October

I had a brilliant 2 week break at the start of the month. The weather was pretty good in the first week so I spent quite a bit of time working on the garden. I also caught up on lots of sleep, as well as fitting in a few gym sessions. In the second week my mum and nana came to visit for a few days. It was lovely having them here. The chooks also loved it as mum had bought down a huge amount of silverbeet for them that had run to seed in her garden. In fact that was pretty much all her checked in bag contained as she bought her clothes in her carry-on bag. Will and I certainly appreciated all the work they did around the place while they were here.

Will decided that nana would be a good marketing tool for Engineering at Vic Uni, so presented her with one of the department robot hoodies to help spread the word in Hamilton. She'll be the coolest grannie in town!

On one of the days Lucy and Tess came to visit, bring along little Isla and Tess. It was a gorgeous day so we enjoyed some very nice afternoon tea outside on the deck. Mum and nana enjoyed having the little ones around.

 

 Will has also enjoyed the nice weather on the weekends, doing some of his work outside. Every so often he gets some 'help' from the girls...

 

 

Will has also been enjoying his fishing. I blame you Richie Roe, you've created a monster! Some weekends he will go out with one of his colleagues and fish off the rocks just past Oriental Bay beach. There can't be too many places in the world where you can catch fish just a minutes or two out of the CBD of a capital city... The other day he caught a couple of small kahawai which we smoked and ate. He also got a blue cod, but it was under sized, so he had to throw it back. I think the next thing he would quite like is a sea kayak for fishing (your influence again, Rich!).

Last weekend we had my Taranaki friends Nicky and Neal stay for a few days. Nicky was competing in the NZ tree-climbing championships at the botanic gardens. She is the top female climber in NZ and comfortably won, booking herself a trip to the world champs in Toronto next year. On the Saturday Will and I went down to watch her in action. The pics below are her doing her work climb, one of the 5 events they need to do.

 

 

While we were waiting for Nicky's turn to climb we borrowed their lovely dog Charlie and went for a walk around the gardens. We were too late for the tulips, but it was still nice.

 

 

School is now winding down. We've had 3 weeks so far this term, and my 3 senior classes have now left on exam study leave. It means I'll only have 2 junior classes running for the remaining 5 weeks of term. I love this time of the year! Although because our girls are pretty good, I'll probably have a few coming in each day for some help during the next week or so before their exams.

Badminton is now done and dusted for the year. On Saturday night I've got the Wellington Badminton Association Awards evening. Our Masters team has been nominated for team of the year. Touch kicked off this week. On Thursday night our QMC staff team played. We got bit of a hiding, but it was loads of fun. It was only grading games so didn't really matter. There are quite a few in the team who had never played touch before. On Monday night I've put together a team that mostly consists of my badminton friends, so again, it should be interesting! It'll be fun anyway, on a nice evening you can't beat bit of a runaround with your mates...

No more news from me, in less than 6 weeks we'll be in the UK!