Lots happening!

Wednesday before last my mum & nana came to stay for 5 nights. We picked them up from the railway station on Wednesday night after they had spent the day on the train coming down from Hamilton. It was fantastic having them around, & they certainly earned their keep in terms of helping out around the house! We set them to work on our flat-pack ikea furniture we had brought over from the UK. They ended up putting together 4 Billy bookcases, 9 Benno CD/DVD units, as well as several other assorted shelving units.

We have put these up in the Africa/music/library/chill-out/second guest room...
There used to be a double, double wardrobe where the above shelves used to be, so they also helped us take that out. Storage is one thing this house is NOT short of, so we decided we would rather have the extra space in that room.It wasn't all hard work, we did let them relax a bit as well! Nana was particularly taken with the Wii fit, & can be seen above slalom skiing & hula-hooping. If I am half as sprightly as she is at her age I will be doing well...Will was also busy & took out a large Grevillea shrub in order to open the patio up. You can see the before & after in the photos above & below. The birdbath below was a very kind house-warming gift from nana that we love.That Friday we attended the wedding of one of Will's colleagues. The wedding & reception was at Wilton Bush House, which is only a few minutes from where we live. It was a very nice ceremony, followed by a superb meal, & then an open bar & dancing for the rest of the evening.As befitting someone in Will's line of work, there was bit of a robot theme happening. Will was particularly taken with the robots on the top of the wedding cake, & there were also cute little wind-up robots on the table to play with...We put mum & nana on the train back to Hamilton on Monday morning, & then Tuesday I had

to go into school for the new staff induction day. It was a good day & we got given a whole stack of useful information. There are a handful of new staff who all seem really nice. I didn't have to go in on Wednesday, but spent a few hours there anyway getting myself sorted. Thursday & Friday was taken up with staff meetings & professional development. We had bit of a staff bonding session on Friday afternoon where we were put into teams & sent around the school to complete a series of tasks (think a combination of pictionary, cranium & trivial pursuits!) followed by drinks put on for us in the staff room. It does seem like it's going to be a lovely place to work. However I was shattered by the end of the week, it is a shock to the system having to get up in the morning & go to work after my 6 months off!!!

This weekend ended up being quite social, despite us not having a huge amount planned! My friends Neal & Nicky stayed on Friday night as they were up from the 'Naki to go to the 'Them Crooked Vultures' concert at the TSB arena. They arrived at around 6pm, & had just headed off to the concert when one of our next-door neighbours popped in & asked us if we wanted to join them for a drink. It was a glorious evening so we had a lovely time drinking wine on their lawn in the sunshine.

Saturday was also a glorious day so in the morning we all went for a walk in Otari-Wilton's bush which is a few minutes walk from our house. We spent an hour & a half exploring some of the trails. It is a fantastic place, it's the only botanic garden in NZ solely dedicated to native plants & consists of 100 hectares of native forest & 5 hectares of plant collections. Nicky & Neal's dog Charlie certainly enjoyed the walk!

My mate Marty was also in town this weekend, so Saturday night Will & I went round to a BBQ at Marty's friends place on Pembroke Rd. It was walkable from our place & took us about 20 minutes, all uphill! We thought at least it would be downhill on the way home, but in fact we ended up getting a lift with someone who was driving. Marty & his friends had been out at Makara snorkelling for paua during the day & had got a decent haul, so we had beautiful paua fritters done on the BBQ. It was another amazing evening & the house had lovely views out over Wellington to the south coast.

I'm glad the last few days have been nice, because today is wet & windy. Probably just as well though as I have lots of things to do... I might pop into school for a few hours this afternoon & make sure I'm all prepared for the kids coming in tomorrow. I got given a nice new shiny red laptop at school on Friday afternoon so I haven't had much of a chance to play on that yet.

Our House

We moved into our new place last Monday. Our container of stuff from the UK arrived at 9am & took a few hours to unload. I was really impressed with both Anglo Pacific the UK end & NZ Van Lines the NZ end. Both removal teams were fantastic, & in our whole 20ft container worth of goods that had travelled half-way round the world, the only casualty was cracked glass on one picture frame. Pretty amazing really...

Most of that week was spent unpacking boxes, & we are just about there... I still have some things that mum & dad have been storing for the last few (8!) years, & they should be delivered in the next few weeks. I'll post some pics once everything has arrived & is sorted.

