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we’ve mentioned we live in a wooden house a few times, but i don’t want you to think that our wooden house is like some cosy swiss chalet, because it’s not.

the picture above shows a kiwi house being built.  it’s basically a wooden framework and as far as i can see they just stick big sheets of wood on the outside, and in the case of our house they’ve covered that in plaster.

the ‘leaky home’ phenomenon is due to the various bits of wood not being sealed or finished off properly so water comes in and makes the wood all rotten.

new houses (like the one above) are required to have a level of insulation in them, but our house is old enough not to have had that.  and our bedroom has three outside walls, a high roof which is lacking any insulation, and it’s also got some underneath basement thing too i think (though that’s locked so we’ve never been in).

anyway, the bottom line is it’s cold !  So we’ve bought some extra towelling sheets which go under the bottom bed sheet, and also go under the duvet to create a person envelope.  and now we’re a bit warmer again.

although jane and i are still feeling a bit under the weather so we’re hot and cold all the time anyway.

this morning we had the new sound system trial at church which went well (although i spotted the sound man subtly restarting the software a couple of times and accidentally writing over one of his presets with a different one by mistake!).

jane stayed at home during church this morning and we spent much of the rest of the day watching DVDs (Flushed Away and half of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory)

But the exciting thing is Esther player TWO games of flippa ball today as she also played for another of her school teams which was down on numbers.  Esther got man of the match for that match (they lost 1-5).  2 hours later she narrowly missed out on man of the match for her second game with her proper team (they WON 9-1 !)

everyone’s tired so we’re all off for an early night.  already looks like being a busy one for me at work unfortunately.  still, should make next weekend come a bit faster which is good as it’s a long weekend for us with next monday being a public holiday.

just had to jump out of bed as i remembered i haven’t updated the family blog.  here’s a shadow of london (or some bricks from it that were sent to us by my brother-in-law kev as a house warming pressie.

and here’s esther’s project which she spent lots of time working on

elsewise today i spent 4 hours at church today as we’re testing out a new sound system which is entirely computer based and runs on a windows computer.   we’re using it live tomorrow morning so that’ll be interesting.

and the girls had 2 hours of tennis lessons today as there were some new trainee tennis teachers being taught.

we did manage to go out to a restaurant tonight this evening as a long awaited celebration of everyone’s various successes.  jane was well enough to go but felt a bit peaky whilst we were there and went back to bed when we got home.  but i think she’s generally feeling better !

right, back to bed.

a mostly good day in the office for me although i did have a late panic in the day when one of the speakers for a department conference i’m arranging for next Thursday dropped out.  i think we’ve got that sorted now though.

jane meanwhile was staggering about in an ill person’s daze whilst the plumber came to fix some light bulbs and the door seals (not sure why a plumber does that).

i left work a bit early so i could get back in time to take the girls to their swimming lessons.  i have to say i’m impressed by their swimming and also the set up at the pool.  there seemed to be various professional swimmers training down the other half of the pool too as there were loads of video cameras and stuff inspecting the form of a few of the swimmers.

on the way back we went to the local takeaway roast shop.  it’s a bit like a carvery setup, but they put it in a plastic box and you eat it at home.  esther had lamb, i had beef and kezia had chicken.  no one had pork this time.  it was ok …

as a result of the lateness i’ve missed my men’s meeting at church which is a shame.  but once jane has finished on the skype we’ll watch a bit of telly instead.

i had a kersquillion documents to write by the end of today which i hadn’t had time to do because i was down in wellington earlier in the week.  so i’ve sat here for the last 14 hours or so writing.  i’ve just finished and am now very tired so apologies for today’s brevity.

jane’s been poorly sick today though she managed to keep up a couple of her public appearances this morning (and went rapidly down hill this afternoon).  i think it’s the same bug that kezia and i have had so hopefully she’ll be back to normal in the next day or so.

the girls had their violin lessons this afternoon.  their teacher was away so they had his mother instead.  luckily she’s an excellent teacher (they’ve had her before) so all was well.

and in other news, here’s the girls’ school photo which i think is fab.  it’s a deliberately rubbish photo of their excellent photo (in the name of art perhaps) as we’re not allowed to make copies.  so this is just to give you an idea of what it looks like.  They’ve also each got a picture of them in their classes with all the pupils really nicely arranged.  i’m very impressed !

and it looks like we’ve got new tenants lined up for the house in the UK from early July pending paperwork.  (if any of our old neighbours are reading this, then they look/sound really nice).

it’s back to the office for me tomorrow for the first time in yonks (a very popular word here which is good news)

remind me to tell you about the peanut desks sometime

right, bed fred.  bye

good news.  i’m back from my few days in wellington. 

monday started with the car debacle and getting dressed unnecessarily in the dark (the dark bit was the unnecessary bit, not the getting dressed).  I got in to town for 7.30am which was plenty early for my 8.30am meeting.  unfortunately my colleague didn’t arrive until 8.40am so we were both late for our trip round a telephone exchange in downtown auckland.

 

then we drove to the airport and i was able to get both of us in to the airport lounge on my new gold airnz card.  we feared a rough flight as the stewardess said she wasn’t going to serve hot drinks because of the bumpy weather. 

one interesting moment was meeting the lady with the blond hair from the AirNZ safety video coming through security.  i nearly didn’t recognise her with her clothes on.  She’s the lady who says ‘Kia Ora’ at the beginning and does a funny head wobbly thing on ‘… take a second look’

in the end it was a very smooth flight and we arrived in wellington in time to join the rest of our team for celebratory drinks (our team has been shortlisted for some international lawyer’s awards).

the next day i went to a lecture by top international regulatory legal economist Greg Sidak

he was over to do some talks for us from the US of america

i took these photos for our company magazine

one of the things i like about visiting the rest of the team in wellington is that they often stop for morning tea.  tuesday was no exception and we had this giant cake which was made by one of the interns who was worst at guessing the date, weight and name of one of my colleagues new baby.

today was more greg sidaking and then a good flight and drive back home.  jane’s out choiring, and the girls are in bed.

in amongst the post was this brochure for the swallowfield show which brought back good memories.  you should go if you live nearby.  we don’t so won’t.

