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to be honest, we’re not very good at sitting around at home.  so it was great to be back adventuring today.

the day started with jane going for an early morning run with a new friend from church.  and that went very well !

then we took the girls to orchestra during which jane and i went for our saturday morning ‘date’.  we found a nice cafe which sold pain au chocolates which of course i chose.  however, it wasn’t great as it had jam on it.  (why oh why ?)

we then whizzed back home, dropped of the violins and picked up the picnic before hitting state highway 1 to go to the zealandia sculpture park.

it’s a lovely place which mainly displays the work of new zealand’s most famous sculpturer Terry Stringer.   he lives and works there and he kindly let me take a picture

he was quite shy but really lovely and asked if we wanted him to take a picture of us, so we jumped at the chance

here are the two pictures we took.  i might start asking famous people to take my photo in future.

anyway, we had a private guided tour by Terry’s partner Tim because we were the only people there for the 11am tour.

we got to learn loads more about the sculptures than we would have just by wandering around.  for example this mammoth work was so well balanced it could rock back and forward with a gentle touch

and here’s one of the works which has just been delivered back from the metal place

 

there was a lovely walk through a kauri forest which contained a life size sculpture of jesus in a box

and a bizarre very high stepping stone thing you were allowed to walk on

when we arrived we could hear organ music.  it was coming from this little shed which contained an organ. 

we’re not entirely sure, but the chap who was playing it might be a world famous organist who is in new zealand to play recitals on the Auckland town hall organ which has recently been renovated.  he was certainly visiting the house the night before anyway

included in the entrance price was a cup of tea or coffee or juice which we took on the veranda.  kezia took the picture below

 

 

 

after we’d finished up in the sculpture place we drove down to the local reserve for a picnic.  this is the place we went to on new year’s with the ‘gang’ and it was lovely to be there again on a quieter, but just as hot day.

jane and i sat on the picnic blanket whilst the girls chucked themselves about in the sea.  i’ve got a pile of photos of that which i’ll post on a quiet day !

then we headed to a little town called Puhoi (pronounced ‘poo-hoy’).  which reminds me, i saw a t-shirt with the slogan ‘waipu ?  wainot !’  heh.

anyway, it’s a historic town and is really interesting.  you can read more here. 

after we’d had a look round the church, the local canoe centre (which we’ll revisit in a canoeing capacity at some point, and the local old-skool museum, we walked up a hill to a lookout point

it was a short sharp climb to get there, but was well worth it for the view

 

in the museum there was a lady mending old teddy bears and she recommended we visit ‘The Art of Cheese’ which is a cheese making plant just up the road. 

there’s a cafe there and a rather green lake.  you can see the small cheese factory in the background.

the local church was a rather catholic so there were some great statues.

 

the puhoi settlers originally came from a place called Bohemia in what is now the Czech republic and had a rather different experience when they arrived in New Zealand to what we have.

 

Puhoi also contains the smallest library in new zealand according to the locals. but it’s not uncommon for every town to claim it has the ‘smallest’ or ‘biggest’ something in new zealand and most are unsubstantiated.

oh, and the local village town pub was a biker pub and had some amazing internal decoration (including a bra chucked over a moose head)

 

after all that fun we came back home to play scrabble then it was bed.

the rest of this evening has been spent skyping (now on the big telly in the living room thanks to a new webcam).

we’re quite pleased with what we got done today, but i think tomorrow might be a bit slower (not least because i’m at church 7am-1pm doing sound at the morning services)

here’s some mannequins near my office.  i actually saw the lady who runs the shop adjusting the mannequins today.  she has a black band hair thing and looks rather like the mannequins.  mysterious …

anyway we went out for lunch today and i had a curry and a freshly squeezed real lemon juice.  looks quite bland but was actually quite tasty

there were a couple of birds on the next table who were enjoying it too.  apparently there was some famous comedy actor in the room, but no one could remember what he was called because he hadn’t been in anything for a while.  and i certainly didn’t recognise him.  my celebrity radar has been a bit quiet of late.

and good news on the meal moths.  they’ve been bagged up and is unedible.

then this evening i went to a church event call The Mob which is for blokes.  Mob stands for Men Only Business and is a kind of social hanging out type thing. 

there must have been about 40 chaps there and i played (and won) loads of games of pool.  there was also poker going on and table tennis and wii games and videos and just general chatting.  and some food and fizzy pop.

here’s a really bad picture.  i left early so i could come back and spend some time with my wife Jane and watch a movie on the television set.

tomorrow we’re off on an adventure as we’ve been a bit too home-based of late.  see ya

office excitement today was some moths had invaded the food storage area at work, so there were these funny caterpillar type things ‘running’ round the place. 

and our desks are moving back to where they were tomorrow which is exciting.  those 10 centimetres make all the difference !

weather-wise it rained heavily at various times today, but then minutes later it would be nice and sunny.  which made for some nice rainbows

like this one over our back garden

the girls had their violin lessons after school today.  otherwise just general life i’m afraid !

