Tidy and neat...neat and tidy.

I spent the day in a tidying mood, slowly getting into the groove helping the kids tidy their bedrooms. Bees has the right idea, tidying up quick, albeit not too tidy but clearing the way so one can at least wander around the bedroom without treading on something. Then someone came over to take over the Treasurer's role for Ellesmere Pony Club. I took her through what I did and gave her a USB Stick with the accounts on it and it's now all hers, however we still have to hand over many other things like signing rights and all the mail that comes my way...etc. After she left I started to tidy up the area around Audrey's PC. It's still Audrey's PC. Seeing as I have all the treasurer's stuff there and I thought now is the time to get rid of it all and anything else that we don't really need there. I found a few family keepsakes for the kids when they grow up and a few important docs which I've put with other important docs. The dust is still there though. I'll get rid of that when I next hoover.

Bleeting

Maybe I should be "tweeting" in my blog. Bleeting as it happens. If so, then...Dun-dun daaaaaaaah. Bees needs glasses! The 4-eyed little squirt. :-) She's long sighted but supposedly only a little. The optician said that she may grow out of it. Where have I heard that before. Anyway, she's got a pinky-purple pair and a yellow pair. Buy 1 get 1 free. I hope she takes care of them.

Long Weekend

Well, this is the first of many long weekends. Or longer I should add. Any long weekend coming, I'll take another day off. Usually the Monday or the Friday, opposite the public holiday. Friday I went into town and had a coffee. That was about it really. Lol. I was looking at stuff to buy but the tight-arse that I am says I don't really need that and walked away. I'm going to get a smaller camera anyway because it's just easier to use but not sure when. 30% off is a good deal (Dick Smiths) but I might still wait because I don't really know what camera I'm looking for. I saw a Tivoli Audio Pal for $400 which had great sound. I should have bought that. I checked the 'net for cheaper prices but could not find any. I could have used it on Saturday. I also saw loads of cool gardening equipment and other 'toys' that I'd like. Perhaps one day. Saturday and Sunday were spent gardening, weeding. The Pal would have been useful to plug up onto my iPod and get some decent sounds out of it all. 16 hours of battery life supposedly the Pal has. Sounds great to me. I'm never out side for that long. Perfect. Might get that another day unless I can find a WiFi one :-) Monday I took the kids into town shopping for some food. We then went to Warehouse Extra to get a couple of toys for the kids. They wanted to spend their pocket money. After that it was Hagley Park for a picnic by the swings and slides. It was a nice relaxing Waitwangi Day. After eating bits 'n' pieces all afternoon we got home at tea time and none of us were hungry for anything.

