Blog

 

as kezia said, we went back to camp this morning, refreshed from our night in our own beds rather than a solid camp bunk.  i played bass in the band which was exciting (!) and then we had lunch.  it was really great to get to know more people from the church and as we looked round we’ve met the vast majority of those who were there already which is great

we got back here about 2pm and jane and i had ‘nanny naps’ before jane took esther to her flippa ball.  sadly they didn’t too well and lost 10 nil.  oops

this evening we watched coast to remind ourselves of the mother land and that was that.

of course the other news is that a Tsunami turned up and made the sea wobbly round our way for most of the day.  there were some quite amazing things like the tide coming from fully out to fully in in 5 minutes in some places and weird choppy water all over the shop.  here’s some news coverage

we weren’t planning on going to the beach today anyway, but it was good to get the regular Auckland Civil Defence emails throughout the day, and comments on Facebook from the UK warning us not to go the beach !  technology is marvellous.

take care all

 

today is the last day of church comp and daddy played the guitar 

by kezia

we got up very early today and drove across to our church ‘camp’.  for camp think ‘very basic butlins camp’ and you’d not be too far wrong.

we arrived in time for breakfast and then i had to do sound for the worship session at the beginning of the day.  it involved fiddling with twiddly things through this metal grate.  i imagine that’s how prisoners must do their sound desks when they go to church.

the rest of the morning was spent in a couple of seminars, me supervising free range children in a gym for 90 minutes (!) and then lunch

after lunch it was team building games.  usual good fun stuff which everyone could join in with

and at around 4pm they opened the ‘flying fox’.  that’s what they call ‘death slides’ over here.  if you’re new to the blog, then you might be interested in seeing some actual ‘flying foxes’ here from my trip to Sydney last year

this one was HUGE and involved a wheelie ladder to get people down

kezia was the first to ride it today and it looked seriously high up from down below.  she’s pretty fearless when she doesn’t think about it.

the camp itself is a christian based organisation and houses church camps.  but it also does school camps which are very popular over here.  as a result Esther will be coming back after Easter for three days/two nights and is really looking forward to it.

we decided just to do day tripping rather than staying over as it’s only 45 minutes drive away.  and our beds are more comfy than their prison standard bunks

they’ve got some great posters in the main eating room for saying grace.  we’re likely to incorporate the adams family and superman ones in to our family repertoire.  have a go yourself (you’ll need to click on the pictures to enlarge them enough to read i suspect)

there was also a really deep and cold ‘water hole’ which was a dammed bit of the river with a mad water chute of black bin liner type material which jettisoned kids out in the water, and a mad rope swing thing which pinged them out far enough to drop off. the girls loved it.  although everyone was a little worried as the rumours said the hole contained … eeeels (which are really common over here)

we’re back tomorrow morning as we’re on breakfast set up duty (involved putting butter satchets on tables) and i’m in the band. 

well, the big news of the day is one of the girls won the Botanical Garden photo quiz  The prize is a rather fab electronic photo frame !

Now, i say ‘one of the girls’ because the letter was addressed to Esther.  she was therefore delighted about winning and excitedly phoned me up at work to tell me.  The letter said they’d put the photo on their website.

a car is ‘clamped’ by bollards for parking in a bus lane

so whilst later than morning jane had a look  on the website only to find Kezia’s name and photo.  so we’re not sure whether it’s the website or the letter which is wrong and therefore whether it’s kezia or esther which has won.  And the ‘lady what knows’ isn’t around until Monday. 

esther has been very good about it, but jane and i spent most of the day worried about how we were going to tell her.  we should find out on monday.   what a rollercoaster of emotions for all involved.

auckland is such a reflecty city

as for me, i had a meeting over breakfast, then headed up to the office in time for lunch at a Malaysian restaurant, then had a meeting with our CEO who supported the recommendation i presented to him (hoorah) and then we went out as a family to the local food maul (sic).   kezia and i had mcdonalds, esther had a roast dinner and jane had something noodly.

kiwis love the outdoors lifestyle.  this house is incredibly open plan

the girls had their swimming lessons this afternoon too which went well i think.

my favourite scary dolls in the local maul

this weekend we’ve got our church camp in this place.  We heard the accommodation is rather, er, basic, so like most of the church we’re just day tripping tomorrow and sunday.  no lie ins for us this week which is a shame as we’re all spent !

see yas

(finally managed to take some photos today, hoorah)

hello

we got our passports back today and our conditional residency has become unconditional.  the lady who handed our passports back to me said i no longer have to keep my current job and that i could retire and wouldn’t be thrown out of the country.  so that’s nice.

as for my job, that’s going fine and i’ve no plans to leave.  however, Telecom is having a few problems at the moment (which are nothing to do with me). 

It’s all over the media because there isn’t really much news over here.  which is why stories like ‘puppy rescued from teapot’ are so common

meanwhile jane had another busy day of doing.  and the girls had their second violin lessons which went well.

this evening i went to a band practice at church.  for those who remember me being loud at church in the UK you’ll be pleased to hear i’m now at least 10dB louder as my amp is too quite with it’s silencer button pressed in.