Our first house guests arrived on Friday, so that was pretty exciting! The Roe family came over as foot passengers on the ferry, & left yesterday afternoon. It was great to see them all & we had a lovely few days. Unfortunately the weather was pretty awful for most of the time they were here... However that did lead to Rich getting a few seconds of fame... We were coming out of Te Papa & a TV3 camera crew had just set up & wanted to interview one of us. They were interested in whether the terrible weather was the main reason we had chosen to go to Te Papa that day. We pushed Rich forward & he appeared (briefly) on the news that night. It finally cleared up yesterday so we went for a drive up Mt Vic to check out the views, en route to dropping them off at the ferry terminal. The kids coped well without any TV (all going to plan, Sky gets installed on Thursday) but the Nintendo Wii kept them occupied! Broadband is also supposed to be installed on Thursday, so it will be good to be connected to the wider world again. That's partly why is has been so long since the last post, plus the fact that I've been pretty busy unpacking boxes...

The next house guests are due to arrive on Wednesday. Mum & Nana are getting the train down, so it will be lovely having them to stay for a while as well.

Seeing in 2010

It was great to meet up with Nic & Tom on the 30th. We picked them up from a farm just out of Tokoroa & Tom was happy because he had caught his first NZ fish. 4 of them in fact... On the way back to Hamilton we stopped at Tirau for icecream, & a visit to the giant corrugated iron sheep & sheepdog. Only in NZ...

We also stopped at the Hamilton Gardens, but didn't have a huge amount of time before the gates shut at 7:30pm. My favourite Indian garden was looking amazing.

We finally made it back to mum & dads in time for a lovely dinner of BBQ steak & salad. With the wine flowing & a lot of catching up to do it ended up being quite a late night. Nevertheless we were up fairly early the next morning in order to hit the road for the Coromandel. We had tickets to see in the new year at the Coromandel Gold music festival at a farm next to Buffalo Beach, just out of Whitianga.

We arrived quite soon after the campsite had opened, so got a good spot for our tent. Will & I had bought the tent a couple of months earlier in a big Kathmandu sale, & it was its first outing. It was perfect for the 4 of us, each couple had their own enclosed room at each end of the tent, & there was a large communal room in the middle. We are definitely looking forward to taking it on further adventures... Once we had set up camp we wandered down to the beach for a couple of hours to chill out before the start of the festival.

I was really impressed by how well run the festival was. It was in a lovely setting with a natural amphitheatre surrounded by native bush, with the ocean in the background. The line-up was Katchafire, Tiki Taane, Kora & Shapeshifter, with DJ's playing in-between. The 2 earlier acts were my favourite, although Shapeshifter were a good choice to see in the new year.

After experience of UK festivals, it was quite refreshing to see food & drink very reasonably priced. We had taken a lot of food with us, so my only purchase was a beautiful mussel & trevally fritter on bread for $5. Beers were also $5, & I was drinking $6 Jim Beam & cokes. We must be getting old because we were all sensible with what we drank, & were pretty sober to see in 2010! That's more than can be said for some of the young teeny-boppers around us!

The next day we set off for a bit of exploring on the Coromandel Peninsula, starting with a hearty & much appreciated brunch at a Whitianga cafe. Then it was off to Cathedral Cove.We walked the 30 minutes or so down to Cathedral cove & embarked on a New Year's Day swim. It really is such a beautiful place.Next was Hot Water Beach. We hired a shovel & dug ourselves a nice spa. Actually we cheated a bit & took on one that had been abandoned! The water was incredibly hot, & it was such a scorching day we actually had little interest in lying around in our hot pool! It was more a case of having bit of a paddle, then cooling off our feet in the sea. However it was still a very cool thing to do.

Then it was back to Hamilton. We had the place to ourselves as mum & dad had left for Oz that morning. They are spending time in Melbourne catching up with my sister who lives there with her husband.

On Saturday we drove Nic & Tom up to Auckland airport for their flight back to the UK, via Hong Kong. It really was great to see them, & we'll see them again next Christmas as we are planning on spending it in the UK.

Yesterday we drove back down to Wellington, as Will is back to work on Tuesday. We take possession of our house on Friday so that is very exciting. We pretty much have everything sorted for it... We need to purchase some house & contents insurance tomorrow, & then transfer the last of our UK £££ over here.