Holiday in Nightcaps

The journey down was rather warm. We were expecting it to be wet but no rain appeared. Still, there was a storm coming so we'd cool down at some point. Unfortunately not on the drive down.
Whilst travelling down through Geraldine, Tekapo, Twizel, Cronwell, Frankton, Kingston, Mossburn to Nightcaps, I had forgotten how beautiful New Zealand was. Lupins, wild roses, dramatic scenery, snow capped mountains, dry tussock, lush green pastures. It must've been a good 10 years or more since I last travelled alont this route.
When we arrived, we were shown around the garden and the traction engine (above) and the implement shed. There's is definitely alot of projects in that shed to keep someone going for 50 years. Lots of stuff. I was certainly impressed by the lawn too. A much nicer lawn than mine. After that it was tea and bed.
The next day at around breakfast time we heard the coal train come past. It arrives with empty containers, gets filled up with coal and then goes away again. The kids rushed their breakfast and we all went out to see what the fuss was about.
They were taking the containers off the train with a huge forklift, then putting 2 of them onto a truck. That truck went to get the containers filled with coal whilst another truck got 2 more empty containers. The filled container truck came back and the full containers were put back onto the train. The train moved forward a little and empty containers were put onto the truck for the second round. as that truck sped off, the other arrived to have the full containers tranferred to the train and empty ones loaded onto the truck. And so on until the whole train was loaded with coal. Then off it went.
Whilst the truck drivers were partway doing this, one asked if Jamie and Bees would like a lift in the truck to see the other end and enjoy the ride. They jumped at the chance and so off they went. Meanwhile the other truck driver gave me a lift on his truck and I too saw the other end. I was expecting a huge hopper that poured coal into the truck from above. It was a front end loader that did it.
In the afternoon we went out for a drive around the area, driving through Tinkertown, Ohai, Tuatapre, Clifden, where we saw the Clifden suspension bridge and Monkey Island where we wanted to walk over to it where a seal was but the tide was in so couldn't. The kids had fun at the beach though. There was a very interesting house there too with it's turrets.
On Tuesday, John Esther's brother, got the steam engine warmed up and by the time we were out it was sharting to build up pressure. It took a few ours to get there but eventually it was ready to transfer that steam into useful movement to get a log chopped up into planks.The kids, being kids, got bored with the setting up and went away, then came back for the sawing, then went away again. One thing you can't appreciate in the pictures was the smell of the steam engine and the smell of the freshly sawn wood. It was fun but as a job, taking 2 hours to start the machine and 2 hours to tidy up, and however much sawmilling you had to do, whether it would be worth it now. Good to watch though. A few people came to watch the spectacle. The steam enging is on some herratige trail so if you're ever out and about and in that area you can go have a look. It might even be running.
On the last day there we went to John and Lallie's daughter and son-in-law's (Alison and Mark) place. They are managers on a farm and get to live there too. Being a farm, they were always working so after some lunch we went out to watch what they did. It's the largest sheep milking plant in the world supposedly and it's not long in being created so alot of ideas and processes are still being tweaked. It was interesting to watch the sheep being herded up and fed through the plant. Many of it being mechanised and comuterised so they can calculate how many litres of milk each sheep produces...etc. On the property were also a few barns with lambs which are born throughout the year and specific times to help feed the milking process. All the male lambs at only a few weeks old are sent off to be the meat under the mint sauce. We tried some cheese they made and it tasted OK. Like cheese really. Nothing too out of the ordinary. They also make powdered milk for the asian market where it's sold as an expensive luxury. Unfortunately, I did not take my camera with me but I have a feeling it was probably not the done thing to be taking photos of their plant when they're the pioneers of sheep milking and processing so all good anyway. It would have been nice to have taken a couple of pictures of Bees helping out and Jamie being thoroughly miserable because he wasn't allowed to watch TV and had to come watch the sheep being milked. The joys of parenting.
Thursday was the long drive back, taking 10 hours to get home but stopping along the way for food, grocery shopping and pictures.
A nice little holiday and here are the pictures to see if you're interested.

It's Christmas!

It's that time of year again. I awoke at 06:30 and decided to send a few text Christmas messages and make a cup of tea. Whilst the kettle was boiling away, I went back to bed for a quiet moment before the kids got up. 2 minutes. That's all I got. The kids must've heard the sounds I was making when getting thew phone and putting on the kettle and awoke and ran out into the living room. Then Bees shouting "Santa's been here. Santa's been here". Sweet.
They of course wanted me to get up but I said there was no opening of presents until Nan arrived so they might as well have breakfast. Bees was too excited to bother. Jamie made himself a sandwich.I got up out of bed about 07:00 and got a few things ready. I set up the webcam so that family back in Europe could watch the kids opening the presents if they so wished. Rik and Leny did but Dave, Carole and the twins arrived just as we'd finished. Bees handed out the presents and thoroughly enjoyed the whole thing. After Jamie got a bit stressed over trying to put together a cheap Chinese Lego copy of a racing car. The instructions were a bit vague and incorrect and the bricks would not fit together smoothly like Lego bricks. Ah well. It happens. I decided not to buy any Lego (or cheap imitations) for Jamie as he has enough already.
After a few cups of tea, Esther went back home and as the kids played with their presents, I got a few things ready for the day, the final thing, picking the peas from the garden.
Off to Esther's for lunch and then the kids had fun on the water slide that they got from Esther. It took them a good hour to two hours to be brave enough to get under the water with their heads. Water on their faces is just too scary. after that and a Barbie video and a slight kip from me it was off to Amy and Iain's for an evening BBQ.
We arrived, we drank, we chatted, we ate. The kids played on the water slide again and had a nice evening there before coming home exhausted and needing sleep.
There are some photos of the day.

The best Christmas present ever

What more could a father ask for than a wonderfully compassionate daughter, who misses her mummy. Needless to say it had me in tears. Click on the picture to read what it says. I am so lucky to have a wonderful family.

Run Away!

