1 week down 9 to go...

Don't worry, I'm not really counting down until my next holiday already. Although it's worth counting down to as we get 3 weeks for the next one & my school is sending me to Sydney for a course on the last weekend of it. I've chosen to fly out a week before the course starts so I can see the sights.
I forgot to say in my last post that Will & I had done a really nice walk in Otari-Wilton's bush. This is the beautiful native bush reserve just a few minutes walk from our house. We went along the blue track which took us past an 800 year old Rimu tree.

Near the main entrance there is a canopy board-walk which looks down on some lovely tree ferns...

I enjoyed the last few days of my holiday. On the Thursday I hosted an afternoon tea for several of my colleagues, as they were really keen to check out our house. I enjoyed baking up a storm in the morning, & ended up making FAR too much. I made everybody leave with some sort of doggy bag. The neighbours also benefited from some of the leftovers. It was a most enjoyable afternoon, & then I had badminton that night to work off the cake!
We are continuing to get plenty of visitors to our garden of the feathered variety. The wood pigeons are still going strong on the berries on the cabbage tree. We were right below the fella above & he was not in the least bit bothered! When picking the last of our apples Will deliberately left a couple on the tree for the birds, & they have been most appreciated.

The birds have also learnt that scraps get put out around the bird-bath, so they tend to keep a fairly close eye on that... 40 odd is the most I've counted in one sitting. We are lucky that the neighbours cats wear bells! All the bird pics (bar the wood pigeon) have been taken through our lounge windows, so the quality isn't that great.
Will can't quite believe the size of some of the NZ insects. We have a 'pet' weta who has taken quite a shine to the inside of our letter box, & then we came across this guy sunning himself on our deck.
The wind has knocked the last of our walnuts down so we gathered them up last weekend. It wasn't a bad crop & they are drying nicely.
This weekend has been nice & relaxing. Today we had a wander around town & bought ourselves a heater for times when it's not practical to light our wood-burner. It's still pretty mild & we haven't needed any heating yet, but winter can't be too far away... We went out for brunch at Cafe Neo in the city centre, taking advantage of the Wellington Entertainment Book which we've bought. It's full of vouchers for either 'buy one meal & get another free' or '25% off the final bill' for all sorts of eateries in Wellington & surrounding areas, so it'll be a good way to try a whole lot of different places. It also has 'buy one ticket & get another one free' offers for both Wellington Lions & the Hurricanes rugby teams, as well as places like the Zoo & Zealandia Wildlife Sanctuary.

Today we also checked out the fruit & vege market which is held every Sunday in town. It is crazy cheap, less than half the cost of the supermarket. We ended up buying a bag of apples, loads of kiwifruit, some plums, bananas, vine tomatoes, 4 small red capsicum & a huge leek for less than $10!
This afternoon Will finished framing our giraffe picture from Africa. He's done a great job on all of them, building the frames from garden stakes. We decided that next to giraffe was the only place this pic could go... I love how giraffe seems to be looking at the new arrivals, checking them out! At my afternoon tea in the holidays, Nada, my head of department had given me a very cool pie dish as a house-warming present. Will & I had roasted a small leg of pork for dinner on Friday night, so decided to bake a pie for dinner using the left-over meat tonight. I essentially made a chicken & leek pie, but substituted the pork for the chicken & it was lovely. Very tasty indeed.

Over half-way through the holidays...

Last Tuesday was a bonus day with Will as the university give their staff an extra day off for Easter. That afternoon we headed into Lower Hutt for a spot of shopping. We got a great deal on a big 6-burner Masport end of line BBQ at the ginormous Harvey Norman centre. We then had a wander around the Queensgate shopping centre before grabbing some dinner in the food hall, then heading to the cinema to watch 'Boy'. We really enjoyed it, although the first 10 minutes or so was the best & had the whole cinema laughing out loud. It was a nice way for Will to end his Easter break.
On Wednesday I got my hair cut. It had been on the 'to do' list for a while, but it's hard to find the time during term time. I went to a place in Karori & was really pleased with the job that she did. I've spent the last 3 years or so growing out my spikes, but my hair had got longer & longer without really having any shape to it. I've now got some layers cut in, as well as a new fringe, & she also re-did my highlights that were last done in the UK, so a while back!

I can't really remember what I did on Thursday, so it can't have been anything too exciting... Thursday night I had badminton. I've joined the Wellington club that plays out of Badminton Stadium in Hataitai & I'm really enjoying it. There are only a handful of good quality ladies to play against, but they will also give you some men's doubles games for a bit of extra competition which is good.
Friday was an absolute stunner of a day so I decided to walk into the gym which takes about 45 minutes or so. You get glorious views of the harbour as you come down off Wadestown hill. My gym is about 5 minutes walk from the Cake-Tin rugby stadium which you can see in the above pic. On the way I came across the fattest tui in the whole world!
Saturday was also glorious so Will & I headed into the city centre. We had a browse through Frank Kitts market on the waterfront which was interesting. The waterfront was buzzing with lots of people taking advantage of the sunshine.
We watched some kids 'walking on water' in the aqua balls. Will thinks they'd be a great way to entertain his nieces & nephew when they come to visit us one day!
The saying goes 'you can't beat Wellington on a good day' & it's pretty much spot on. The city really does come into it's own when the sun shines & the wind dies down (& yes that does happen on occasion!)

