Great!

Our first destination, and this is what is being predicted.

"On Wednesday, showers stick around for Wellington but should clear elsewhere and cold southeasterly winds should ease as a ridge of high pressure spreads over the country."

Thanks Wellington!

Star Pupil.......

....... for Academic Excellence!

You gotta love IRD

It's currently 4.12pm, and I'm on hold with IRD. Like I have time to sit here waiting, although I got to admit at least they have some semi OK music.

Oh, m, gosh! It's 4.17, I'm off the phone. I can't believe it, that would have to be the quickest call to IRD, EVER.

I guess that means I need to get on and do other stuff! Like organising for this holiday. Two weeks is a long time to have everything for!

OK, so the holiday is all planned. 1 week to go.
Tuesday-we leave, and stay 2 nights in Wellington.
Thursday 2pm we get on the ferry, and stay the night in Picton.
Friday we travel to Nelson, stay the night to break up the travelling.
Saturday we head to Greymouth, visiting touristy things on the way
Sunday, onto Christchurch for 2 days of sightseeing before official business
Wednesday to Friday IS official business
Saturday we head back up the east coast, catch the ferry and stay again in Wellington
Sunday we call into friends in Palmerston, don't seem them as much as I would like so looking forward to that, and then onto family in Taihape
Monday we make the trek home, back to our own beds!!

Yes, well, I normally prefer to do my waterblasting in summer, shorts and t-shirt, barefeet, but today, it was long pants, jersey and shoes, which unfortunately got soaked. The thing is, when the house needs to be sold, ya can't wait for summer to do the waterblasting, so we went down to Jons mothers to help get the house and section ready for putting on the market. That took most of the day, so by the time we got home and had Subway for dinner, it was time to get the kids ready for bed, and to settle in and watch Survivor, which is getting interesting (I won't link to it, as it has spoilers on the website, and for once, I would like to be surprised as to who wins)

OK, it's going to shock some, but here I am again. I just have to share my new toy.
A flat screen too, which is so much easier as we have limited space in our computer area.

Thats not the real exciting part though. See the first picture, it has a USB port on the front, so I don't have to keep reaching over the back to plug my camera cable in.
But wait theres more..... see the second picture, with the little flap open, it has 2 more USB ports, for what I'm not sure!

OK, so I just get over this excitement, when I realise something even more exciting, I don't need all these ports, because... I also have memory card slots. Take the photo, insert the card into the slot, and it's all done in 2 seconds.

I'm loving the speed, we went from 120mbRam, to 512, so 4 times more operating memory. The only problem is transfering all the files from the old computer. The other good news is the old computer had 20GB memory, which we had only used half of, this one has.... wait for it.... 160 GB. What on earth are we going to do with that amount of memory? One good thing is, after I have taken a hard copy onto disk of photos, which Jon keeps at work, I can leave them on the computer, means no more searching through disks to find photos from several months ago. Then probably every 6 months or so I'll make another hard copy, to keep.

Right, that's about enough excitement for me.

Righto, it has been kindly suggested it was time for an update.

An update on what?

Nothing much!

It's absolutely freezing here, and Braden is sick, has had the day off today, and therefore I had to take the day off aswell.

Jon is away again this week. Last week Fiji, this week South Island. Talk about extremes! While Jon is away the kids get to take turns sleeping with me, and I couldn't resist taking this photo of Cameron, sound asleep with our cat Rocky.

And while it's not the best photo, (that's what happens when they move away, and you can only snap photos at visits), here is Iesha, now 3 months old.

So we got a new computer on the weekend, and I've spent the day transfering the relevant info, takes awhile, and I see somewhere along the line, my photo banner has been gobbled up. Will have to try to fix that.

Plans had been made. Cousin had been invited. Lunch organised. We finally made it to the Auckland Museum to see the dryosaur. The kids just had an absolute ball. We were lucky that it was a very small group, and the kids got to spend lots of time with the dinosaur.


Here is Troy, on the left,
and Cameron, getting to know the dryosaur ,

and then Braden, saying goodbye.

And another makes 5

Make you look?

Our guinea pig had babies.

I hadn't blogged in a while, and it was someone else who made the comment, she feels like she needs to put a photo with each entry. I thought, yep, that's me too, so I'll share some photos of our newest additions.

These 2 little critters here are only 5 days old, can you believe it? On day 1 they were outside, running around, eating grass, etc. Now, they are just roaring around, in and out, having great fun.

We still have a baby from the last litter, she is blind, and no one wants her, so she now lives with us. She has taken on a protective big sister role, and can often be found snuggling up with the babies to keep them warm. Thats her in the background of the 'group photo', and baby in front, along with Mum, left, and Dad, little brother must have been camera shy.

OK, so while I'm here...

.... I should share some photos from our weekend. We went to the Easter show in Auckland. It was a great day out, ok, yes, a bit expensive, but we were there from 12.30 - 7.30, and had a ball.