I broke up from work for the year on Tuesday. The kids were staying at Nan's, idea being that I could pop into town and do some Christmas shopping and just chill out and enjoy some time on my own, without having the kids about. So I did just that, popping into town and getting some presents. I also caught up with some friends for a chat whilst I was in town which was nice. When I got back home I wondered what I could do Thursday. I decided to run away. Esther was going to look after the kids Thursday night so I decided on Wednesday evening to book a room at a motel in Hanmer Springs and spend Thursday there and come back Friday. Which is what I did. After I dropped Jamie off at Esther's place at 07:30, I took a leisurely drive to Hanmer Springs. It was a nice sunny day and I stopped off occasionally to take some pictures. As I couldn't check in before 14:00 I went and had a cooked breakfast at Robbie's and then spent the rest of the morning and early afternoon in the pools, hopping from one to the other. It was surprisingly empty which was good as a crowded hot pools would have been annoying and no pool was cold. So I left there after a few hours and went to the motel. It was very nice. I sat in the garden reading and having a coffee and then after, went into town late afternoon for an early tea. I had fush n chups and a couple of dark beers at the Montieth's pub before going back to the motel for a read and some TV in a nice, quiet, no kids atmosphere before going to bed. I woke up nice n early, which is always the case these days, and left there at 08:00 on the slow drive back home. I'd spotted on the way up 4 places that I wanted to take some pictures of. As it was, 1 I couldn't and another I couldn't find again so missed out. Back to Hornby, coffee and brief food shopping before coming back home. It was a nice time away and I'm definitely doing this again.

RIP Caleb - 1998 - 2011

This afternoon Caleb died after a short time with a heart condition. A few weeks ago he started to be short of breath and have what looked like seizure episodes. This was related to his heart which was wearing out after a long and happy life. The kids were upset but not as much as I would have thought. I think they're realizing that death, after all, is a part of life and it happens to us all in the end. Now that he has died, the kids like to think of Caleb with Audrey, going mental as he used to when he met anyone for the first time, when every time was the first time. Receiving lots of hugs and cuddles and "getting in behind" on long horse rides.
Caleb and I had rather a love hate relationship but I will miss him, not only because he was British (mad dog) or that he was Audrey's and there was still that open connection there that has now closed but he was part of the family. We buried him in our memorial garden next to Possum and Audrey's tree. Bye bye Caleb. We love you. XXX.

Sweeties for Breakfast

Every morning, I'd talk loudly, shout or scream at he kids to get ready for school at some point. "Hurry up and finish your breakfast", "get dressed", "what are you doing standing there, go clean your teeth". It was in effective because it was just annoying. Not just for the kids but me also.
"Got dressed before 07:00? Have a pascal swirl"
"Ate your breakfast before 07:15? Have a pascal swirl"
"Hair brushed, teeth cleaned, lunches in bags, shoes on and hi-via jacket on before 07:45? Have a pascal swir"l. Not sure about the third for 3 reasons. 1. Too many reduces effectiveness. 2. Too many and they'll become lardy. 3. Not just after they've cleaned their teeth, surely? As Jamie has a behavioural/psychological issue with the toilet, I think he'll get one for doing a poo.
For those that don't know what a Pascal Swirl is...http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U3aPo9mVyLY

Too much!

Well, I've decided that all the gardening and all the mowing and all the house cleaning and the looking after kids is too much. So I'm selling the kids. :-) Not really, who would have thought that it was an option? So I'm going to look for someone to do some mowing and someone to do some house cleaning. Get some time back into my life. This would not have happened if it was not for 2 things. 1. Lifehacker sowing the seed and 2. my ride on mower not starting. OK, the mower could be just the battery but it doesn't even click which suggests the starter ...again. I went to the local place that services mowers and they have stopped doing them and I have to travel further to get it serviced now. Perhaps they're telling me something. I went out to mow the garden with the flymo which was fine but 3 hours, it was hot and so I had to frequently come back indoor, and only half what I wanted to do getting done, I decided that it would be better to spend money where it counts for a better quality of life. I've yet to find out how much a mower will charge me for mowing the grass verge and the garden area and for a cleaner to hoover, wash, tidy and anything else I can think of that a cleaner does. We shall see. Of course another step will be to get rid of alot of the CRAP that we're all keeping. I can't just say the kids are storing rubbish, which they are, but I have some things I could throw out too.