 

can’t all be exciting days though can they !

here’s a moro gold bar leaking toffee for us.  i got it from the vending machine at work.  they don’t normally leak like this.  hence the photo.

morogold’s are the king of the moro bars (you can get ones which are just normal moro bars).  they are a bit like a long thin round radial mars bar if you see what i mean as the toffee layer goes right round the outside.  and it’s also got crispy rice crispy type things in. 

and it’s very tasty.

the scandal though is that it’s just been revealed they are no longer making these bars in new zealand, and in future they will be imported from australia.  cadbury’s (for it is they what make them) say they can’t guarantee the taste will stay the same.

other exciting news was when my bus did an emergency stop to avoid crashing in to a plastic bollard in the bus motorway lane.  bus and the bollard remained intact.

work for me was stupidly busy in a mostly good way.   jane had her mainly music session and the girls had a good day at school.

one of kezia’s spellings this week is ‘weensy’.  i love it here.

the girls went to a friend’s house after school and had a nice time.

oh, and someone mentioned to me i should listen to this talk from last week at church, so i did.  and it really is quite amazingly excellent.  you should listen to it too

see ya

for a bit of excitement i got a different bus to work today.  that was all good this morning but made coming home trickier as i left the car at home and couldn’t work out which buses to get back.  so i ended up walking from the park and ride, but that was ok.

so i got home, had tea, then went out for my monday evening stomp with warren the neighbour.  we went for a walk to the local mall where we bought drinks from the cinema kiosk.  we both got green powerade drinks as that’s what us sporty types drink.  and magically they turned every pedestrian crossing green for us.  which never happens

the girls had a good day at school and enjoyed their tennis lesson and jane was a bit of a mall rat herself by the sounds of it.  she’s starting to eye up her winter wardrobe.

nothing else to report.  thankfully uneventful and non windy after yesterday’s excitement.

well, today started so well.  the taxi man picked me up at 5.20 and we collected two of my colleagues on the way to the airport.  there were a couple of good stories in the paper. one about a lorry spilling watermelon, mushrooms and zucchinis all over our local motorway to the headline ‘two-tonne spill causes salad chaos’.   and another story about a man who gets post for someone else.  all classic stuff.

however, when we got on the plane fog came in so we were delayed 30 minutes taking off.  that was fine, but as we approached wellington a gale was in force and we had a VERY wobbly last 20 minutes in to the airport.  we then got a taxi to our meeting room which was on the 17th floor of a building on the waterfront. 

being so high up and so windy (winds of 130km/h) that the room itself wobbled.  and i don’t mean just a bit – it was REALLY moving.  enough to make me grab the desk as i was presenting at one point.

anyway, despite all the movement (and the fact the advertised soup was 4 days old) it all went well.  my presentation was ok and not to chunderous (handy given the flight) and my boss asked me to compere the afternoon.

of course we were dreading the flight back at the end of the day.  we were delayed a bit and as we sat on the plane it wobbled about pushed by the wind.  but once we got going we wobbled quickly through the weather and within 15 minutes it was flat as a pancake.

in fact the rest of the flight was just lovely.

so there we go.  my first experience of windy wellington.   

i’ve no idea what anyone else has done today i’m afraid as i left before they got up and they were all in bed when i got home.  except jane who is out at her tuesday night singing lesson (on a monday evening).

today esther and kezia did their first triathlon and they were fab.  sorry this is a bit of a long post, but there are lots of pictures to show you !

it was sponsored by weet-bix which are not the same as the nearly same sounding british breakfast cereal.  although they look similar.  and you’re challenged to eat lots of them.

the first challenge was to set up the bikes in ‘transition zone’ in a way that the girls could find their bikes and drop them off again at the right point.  you can see the little flags and yellow box which paved the way.

then it was on with the hats and goggles and the wait to be called

esther was the first to go through in the holding pen where they gathered the age groupes together to walk them down to the beach.

