May

I'm now into Week 4 at school so this term is passing by as quickly as ever. I'm looking forward to the end of this week and the Queen's Birthday long weekend. We are very fortunate at our school to also be given the Tuesday off, so bring on a 4-day weekend! Unfortunately a good chunk of it will probably have to be spent writing reports...

 

Here's a couple of chookie pics as I haven't put any up for a while. And no, she isn't meant to be on that side of the window! They can't resist popping in to say hi when the lounge windows are open. We have recently ordered a couple of new chooks to add to the flock. We'll get them as 8-week olds mid June. It'll be interesting to see how our original 3 take to them...We'll keep them all and the 'old girls' can live out a happy retirement on the estate. We might get a few more eggs from a couple of them come the spring, but poor old Daphne (who had the unfortunate run-in with the neighbours dog) has most likely given up the ghost.

 

 

 

When we first moved into our house 4 and a half years ago my nana kindly bought Will and I a birdbath as a house-warming present. The birds absolutely love it, especially the blackbirds. It's very entertaining watching them taking their evening baths. The most we've had in it at any one time is 5 sparrows splashing about.

 



 

 

While we're on a nature theme, I snapped this fine looking fellow on one of our courgette leaves.

 

We aren't eating a huge amount from the garden at the moment, bar the chillis and spring onions that are still going strong. I've got some leeks in, but they won't be ready for a wee while. I've been pretty slack at putting in things like peas and broadbeans, maybe it'll be a job for this long weekend, weather permitting. The first of our tamarillos fell off the tree today which was quite exciting. This is from the tree that Will grew from seed about 3 years ago. The tree is absolutely heaving with fruit, I'll try to take a pic for my next post.

 

Near the beginning of the month I attended a party to celebrate not one, but two of my rugby friends who had recently finished their PhDs. Congratulations Dr Hiria McRae and Dr Katy Chanberlain, it is a fantastic effort and thoroughly deserved. The party was pretty good too!

 

Last weekend I was up in Auckland for the weekend playing my second lot of Wellington Masters badminton matches. We had comfortable won the first two ties a few weeks ago, and this time we were taking on Oroua in the first tie, followed by Waitakere. We dispatched Oroua easily enough, beating them 12-0, and were expecting a tough match against Waitakere. It wasn't helped by the fact that Waitakere had brought in Nick Hall as a ring-in to play for them that day. For those of you not quite up to speed with NZ badminton history, Nick won three bronze medals for NZ in three consecutive Commonwealth Games, with his last one being in 2002. Anyway, we ended up beating Waitakere 10-2 and to top it off, my partner Geoff and I beat Nick and his partner in the top mixed doubles. It was rather satisfying to say the least... Mind you, our whole game plan pretty much consisted of 'don't hit it to Nick'!

My wonderful parents are incredibly good at supporting me whenever I am playing vaguely in the vicinity, so they travelled up from Hamilton and had an enjoyable day watching. It was great catching up with them.

Whilst I was away in Auckland, my sister and her husband Shane, and their nearly 6-month old baby Evelyn arrived in Wellington. They live in Melbourne but were spending a couple of weeks holidaying back in NZ. Will did a great job of looking after them until I arrived back home early Sunday afternoon. It was very cool meeting my new little niece for the first time. A word of warning, if you're not a fan of baby photos it is probably time to stop reading now!

Here's one of the proud daddy!

And just one more to finish... She really is a sweet little girl, but despite teasing from my friends, I'm definitely not getting clucky in my old age!