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Well chums, nearly forgot to do this. Dave is in Wellington and got the same plane down as John Key. Our day has been rather less exciting. Kezia has been off school sick. Luckily it was my day off today, but it isn’t tomorrow, so that will be a challenge. The other car went for its WOF and I am writing reports. I have done 4 in an hour. Only another 46 to go. Sigh

hello.  how are you ?  good i hope.

normal tea – please do not put early grey in here.  that’s the kind of container we’re going to be leaving behind when we move to the new office in a fortnight’s time.  and the magical view.  oh well.

jane took her car to get its WOF today.  that’s like an MOT but spelt differently and done every 6 months here.

jane had a voucher for this WOF so it was free which was a great price.  tomorrow my car is going in, so let’s hope it’s equally bargainous.  although i suspect it won’t be as we only had one voucher.

this evening i got to the park and ride to find my car wasn’t in the car park. gulp.  then i remembered i’d walked to my local bus stop this morning as i was expecting to have breakfast with a chum who forgot.  so instead i walked back from the car park and all was well.

esther gets current events quiz each week and i always forget to copy it for you to try at home.  you might need to click on it for bigness.

the objective is to get the answers whichever way you can, which can mean asking friends/family, looking in the paper and looking up on the internet.  sometimes the questions cover topics you’d probably not want to draw to the attention of 11 year olds.

we spent quite a while trying to work out the google search which would give us the answer to number 2 (which nearly took us on an unhealthy detour at one point), but we eventually found the story here .  not a story to read to through with the kids i’d have thought.

and i’m not sure of the moral story behind a national hero renowned sporting coach being let off for speeding either.  but hey ho.

i’m off to wellington tomorrow for three days and will be back on late on thursday.  so i’ll leave you in the capable hands of jane

the girls went to a fancy dress party at church this evening.  the theme was the letter ‘p’ although no one knew why

kezia went dressed as a parcel (note the UK address, but we’ve still got our mail forwarded)

esther went as paper and her friend sunny went as a pencil

kezia won the prize for the best fancy dress !

i played bass at church this morning which was good, although there’s something wrong with my guitar with the electrics which is a bit of pain.

they’ve got the christmas tree up at church, and in typical kiwi style it’s dressed in sweets and jelly.

 

esther had her first flippa ball game of the new season. they have moved down a league this term, but hopefully that will mean they are playing teams on their level.  they started well with a win this afternoon.

when the girls were out at the fancy dress party, jane and i went for a walk at the beach.  here are someone else’s footprints and a mini jelly fish

i spent this afternoon trying to do another assignment for my photo course

then this evening it’s been hallow’een.  like the UK, NZ has caught the commercial trick or treating bug, although there doesn’t seem to be much tricking which is good. 

 

when we drove back from the beach there were loads of cars parked in our street. it seems that parents from neighbouring areas drive their kids to our circular road so they can go round all the houses.  they must think we are rich picking. 

i panicked being home alone whilst jane was picking up the girls and put a ‘sorry, no trick or treats’ sign up which i’d noticed quite a few other houses had done. 

i felt a bit of a kill joy, but that’s the spirit of hallow’een int it !

here are two ducks who were wandering across our front lawn.  probably trying to get in on the trick or treats

of course it’s day light here until about 8pm so it’s weird seeing people dressed up wandering round the street.  many kids were dressed up in the usual fright masks etc, but there are quite a lot of people who just dress up as anything.

the best trick or treat costume i saw today was a short lad walking down the street with a bunch of ghouls.  he himself was dressed completely normally, except for a massive sombrero hat.  now THAT’S frightening.

here’s the lovely jane wearing a lovely wig (backwards).  we were doing the trial run for an advert for a seaweed based drink we all love and to which i composed  an advertising jingle.  esther is directing it (can you guess)

kezia was out at a friend’s house this afternoon so we didn’t do the actual recording.  whilst at her friend’s house kezia practiced her singing and dancing as she’s doing mamma mia for a school thing soon.

i spend much of the day finishing off our UK tax returns (at last!) and writing up one of my assignments for my photo course which i’m in danger of having to abandon because i’ve taken too long.

then this evening we decided we needed to go out for a walk so we phoned our friends the andersons who live down the road and went to long bay for some geocaching and some walking.

then we came back to our house via the fish and chip shop and all sat around chatting and eating until just about now.

i’ve just done my music practice for tomorrow at church.

in less good news, our potential tenants for our UK house dropped out, as did the other party who was after the house, so we’re back at square one (but ever hopeful).   

And kezia wasn’t shortlisted for the toyologist thing, although we agree that we enjoyed making the interview tape.  you can watch it again here just for your own enjoyment !

i had a rather mobile office kinda day today.  it started with me sitting on a bench down by the viaduct (auckland’s waterfront) reading my papers for my first meeting at Vodafone’s office

we’ve obviously entered cruise ship season judging by the rather large one pulled up at the moment

rather than climbing up the hill to my office after my meeting and then coming back later, i went to our new office to see if i could work there

so i found a little corner in the new coffee shop area (which isn’t yet open) and did a couple of phone meetings and some emails

the new building looks quite fab so i’m looking forward to having an explore

then it was back to the waterfront for a leaving lunch for a colleague who is, er, leaving.

there were a lot of doves about with competitions attached.  i didn’t win anything but i liked their marketing style

here’s my lunch of baby chicken

and here’s terra (in the middle).