it actually proved quite tricky to spot esther as there were lots of people wearing blue costumes and everyone looked the same when they were swimming.  this next photo doesn’t contain esther

but this one does !

after the swim it was a run up to get on their bikes

 

after biking they then went for a short run and i arrived just in time to see esther sprinting round the corner to the finish line.

despite her zoomyness she had time for a smile

 

 

meanwhile jane had my camera and was tracking kezia who had been taken in to the pen

here’s kezia being lead down to the beach

like esther, kezia always has time for a smile and a wave

she tripped up as she ran in to the sea and got an early wetting

you could tell from the screams and screeches that the water was a bit on the chilly side !

but she was soon swimming

i then saw her at her biking transition with esther.

one of her friends from school was also in her little group and she waited for kezia so they did the cycle bit together

then it was dropping the bike off and going for a run

it only seemed a minute or two until kezia came sprinting along and through the finishing line

there were over 2000 kids doing the ‘tryathlon’ and they don’t get an official time because it’s just about having fun

both girls were pretty exhausted after, but not too worn out (especially compared to some other kids)

and we got to see devonport which is a lovely part of town, very popular with ex-pats.  last time we were there was nearly a year ago when we came out our scouting trip.

here’s the itinerary

both girls got gold medals.  kez is convinced her’s is actually gold.  we were incredibly proud of our girls who just got on and did it despite being nervous etc.  i can’t imagine we’d do something like this in the UK – certainly not if it involved swimming in the sea !

at the end of the race there was ‘prize giving’ which was just a random draw of running numbers to win some quite good prizes but we weren’t winners (prize-wise).  then it was retrieving bikes with the other 2000 entrants and making our way home

after an hour’s sleep i went to church and have spent the rest of the afternoon practising and playing for the youth group’s meeting. to be honest i was pretty rubbish, but that was alright as so was the rest of the band this evening unfortunately.  the bass amp i was using even seemed to be on fire at one point so i substituted it for my own and all was well.

tomorrow i’ve a day down in wellington where i’m giving a presentation and compering the afternoon session (i’ve just found out).  taxi at 5.20am so not as early as usual.

see ya

here are some kiwi celebrities we saw at the girl’s triathlon today.

these first two are all blacks.

 

these guys are world famous (although i don’t know who they are!) and it’s amazing they just come along to sporting events to meet and encourage kids doing sport.

they seemingly consider it part of kiwi sportsperson’s job and that is very cool

i’m not sure whether they counted as one person each for the purpose of the container stage

and amongst this lot were various international triathloners, Olympians and a member of the silver ferns (the ladies netball team)

the took it in turns to give medals to kids crossing the finishing line.

it is quite amazing how international sports people are so accessible and there’s a real feeling that if you’ve got what it takes you can really achieve stuff over here.  and equally, if you don’t you’re encouraged to have a good time

today was a day of new friends.  here are bruce and fleur who came round this afternoon.  fleur’s best friends is someone i used to sit next to at Sky !  they were jolly big fun and we did some quality laughing so that’s excellent.  they’ve got two extremely well behaved girls a little younger that esther and kezia.  bruce is in the church band and also does sound.  all good stuff.

this morning kezia and i walked to the video shop and back.  it took just under an hour and we had a good chat about life and everything.  on the way back we journeyed through the school playing field.  he is the school play park.  pretty cool hey ?

this morning jane went to see the korean mum in the mall and they got on really well.  the dad was there too so he could do some translating.  they go to church too which is excellent.

they were very apologetic about the choice of film and were fine about esther not going.  instead esther went round to their house later in the afternoon and then they went to a Japanese restaurant for dinner where esther tried lots of food

jane made me a cup of hot water this afternoon.  she’s arranged for it to have a bit of an extra kick by dropping a wasp in to it.

then this evening i walked down to the fish and chip shop where they have this great sign.

tomorrow is the triathlon so we’re up early to get the girls’ bikes in to the special transition zone.   see ya

Hello, I think this is like Golden tickets. I’ve never had one of these cakes before. It’s Jane btw.

I can see what has happened here.

Dave went to a concert this evening with Buzz.

 

I’m not sure if he enjoyed Renee’s vocals today too – he just gave me the photos to comment on. Did you guess?

I have been sporty Kiwi woman today as I went to the mountain bike place with my mega sporty chums. It was one of them’s birthday so that was her birthday treat, followed by a lunch at her house. I was intending to bottle the bike ride and just go to the lunch but she suggested I was a chicken, so I went. And I enjoyed it. And I wasn’t so much the slow one today. So there.