The boys are getting old enough to try new rides, although Cameron is still very hesitant to try anything different. We were very proud of him to try the rock climbing wall, and he has even agreed to try it again to see if he can get further.

For me, this was one of the things I was looking forward to. Unfortunately the 'concrete man' was just wandering around, and I nearly missed him. He walked past while Cameron was getting ready to go on the wall, and I definately didn't want to miss that, so I only caught a snippet of the concrete man in action.

Census baby (just)

OK, so she is now 6 weeks old, but she is here. Iesha, born to Wendy and Adrian, on March 7, just before 8pm, just made it into this years census. She is such a good baby, you don't see or hear her, until she is very hungry, and even then.........

OK, so I stink at this blog thing.......

....... but I am still here.

I've just typed a whole post and then lost it, aaaargh, so this may be the abridged version.

A couple of weeks ago we were lucky to be taken to away for the weekend, courtesy of JOns work, a kind of partner appreciation time. We went to Waitomo, stayed at the original hotel, and in the afternoon learned we were to go Black Water Rafting. OK, 2 things, first, I am scared of small/confined spaces, secondly they were dividing the group up, and we were being mixed, so, get to know the person next to you, they are your new rafting buddy. It was not as bad as I first thought, the space thing wasn't as bad as I first thought, and we had a great group, including 2 really cool guides.
In the evening, we dressed up, or rather down, farm attire, and went to Billy Blacks. Now you may not know Billy, but you may have seen his mate, Don Rash on TV. Billy does a 'farm show', absolutely fabulous, lots of animals, and audience participation, I would imagine a real hit with the tourists. Check it out

PARTY PARTY PARTY

OK, for those that couldn't make it, we didn't miss you :) Well, we did, but had a good night anyway. After dinner, pinata,(I'm not sure who had the most fun there), and cake,(which is another story itself) we enjoyed each others company until about 12.30. The kids didn't go to sleep until 1.30, and were awake again at 7.15, so it was an early night in our house on Sunday.

Mini Putt

In an attempt to visit all the mini putts we can find, we went to the one at Botany yesterday. WOW, what a neat place. It's easy to find, reasonably priced, a neat environment, indoors and open until 10. The only complaint was it was perhaps a teeny bit easy, on most mini putts we putt around 65, where this was only about 45. Anyway, if there are any near you, let us know so I can make a note and go there next time.

I also convinced the boys to stop and 'pose' for photos, new haircuts, all ready for school.

Sometimes you just got to get out of the house

Last weekend, being Auckland Anniversary weekend, we went to Tauranga. Nothing planned, nothing exciting. Just packed a picnic lunch and took the kids to the park. We were there for about 2 hours, and then came home. Thats it!!! I'm not sure who had the most fun though?!?!?

Christmas babies

These poor kids that have their birthdays at Christmas time. Cameron had been asking and asking when his party was going to be, knowing full well he had turned 7 on the 30th December, only problem was, being the holidays, many kids were away. I finally caved in and gave him a party on Friday. 5 out of 7 kids invited could come, plus his cousin Troy, so it was a nice group. The day went well, and he was pleased with his dinosaur theme.

Just a thought

I know since I have gone digital that I have been slack at sending new photos.

If you see any on here, or on my flickr badge(to the right) that you would really like, let me know and I can send you the larger file, or, if you beg and plead nicely, I may be able to send you a 'real' photo.

Angela

From the mouths of babes

This is a note, written by Braden, my 5 year old, who by the way, has shown no interest in girls whatsever. This was written by himself, and was not prompted by me!

My girlfriend is Keely and I like to play with her at school and I want
to marry her too and I am going to be handsome.

The question has be asked, am I ready to be someones mother-in-law?

A bit of a laugh

For those with nothing to do, enter your name and the word needs, (eg Angela needs) into Google. Then try wants........

Heres my little laugh

Angela needs a family who will access and work with a therapist
Angela needs help! (no comment please!!!)
Angela needs to untangle her emotional attachment
Angela needs to be in the school for the disabled
Angela needs to get her 'Ramsay' cookbook
Angela needs her coffee (those that know me well enough will laugh at that one)
Angela needs to know how many tables and chairs we need

Angela wants it gone
Angela wants the pic removed
Angela wants to see what John sees (mmmmmmmm, so what does John see???)
Angela wants to learn the family business and won't take no for an answer
Angela wants to know what the turnout was
Angela wants to know why more vehicles don't have MP3-aware CD players

and finally

Angela wants to uncover the truth (oh yeah)

Off to the pools

Well, we didn't spend much time at home over the couple of weeks while Jon was off, and Saturday wasn't much different.

We had seen these pools advertised on TV, and had to go to Auckland anyway, so went to the Mt Albert Wave Pool.

It was a great complex, even if it was quite crowded to start with. The place was well supervised, and for $20 we got a good couple of hours of fun.

I wasn't sure how the boys were going to go on the hydroslide, especially Cameron, as he is scared of heights. However, my concerns were short lived, they just went back and back,... and back.