 

and here’s my sorbet selection which was huge !

then this evening it’s been the men’s group meeting at church where we had a chap come along and talk about internet safety which was jolly good.  he’d worked in the UK previously and knew a number of people i used to work with so it was good to chat to him.  it was $10 enterence.

esther had a good day doing her exams/tests for her new school which i think she enjoyed, especially some which involved code cracking

jane went to some of the ladies group which meets at our house every other week, and then had lessons.  some of her classes were good and one wasn’t.  but that’s teaching i think.

the girls had donuts and swimming after school then watched the Pacific programme thing which was about new zealand and whales.

hoorah for the weekend.

on our final day we got up late and checked out of the motel

we then went across the road to the shopping mall area and got me a wetsuit in the Labour Day sales

then we drove in to Raglan, a hippy surfers beach kinda town

we did a bit of looking round the shops then had our lunch (not ice cold fish and chips)

then we drove down the coast in search of surfers

but we chose a flat day so other than a couple of surfers (and our girls pretending on a fence) there wasn’t much surfin’ hapnin

so we went for a bit of walk along the foreshore whilst avoiding leaving any waste of any sort (and being slightly confused as to why european law applied)

still, it was very nice

then we drove back over the top of the hill to another surfing beach

 

where we descended and sat around for a bit

 

before finally deciding it was time to drive back home

we seemed to pick a very windy route back home to auckland.  absolutely stunning scenery, and very quiet for a bank holiday monday evening.

being a bank holiday there were more speed checks with only a 4km/hr allowance above the speed limit before you get a speeding ticket.  (normally it’s 10km/hr extra).  it seems to work as a policy though and reduces road accidents

we eventually arrived home exhausted but it felt like we’d been away for a week !

we’ll definitely be back for more exploring down there as we’ve only really whetted our appetites !

i had a good day at work today.  something i’ve been working on quietly for the last 6 months has come to fruition and the results are better than even i’d expected.    Essentially, we’ve managed to convince the regulator that some of the rules on Telecom (my employer) can be relaxed for quite a lot of telephone exchange areas. 

That’s not a bad outcome given that the regulator isn’t particularly fond of Telecom at the moment.  It’s just a draft so everything can change in the consultation.  but i can enjoy the glory at work for the moment at least !

here’s today’s press release  in case you are interested (and no worries if you’re not).

And we’ve got some nice new tenants lined up our UK house for when the existing ones move out at the end of the year.  The paperwork for that is being sorted.

Esther had her audition to be a compere/narrator at the school prize giving evening.  there’s lots of competition for this job so we’ll have to see what happens.

And kezia went swimming at a friends house after school i think.  i didn’t get much of a chance to speak to anyone this evening as i rushed off to a band practice at church which was even more tricky (for me) than normal as the group is particular thin this week.

so that’s us. see ya

on the way back from the caves we detoured to Te Pahu to see the magnificent toothbrush fence

we took three toothbrushes along which we added to the collection.  And there was even a geocache hidden amongst the throng.  excellent stuff

 

you should read more about the fence and the amazing man who created it here

on the second day we left the motel at 8am (on a sunday) to drive the hour and half down to waitomo

waitomo is famous for its glow worm caves

but there are three big caves which have tours around

we went on all three.  photoing caves wasn’t easy so excuse these poor attempts to capture how amazing the place looked

 

this is a bone of an extinct Moa which was a giant flightless bird.  this one fell down a hole in to the cave

 

all three of the caves we went to were amazing for different reasons

  

highlights were an elderly lady on our tour doing a giant burp, our hilarious guides and of course the glowy worms (which you can’t take photos of)

 

these photos give you an idea of how high the caves are

 

we also went for a circular walk round the outside of one of the caves where you could see the river going in to the caves

that involved a little bit of climbing through holes in rocks

they do black water rafting in the caves and the girls were very taken with the idea

but thankfully they are too young at the moment

this was getting off the boat at the end of the glow worm cave

on the way back we stopped at the big apple cafe mainly due to the big apple

 

they served Big Az ice cream (as in ‘Big As’, or ‘Sweet As’)

  

the girls and i went to explore the big apple after our cake

then it was back home to the spa pool

we stopped at the toothbrush fence on the way, but that’s a separate story

(and i thought you might like this.  it’s a car sized sign advertising a pie and a can of fizzy drink for just $3 (one pound fifty).  Bargain.

esther and her friends sunny, lauren and amy presented their science experiment to their year group and loads of teachers today.  their experiment was about floating eggs in different sorts of liquids.  i was delighted by the egg pun

kezia had her piano lesson today and jane went to visit a friend who lives out in the sticks (called the ‘wops’ here which is short for ‘wop wops’)

now she’s off at choir and i’m off to bed.  g’night.