the year above so that’s good for her learning

esther meanwhile had to take a ton of books for her first day

 

so many in fact that she had to get her old dad (me) to carry them and my hands hurt for most of the rest of the day

i went in late to work so i could walk up to school with esther and there was a fair bit of hanging around, but eventually they were led away to the sorting hat to be allocated to a whanau  Esther is in the same whanau as her friend sunny which is good.  her other two best friends are in classes together, so that’s worked out nicely for them too

after dropping the girls off i drove in to work rather than getting the bus as the roads were clear.  it took me 20 minutes to drive to my office then over half an hour of driving round multi story car parks trying to find a free space which wasn’t reserved.  i’ll spare you the details, but it was a parking nightmare !

when i got to the office simon and sasha wanted to hear all about the morning.  (simon only had his eyes shut temporarily)

meanwhile jane went to the eye-opodist to find out why her eyes keep going red, and it looks like she might be allergic to her contact lenses so they are going to try some different ones.  whilst she was in the eye place granny and party had a look round Brown’s Bay. 

i think jane also went in to school but i wasn’t listening properly when she told me

bbq burgers for tea and a family interrogation of esther and kezia to make sure we were up to speed.  then jane’s dad mowed the lawn which was excellent.

and thanks for all your thoughts and prayers for the girls today.  all is good !

jane went back to school today and had her first class who i think were nice so that’s good

it was someone’s birthday at my work today so we had this big afternoon tea feast

meanwhile pooch and party kindly looked after esther and kezia.  they went to kezia’s school to play on the playpark, and then the library and also did some violin practice so had a busy day.

then when jane got back from school they all went to Long Bay to have a swim

then this evening it was getting everything organised for tomorrow as esther has her first day at her new school and kezia goes up a year in her primary school …

(the dead thing above is a cicada and they make a lovely chirping noise like a cricket in the evening – unless they are dead like this one is currently)

today’s we’ve been over to the waitakere ranges for a picnic and a trip on the rainforest express, which is a little train which goes along the maintenance rails to auckland’s highest drinking water reservoir

we started off the day with a trip to the shops to get kezia a bag for her birthday

then we had a look around the waitakere visitor’s centre and enjoyed this gecko being confused about where he’d left his lunch

 

this is a long horn beetle.  (i know you’re interested in such things)

then we shoe horned ourselves in to the little trains and were whizzed trundled through various tunnels

we saw a cave weta

and eventually we got to the dam

as it was a special occasion (it’s a public holiday in auckland today) we got to go actually inside the dam

we walked up some very steep steps from the bottom to the top of the dam

and all was good.

jane’s back to school tomorrow so the girls are at home with granny and party.  i’m back at work tomorrow too.  such a shame !

we went to tiritiri matangi today.

  it’s our local wildlife sanctuary island

these people pushed their kids round in a wheel barrow all day

here’s the ranger telling us the rules

we had a guide to show us around.  here’s what we got up to and some of what we saw

this is a silver fern

here’s our native robin

here’s a big fat native pigeon

here’s our guide.  she often visits Tilehurst near Reading

here are some bell birds

and some tuis

and of course greg the tarkahe

he’s a nearly extinct bird who terrorises visitors by trying to steal their sandwiches

 

and he’s huge !

with a pecky beak

 

then it was time to leave

when we got back we afternoon tea and we took esther to a friend’s house for a sleep over in a tent in their garden.  i’m not sure how much sleeping there will be

jane’s parents kindly agreed to babysit for us so jane and i went to long bay for a stroll

thanks to the cyclone passing through there was still plenty of debris about, but mostly organic

 

then we had a meal in the long bay restaurant which is the place we went to on christmas day

it was dark by the time we’d finished

oh, and we also skyped jane sister first thing in the morning so that was funny her having her parents on the other side of the world rather than jane

here’s a bird fight

jane was preparing her lessons all today so the rest of us cleared the house and did some adventuring

we started off at auckland museum where we saw this chap searching for a missing fly

 

and these wonderfully displayed bird specimens

 

 

and piggy backing locusts

  

and lovely piled up kinas

 

after the museum we went for lunch in devonport.  everyone had fish and chips and they were very nice thanks for asking

it was incredibly windy and the sea was very rough considering its in a natural harbour

then we went to the top of north head and explored the tunnel (once these segway riders got out the way)

 

 

we squashed down some quite small passageways and did some proper exploring which was jolly good

then we drove up the coast to takapuna where we had huge icecreams

and watched people surfing in the rare east coast surf

then it was home for tea.  jane’s dad and i walked to the local bottle shop to top up the beer supply and now it’s now.

and jane got plenty of school work done too.  good

 

tuesday was my last day with the team in rotorua so we went to wai-o-tapu thermal wonderland

 

we’d been before but it was still great to see all the geysers and strange pools of water and thermally things

 

 

 

there were some disobedient people around with fire proof shoes on

then we watched some bubbly mud and i drove home

here’s a video for you

day3 started with breakfast in a lovely cafe in rotorua that we’d been to before

then we went to a jolly named place called Hell’s Gate which all glooping mud.  only it was mostly bubbling brown water because of the 5 inches or rain we’d had the couple of days before.  it was still good though

 

 

it was raining but not as bad as the day before.  here’s the southern hemisphere’s biggest hot water waterfall

on the way out you could put your feet in the mud and save the cost of having a proper mud spa by doing it yourself !

 

then we got lost in a 3D maze.  we split in to teams.  esther and kezia won of course, then jane’s dad and me.  then the ladies

 

after lunch back at the bach we took jane’s parents to the buried village whilst the girls had a swim in the blue lake. 

 

then we all met up and went home for tea and noticed the cloud was finally starting to lift

a good day

great news, everyone’s back home.  the girls back early enough to go to their swimming lessons then we had a tv dinner watching joanna lumley finally reaching the source of the nile

i had lunch with sasha today where he gave me some tips on how to do the swimming part of a triathlon which i shall pass on to the girls

and the mad rain has arrived as we await Wilma’s arrival proper this evening.  apparently it’s the most significant cyclone to hit New Zealand in 14 years  I think were far enough south not to have too much trouble, but we’ll see !

most days started with bacon

it rained and rained.  and the wind blew.  it was a low rather than a passing cyclone so it stuck around for a while  

so we stayed in and did a jigsaw.  here some progress pictures. 

it was still unfinished at my time of leaving

and we did a bit more exploring of the holiday bach

it had a decidedly retro feel 

and we awoke to find it also had a leaky roof.  no worried though.  jane’s mum put various vessels around the house and put damp cloths at the bottom to stop the drips being too noisy.

the simpson’s got a bit stir crazy so we braved the wind and rain and drove in to an open air hot water spa pool in rotorua.  it was weird being in the hot water and being blasted from above by torrential rain !  good though.  and on the way back we stopped a couple of times to drag fallen trees out of the road !

we drank wine from up near where we live in north auckland which was nice

but first we went for a walk down to the local wharf to take advantage of a brief lull in the storm

the storm came back over night even louder than the night before !