I can’t believe no-one commented on my fascinating day yesterday – it’s Jane by the way. Well, today I delivered my bits of paper to Kristin, the school where I will be teaching. So it’s official now. Next I went for coffee with my chum Wendy in Whenuapai. When that was over I went grocery shopping. After that I went to the church offices to do the prep of resources for the primary school age group. At 2.50 I collected the girls from school. An hour later we went to tennis. We had dinner when we came home and then they did their homework and violin practice. I have been skpying a chum and now I am going to do some ironing. It is raining btw.

Byeeee

Well, the day started pretty early in the small hours with Kezia crying. We realised that the weather bomb had brought a power cut with it and she couldn’t see and was all confused.

Dave woke early as he needed to drive into Auckland for a meeting, so he could then drive on to the airport to go to Wellington. He was a bit noisier than usual as he tried to get dressed and finish his packing in the dark. However, he realised that the power cut was just trip switch doing its thing.

Then his car wouldn’t start and when it did, it made a really strange noise, so he took mine.

Kezia turned out to be unwell, so she stayed at home all day. I discovered lots of water had come in through the ranch sliders during the night and if I had the washing machine and tumble drier on together it kept tripping the switch in the garage.

On the plus side, I took Esther to school in Dave’s car and had a little drive around and it seemed ok, so I didn’t take it to the garage. My enforced stay at home meant that I sorted out the office and unpacked the last 2 boxes which have been lurking in there since our stuff arrived. I filled in my forms for all my qualifications to be checked by the body that has to do that here to make sure I haven’t made them up, so that I can register to be a teacher. I needed to get a photocopy of our marriage certificate verified by a justice of the peace. Well, there is a letter box up the road which has got Justice of the peace on it, so I went and knocked on the door and a nice older gentleman signed and stamped my papers. I then bought some of his pot plants. So, quite productive in some ways.

it was cold last night.  i kept waking up because my head with so chilly so i might need a night cap.  11 degrees in our bedroom this morning.

church this morning was good then we went for morning tea with ‘the gang’ which was great.  the men sat in one room putting the world to rights whilst the ladies sat in the other and the kids were somewhere else.  it was good to find out that their house was chilly too !

after lunch we went to our friends bruce and fleur’s house.  they are excellent, and new subscribers to this blog, so let me just say how fantastically lovely they are.

they had these toadstools (or mushrooms?) in their driveway which was a nice touch.

right now the girls are doing various skypings to friends and family before esther has to whizz off for her flippa ball match.

apparently there’s a ‘weather bomb’ on its way and we’ve had the emergency emails from the emergency place telling us about emergency measures.  I’m flying off to Wellington tomorrow lunchtime for a few days so hope it’s not too windy !

You can read the emergency warning and instructions on what to do here just in case you want to get yourself prepared too.

UPDATE:  Esther’s team WON 7-0  RESULT !!!

today was the day of esther’s disco

so after the girls got back from their orchestra practice we all got togged up in our best disco clothes

we then had a number of competitions such as best (and worst) dancer, best dressed person, person dancing most like an alien etc

esther had organised it all and it was great

jane went as a psychedelic dustbin lady. she wanted to point out that she hasn’t actually put on lots of weight, and it’s just her scarf which gives the appearance

we all had to write our own song for the disco too.  there’s some video evidence of all these activities, but i’m not putting that out in the wild of the internet in case it falls in to the wrong hands

here’s esther, the disco organiser queen.  by the way, you may wonder what music we danced to at the disco.  the answer is the Sky planner music which is SO completely funky over here.

this afternoon kezia went off to play at a friends house so the three of us went for a walk in a local reserve

it was quite a dense forest with some cool dangly wooden rope things like this one. 

 

the ‘rope’ is the thick thing seemingly looking like a spindly tree.  but it’s not.  i think it must be an airborne root or something

we had to get back to put the dinner on for our evening guests so we could only walk for an hour before turning back.  unfortunately it was very hilly which made for a rather depressing last 10 minutes going down steps, knowing we’d be coming back up.

this evening we had friends from church round which was really nice

jane cooked up a roast chicken, stuffing, loads of veggies

and we had crumble and custard for dessert.  all great british fayre.

 

and this is the view that greets jane in the morning when the sun comes up (i’ve gone to work by then).

 

apparently the mist gently floats down the little valley behind out house

 

although the steam here was from the sun warming the overnight rain and dew

we’re gradually getting more keeping warm tips from friends, but the general conclusion is that new zealand feels very cold in winter as it’s impossible to keep houses warm.  which is a shame.

that’s all.  good night.

it started raining about 3pm yesterday.  serious hard rain.  And it stopped about 3pm today

 

luckily i was working from home today so didn’t have to go out.

 

this morning i had to hide in the bedroom and work because jane had the church ladies group round.  there seemed to be millions of them

At school today the girls went to see a stage show of Peter Pan in Auckland town which they enjoyed. And at swimming today esther was told it’s time to move up to a new swimming group which is excellent for her

and then this evening jane and i went to The Powerhouse to watch top local band The Phoenix Foundation play.  Luckily our babysitter was a grown up because we got back after midders.

now it’s very late and we’re very tired.  esther has arranged a family disco for tomorrow morning where we’ve all got to perform a song we’ve each written for the occasion.  i’ve not yet done my homework …  ooops.