We decided to take advantage of the weather by christening our new BBQ with some nice big juicy steaks for a late lunch (which also ended up being dinner as we were fill for the rest of the evening!)

One of our Saturday town jobs was to pick up a couple of screen prints by NZ artist Tony Ogle which we had put in to be framed. We bought them when we were freshly back in the country. We've only just got around to getting them framed, but they are now up on the wall & we really do love them. The first one is 'Rising Swell' which is a scene from Raglan, & the second is called 'Windows on Waitakere'

Yesterday was our two year Wedding anniversary, and almost 4 years to the day since I met Will. I couldn't have hoped to find a more wonderful, caring & kind husband. Here's to many more happy years...

Will actually had korfball till late last night, so we are having a celebratory meal tonight of roast chicken, roast veg, & a bottle of bubbles.

Holidays

Another 3 weeks since the last post, & again it has been incredibly busy. Busy in a good way though, with lots of social events. I'm sometimes surprised how much we have going on, considering that we still don't know THAT many people in Wellington!

A few weekends back we had a wine-tasting evening hosted by one of my fellow maths teachers. There ended up being 14 bottles of wine to blind-taste. We were given a list of the vineyard, grape variety, region & year, & had to match each wine up. I did OK, coming in second equal place with 8 correct, 1 behind the winner.
Each weekend Will & I try to do something around the house, & a couple of weekends ago we hung up our dryer. This ended up being bit of a mish! The previous owners had left the bracket up on the wall for us, but it was so close to both the ceiling & the wall that it was a nightmare job! It ended up taking us a couple of hours... We ended up sitting the dryer on a couple of wooden crates left over from the move. We then built it up with wooden blocks so it was pretty much the right height. Then it was a case of pushing it straight back so that it locked into the bracket. It was well worth the effort as it has freed up loads of room in our laundry.

When we bought our house the house-warming gift from the estate agent was a catered dinner party for 6 from Nosh. We had this last Saturday & invited our immediate neighbours on both sides. Nosh delivered the food in a big box on the Saturday morning. All the food was in foil trays ready to heat in the oven, with full instructions of what temperature to heat each thing for, & for how long. It was a lovely meal; roast mushroom herb & pine nut filo with tomato & chilli dip for a starter, sirloin steaks with potato salad, tomato & rocket salad, & grilled peppers & courgettes for the main, & chocolate mud cake with orange creme fraiche for dessert. We have cool young couples living on both sides of us so it was a brilliant night. We drank a disgraceful amount of wine & ended up snowboarding & 10-pin bowling on the wii until 2am!
I have now completed my first term & QMC & have thoroughly enjoyed it. It is full-on though, so I'm going to enjoy my 2-week holiday. We finished on the Wednesday & had staff petanque on the front lawn with wine & nibbles as our end of term social event. We did have to go in on Thursday but it was just department time up to interval, followed by a couple of hours of professional development. The school put on a nice lunch for us, then we were free to leave after lunch.
Friday afternoon Will & I picked my brother & a couple of his mates up from the airport. He is over on a flying visit from Hong Kong. I was in Hong Kong a year ago, & that was the last time I had seen him. We had tickets to the Hurricanes/Crusaders game on Friday night.

It was an exciting match, especially for Warren's Hong Kong mate Dennis as it was his first ever rugby game. It looked ominous when the Crusaders went 18-0 up in the first twenty minutes. However the Hurricanes hit back & were leading by 5 with only a few minutes to go. Unfortunately in the last play of the match the Crusaders went over for a try near the corner to tie the match up. Dan Carter had a chance to take victory for his team, but luckily he missed the conversion. It wouldn't be a rugby game without a couple of Dan pics. Luckily for the Hurricanes he had one of his more forgettable games...

On Saturday Will dropped us into town before heading up to his office to do some work. He's pretty snowed under at the moment. We went up the cable car so Dennis could check out the views over the city. I then left the boys to their own devices & met up with my mate Marty who was in town for the Easter weekend. He was hanging out with some of his family at the Te Papa cafe so I met up for coffee & a catch-up. Will met me in town later in the afternoon & we checked out the Briscoes & Rebel Easter sales, picking up a few bits & pieces that we needed. That night we had a BBQ with some of my touch team which was a good night.

Sunday morning we dropped Warren, Jason & Dennis at the airport. They were flying to the South Island for a few days. Will did loads more work & I had a lazy day where I pretty much just curled up under a duvet on the window seat & worked my way through two weekend newspapers! I've been a bit under the weather the last few days with a nasty head cold, so it was nice to just chill out. It's the typical teacher thing of coming down with something as soon as the holidays start... We've got a couple of big fat wood pigeons who are regular visitors to our garden at the moment, gorging themselves on the berries from the cabbage trees
In other garden news... We have just picked the last of our cox orange apples which have been very tasty. Our walnut tree is laden with nuts at the moment & they are starting to fall. We've got a whole lot we are drying out on the windowsill. We also had a big walnut tree in our garden in the UK, but we never actually got any nuts off it as the squirrels would systematically strip the tree, carrying the nuts off one by one to bury for the winter!