Blog

let’s see how this works out.  i’ll gradually step you through the days of our holiday whilst attempting to keep up with the day to day life !

so, day 1:  we left at 7am to avoid the Good Friday traffic.  this worked really well as the roads were empty for all of the 3 hours it took to drive to Mount Manganui (including an in-car picnic breakfast)

we spent a good bit of the day climbing up the extinct volcano and learning about tombololoas (or something to do with sand).

  

once we’d made it back to ground level we had ice-creams, did a webcam geocache with the help of the exile who was sitting somewhere in the eastern end of the USA controlling a webcam above our heads on the east side of new zealand whilst esther and i sat underneath (photo here)

then we checked in to our lovely posh motel, went for a swim in a local natural hot salt water spa pool and watched paragliders jumping off the mount above us, then went for a walk to a funny little nearly island thing with a blow hole, then to bed.

here are some pictures of the girls i haven’t put on flickr

so there you go

 

you can see the rest of the pictures of the day as a slide show here

and you can read more about Mount Manganui here

View Larger Map

back in the present – i went to work whilst jane and the girls went to a friend’s birthday party.

the really exciting news is that my travelbug won the race from the UK to New Zealand and is now sitting in front of me here having made its own way across the planet

(this photo was taken at the actual stonehenge last year when i had a day trip to Bath for photoing-business)

And tomorrow is our 6 months anniversary since we landed on this side of the planet.  hasn’t time travelled quickly !

take care all

just to say we’re back.  quite tired and lots to do before going back to work, so here’s a couple of pictures in some comedy mirrors to show you what fun we had

see ya

we’re off on holiday so i probably won’t be updating the family blog for a few days.  i’ll try and do an update on the 11th April when we’re back.

don’t forget there’s still plenty of daily updates over a the main blog 

and you can keep up with us in real time via dave’s twitter feed  or our facebook page for those what are on it.

we’re on holiday now until the 11th April.  I don’t think we’ll have internet access so here are some pictures of the girls mucking about in the sea to keep you going.

 

very strange day at work today as there was a certain end-of-term feel to the place.  helped largely by one of the company’s directors wandering around dressed as the easter bunny. 

it was very strange, but not as strange as the eggs themselves which are a kiwi delicacy

so let me share them with you. 

they looked like a flat egg

but in face they were two flat chocolate covered marshmallow type things

rather like the chocolate fish (fush) they love so much

these ones even had yokes !

the easter bunny left a large basket of eggs

there were also some smaller ones in there

and they were just solid chocolate

and what of the dodgy church in auckland which has the outrageous signs outside which causes civil unrest ?  as features in Britain’s very own love-to-be-outraged daily mail

well, they’ve got a cartoon thing which isn’t likely to cause the same level of upset.

 

but there’s a very funny typo in the paper where the communications manager for the church is talking about the christmas poster going VIRAL.  and the Herald has written VILE.  which is excellent.

and a nice quote from the chap saying the easter poster isn’t the same as the christmas one.  er, that’s to be expected isn’t it ?

and in other office news, this funny little barrier appeared in the office at the beginning of last week to keep some of the people

and finally, crisp news.  Doritos have finally arrived in new zealand.  and the traditional kiwi corn chippies (as they call crisps here) have been evicted.

that’s progress for you !

i met a couple of chums this morning for coffee before work.  we met at 7.30am and then i walked up the hill to work

my walk to work has got a bit more complicated recently as I have to go under a bit of the motorway. 

that wasn’t really a problem before, but they are building a new tunnel for motorway right across where i walk, so that’s a redirection pain.  apparently that will go on for the next 13 months so we’ll have moved in to our new office by then.

there were some good clouds this morning and nice reflections. 

and saw this house offering free soil at lunchtime

i didn’t take any

and here’s an abandoned leaflet in a pile of big heavy autumnal leaves

the company magazine came out today and contained the picture i took of my book writing colleague.  it’s interesting how they used it.

and then this evening we had our home group easter social where we did laughing and cake eating.

last day at work before the hols tomorrow.  hoorah !

kezia survived her camp.  in fact she did more than survive – she had a great time and threw herself in to every activity by all accounts.  she started writing a blog post so hopefully she’ll finish that tomorrow. 

jane went along today to help and ended up standing in the sea whilst the kids did boogie boarding.  i can’t tell you any more than that as we only overlapped briefly this evening as i got home and she went out.

i’m really looking forward to our holiday next week so we can spend some time all in the same place at the same time.

  

i’ve been writing a report the last couple of days giving an update on the latest UK regulatory environment which has been a bit strange.    Ofcom published a load of documents last week which were on things i was working on just before i left.  It’s nice to be able to fast-forward to the conclusion of the process without having been involved in the pain on the way.

i walked to work in the dark this morning as i ended up getting a slightly earlier bus and the nights/mornings are drawing in.  we go back in time on sunday though so that’ll make the mornings a bit lighter.

Hello, Jane Here. Today I dropped Kezia off at camp. She is staying at a purpose built place about 15 minutes from here. Not sure how much sleep everyone will get tonight as there were 32 girls in one big dormitory. The room was sort of divided into little groups of 4 people with 2 bunk beds in. Kezia’s friends had saved her a bunk by the time we arrived. I am going to help tomorrow. I spent the rest of the morning catching up with Wendy, Buzz’s wife, who took me to a coffee shop in Helensville

This afternoon I got my NZ driver’s licence. For UK people this is just a matter of filling a form in, producing the correct documents and having a sight test – all of which I managed successfully.

After school, I just had Esther and there is no homework this week as it is the last week of term. So we went on an adventure and caught the bus into Auckland and had a look round the Viaduct area of town and I indulged Esther by letting her browse in about 10 souvenir shops. (We didn’t buy anything). Then we met Dave, had dinner in Wendy’s  (different Wendy from above) and came home.

here’s evidence of us skyping via our telly.  that’s jane’s parents from last night.

and here’s something you might like to read.  it’s the snack bar menu at the secondary school where we have church.  we don’t get those kind of snacks at church of course, but if you go to this school you can have all sorts of delights during the day.  (don’t tell jeremy oliver)

this morning i was on sound at church. these pictures are from the practice before hand.  it’s packed out for the two services.

things didn’t exactly go to plan though as there was some high pitched squealing which  meant lots of cable and power checking.  eventually it turned out to be something with the video cameras (ie not me), but for a while there i thought it was me that had broken something.  as you can see there are rather a lot of buttons and dials to accidentally press !

i didn’t see any baby capsules.

there religious crucifixion cup cakes on sale after church which was good.

kezia chose one with little eggs on (and took this rather good picture of it)

kezia then went off to a soft play party which all went well.  esther baked a lemon cake. 

we had a bbq tea, then esther and i went off to her last flippa ball game of the season.  that’s esther doing a block rather than showing off for the camera. you can see the ball if you click on the picture

unfortunately the final score was a familiar lose to our young heroes, but they all seemed to enjoy it.  so much so nearly all the team are reuniting for the next season after easter.

as we got in to the car we saw this lovely sunset over the local industrial units

kezia is staying away at her school camp tomorrow so that’ll be exciting (for everyone involved!).   see ya