Catching Up

I will race through the last few months in an effort to get caught up on this year, before it turns into next year!

We get quite a few visitors through our house, whether it be couch-surfers, WWOOFers (much better than couch surfers because they do a half-day of work in exchange for their board!) or dad visiting whilst on a work trip to head office (which sadly is all finished now that he has retired). Below is dad enjoying some of the super fresh Browne eggs.

And here is one of the layers...

I now feel like I have made it in life! Every day our local paper The Dominion Post features a pet in its 'Pet of the day' feature on the capital life page. Well, guess who made the cut earlier in the year... None other than Jen the Hen!

Speaking of the chickens... Our two youngest have always enjoyed sleeping al fresco, turning down the nice cosy coop in order to fly up into the branches of a tree every night. Well, one of them has also chosen to start laying al fresco as well... They had been quite good at laying in the coop for quite a while, but then we started only getting two eggs each day instead of the usual three. We had been keeping an eye out for quite a while around the garden, then Will finally stumbled across this hidden in some undergrowth...

Mum and their lodger, Hoi, came to visit in June which was lovely. Mum hadn't been down to Wellington for quite a while, and Hoi had never been, so it was nice to show them around.

At the end of June I was back in Hamilton for a Masters badminton match. It happened to be at the end of the school holidays so I came up a bit early and had a couple of nights at home before joining my team in the motel for a couple of nights. Mum and dad came and watched my matches, they really are good at supporting me whenever I'm playing locally. Here they are with our Wellington team mascot. I really must get dad a Wellington scarf so that he doesn't look like he is cheering for the opposition!

While I was in town I got to catch up with my cousin Renee and meet her wee girl Ashlinn for the very first time.

Early August I was given a raffle ticket as a present by my head of department's wife. It was fundraising for Scots College which is the brother school to the one I teach at. It was an amazing prize, a fully catered dinner for 10 people, in your own home, hosted by Conrad Smith, arguably one of the greatest All-Black centres of all time!

Well, out of the 2000 tickets sold, mine was the one drawn! On the appointed night I had two chefs turn up at our place at around 5pm. I had already chosen the menu in consultation with the catering company. We had a variety of canapes to be served from about 7 to 7:45pm, then an Asian style duck salad for entree. The main was beef fillet with salads and seasonal veges, then dinner was a poached pear encased in filo pastry with honey ice cream. Scots college had provided the booze (they deemed 4 bottles of red, 4 bottles of white and a dozen beers to be a suitable amount of alcohol for 11 people, including one All-Black about to jet off to the Rugby World Cup a few days later, and two kids!), plus they also provided two impeccably mannered boys to act as wait staff for the night.

Conrad arrived right on the dot at 7pm. He is such a chilled, easy-going guy who can talk to anyone about anything, always with his trademark huge grin on his face. I had invited Suzanne, who had given me the ticket, as well as her son and a friend of his, Will, of course, my rugby-friend Hiria (She still plays, and I used to play for the same rugby club as Conrad, OBU), my badminton-friend Richard, then most of my rugby-loving maths department from school. It was a really cool mix of people and everyone seemed to have a really good night. It really was an amazing prize to win as it was an opportunity that money can't buy. I still can't quite believe that Conrad was in my house for the whole evening!

 

Now luckily the All-Blacks managed to win the Rugby World Cup... I was able to make it to the Wellington celebratory parade. My friend Anna and I just happened to catch the All-Blacks as they were boarding their team bus ready to deliver them to the Parliament grounds ready for a civic welcome and the start of the parade. I took loads of pics, but I'll show restraint by just posting a picture of Conrad (of course!) and Dan the man...

Late August Will and I attended the Lux Festival on one of our date nights. We had also attended the previous year and loved it. I don't think this year was quite a good as last year, but we still really enjoyed it. I'm a sucker for any sort of light installation!

Speaking of date nights, Will and I have been pretty good at setting aside a night to do something together on a frequent basis. Usually we try for a Wednesday night as it breaks up the week nicely. Every now and then we'll stay at home and I'll cook a nice dinner and maybe watch a movie, but usually we use up random vouchers that I've bought on the various discount voucher sites (Treat Me, Groupon, Grab One etc...). One of our favourites is the Dockside 5-course tasting menu with wine match. We've had a couple of these and they are brilliant. Excellent food and excellent value. Below are the desserts from our two different tasting menus

 

Here are a few more random date night pics. Dinner at Ancestral , craft-beer tasting and dinner at Bin 44 on the waterfront, then the sharing platter at Coco at the Roxy, which we followed up with a movie.

At the very end of August it was Founder's weekend where I get the Monday off school and have a teacher-only day on the Tuesday. Will and I took the opportunity to spend a long weekend at Ohakune so Will could get a bit of skiing in. We had a lovely weekend away and, even though I don't ski, I accompanied Will up the mountain on the chairlift one of the days and had a lovely time set up in the cafe, reading the newspapers and my kindle, and catching up with Will every few runs.

Will still finds it a novelty skiing on an active volcano!

In October Will and I attended the World of Wearable Arts which is a huge event in Wellington. I had been a couple of years back with some girlfriends, but it was Will's first show. It is an incredible spectacle, much better than Will thought it might be.

In November, on a beautiful Spring Saturday, Will and I took the ferry over to Eastbourne for an excursion (using a voucher for half-price ferry tickets of course!). We had a lovely day, and it just so happened that Grant, one of my badminton friends, was also on the ferry with his family so it was good to catch up with them. Here he is with one of his boys. If you sit up on the top deck of the ferry you are liable to get the odd soaking from rogue waves!

We had a lovely pizza lunch at The Pavilion, followed by an icecream on the beach. 

Then it was back on the ferry for a visit to Matiu Somes Island, halfway between Wellington City and Eastbourne. It is a really interesting place with old gun emplacements, as well as an old animal quarantine station, not to mention just beautiful scenery, and we enjoyed having an explore.

I'll finish up here because this post is plenty long enough already. At least I've made some decent progress towards getting myself all up-to-date!

WW1 Centenary Celebrations

ANZAC day this year was quite a big deal due to the World War Centenary celebrations (which will continue on for the next few years). In Wellington, Pukeahu National War Memorial Park was completed and opened in time for ANZAC day. It is quite a cool public space. In the week leading up to ANZAC Day on the 25th April there was a sound and light exhibition at Pukeahu, telling the story of several New Zealander's experiences of the war.

Te Papa also has an amazing exhibition on at the moment called Gallipoli: The scale of our war which is free to visit and will be open for the next four years. This was the work of Richard Taylor and his Weta Workshop team. It tells the stories of eight New Zealanders who were involved in the war in different ways. They have been created 2.4 times human size. The attention to detail is amazing, the skin looks so real and you can see individual beads of sweat. Below are a few pics I took on my phone, but I probably needed my DSLR to really do it justice. The exhibition has been hugely popular and exceeded all expectations in terms of visitor numbers. At popular times some people queued for a couple of hours to get in.

Several Wellington buildings also joined in the commemoration. Below is Old St Paul's which had the history of both World Wars projected on to it.