(photos are just random ones today i thought you might like because i didn’t take any myself today)

i found a debit card on the street today so phoned the bank and that put a stop to that

otherwise a very busy day of doing for me.  and jane and the girls too with various friends ad coffees and trampolining

homegroup was here tonight but nobody new so it was just jane and me and the chap who leads it.  and it turns out he’s just moved office in to the same building as me and now sits just a couple of floors up.  so that’s good for coffees. so we chatted, prayed and finished early !

and we’ve spent the last hour phoning back to the UK on various financial issues trying to organise remote children bonds and unriddle the mystery of some share schemes which have not been exercised properly.  exciting innit.

and now it’s bed time.  good night everyone.

i got up at 4.15 and went to wellington today.   i drove to the airport and got the 6am train

i went to a cafe in wellington when i got there for breakfast.  it was a bit of a dodgy place, but i thought it looked ok (transport caff style). 

the food was nice, only i nearly got punched in the face by the rather aggressive owner who mistook my saying ‘thanks’ for something else (no idea what) and pushed his face in front of mine and said “what did you say”.  all a bit scary.  all was fine once i explained but i won’t be going there again !

  

there was a few bits of art around and about like this magnetic word thing by the quay

after a day of conferencing i flew back.  i was aiming for the 6pm flight, but arrived at 5.10pm so could get the 5.30 flight !  hoorah for little airports in capital cities and flexible tickets.

the girls had a good time at school and tennis and jane’s out singing so i haven’t seen her yet.  see ya

long day at work for me and long day for the girls too i think.  it’s still very hot and muggy which seems to suck the life out of you.

i ended up getting a bus home an hour later than usual because i had to get something organised before i go to wellington tomorrow. 

one of my colleagues gets that bus and she offered me a piece of cucumber which you can see above.  it was a bit of a weird shape so i asked her what shape the cucumber was.  she said she didn’t know as her mum cuts up the slices for her (!) but she thought it was like a big apple.  so that’s weird.

anyway, i’ve just got back from my monday night hour long stomp with warren from up the road which was jolly good.  jane’s about to skype someone and i’m off to bed as i need to leave here at 4.45am to get the 6am flight.

and apologies to my mum for accidentally texting her instead of jane when i was on the bus coming home this evening.  it must have seemed odd to her getting a text from her son saying i was going to be late home nearly 20 years after i left !  especially now i live 10,000 miles away and it was her 5am.  sorry mum :-/

well, in no particular order, we walked up a 200m hill in Clevedon Scenic Reserve.  i see from the website that the walk we did is ‘suitable for the more experienced tramper’.  that’s probably why we all nearly expired from the heat on the way up !

but we got a fantastic view back towards auckland and across the bay to the Coromandel where we stayed for a night at Christmas.  anyway, that was our afternoon.

jane got us up early this morning to watch a kids triathalon down in town so we could see how it’s done.  it was funny seeing the mountain of bikes for the cycling part of the race

it seems the secret is to put some good flag or other indicator where your bike is.  if you’re a parent you also seem to stand against the fencing so you can shout at your kids as they get changed after their swim

looks like ken dodd was in the race

here’s some of the younger athletes having a sneaky peak at the finish line as they waited for their start time

here’s kezia trying to convince me to buy ice-creams.  i didn’t.

instead we went to a farmer’s market in a place called Clevedon (not to be confused with Clivedon).  these people love pies

and some people were selling brocollini which they spelt wrong.

 

instead kezia and i had GIANT pain au chocolates (they really were this size, it’s not just a trick of the camera).  jane and esther had some funky hungarian pastries. 

 

here’s some more pictures from the scenic reserve.  i still can’t believe we live near places like this.

eventually we got down to the carpark and headed back home

then we had about an hour before esther and jane headed off to the millennium swimming pool for esther’s second flippa ball game.

this time the team only lost 1 nil which was an improvement of 8.  And esther was nominated as player of the match.   i asked what that meant and she said “it means i need to buy the lollies for next week”  (lollies being sweets).

here’s esther with a giant seed pod

and here’s some canopy and a board walk over an old quarry

 

everyone’s having an early night tonight as we’re all exhausted.  this week looks like another busy one for me workwise and might involve my first presentation to our CEO (who i know from uk days) and i’m probably down at wellington on tuesday.

sorry to hear about all the snow in the UK again.  if you send us a few jiffy bags we’ll pack them with genuine sweaty hot and humid new zealand air and post them back to you.  or alternatively, we could arrange some long pipe between here and there and just blow some heat through ?   that’s just a couple of ideas for you to think about.

see ya

a slow & quiet day today after our late night last night.  the girls went to their first orchestra session.  apparently there are just 6 of them, so quite a small orchestra by international standards.

the rest of the day was spent with compulsory rests and low key messing about in the house.  i spent a few hours worrying that we were spending more than we earn only to discover a (rather fundamental) bug in Microsoft Money so we’re all right after all.  serves me right to be fancy and run our finances in two and a half different currencies.

then this evening we had a couple round from church for a barbie. the chap grew up in ashby de la zouch and we used to hang out around the same places in loughborough and leicester when we were growing up (although he’s a couple of years younger so i don’t think our paths crossed at the time).  we had fun reminiscing about slim fast shakes, chocolate oranges and After Eight mints (the latter no present here).

good times !