Wednesday 27 May - A spot of Colour

It's still gloomy weather & really it's starting to get me down. The only spot of colour in my garden is the roses. Their hips are changing from green to that lovely orange, red colour.

Bleak Tuesday 26 May

What can I say. That colour of the sky is the same colour sky we have seen for days on end, I can't remember when I last saw the sun, I'm looking forward to seeing it soon though. The trees have lost nearly all their leaves & the rose hips are starting to turn orange. Not much is flowering in the garden at all & the soil is water logged.

Sunday May 24 - Game day

It was a horrible rainy day so we took the opportunity to play a game as a family. We played this game for the first time, we have had it since Christmas Day. It really is a fun game but a bit long winded for James. The other 3 of us really enjoyed it.

Saturday May 23 - Breakfast at Drexels

One of the things we like to do from time to time is to go to breakfast at Drexels. We usually go to the one in town but this time we went to the new one that opened at Riccarton.

Friday May 22 - Brent's Photo

We drive through town & pick up Scott on the way up to mum's for dinner on a Friday night. Tonight I let Brent take control of the camera so he got to take photos of things he liked. This section of road borders Hagley Park & the flags are always flying on the flagpoles, just different flags on different day. Today it was New Zealand, Australia & Great Britan.

Thursday May 21 - Banana Muffins

The organics bin gets cleared on a Friday morning so on Thursdays I try to clear up some of the older fruit & veges that are sitting in the fruit bowl or in the fridge.

Today it was time to get rid of the brown bananas & what better way than in muffins. The boys will not eat brown bananas but if I make banana muffins with them, I can guarantee that they will be eaten.

May 20 - Waxeye

After all the rain we've had the waxeyes seem to appreciate my rose hips. I presume the rain softens them a bit because they were all over my roses.

May 19 - Middle School Cross Country

Well actually it was supposed to be the whole school running the cross country at Fendalton Park however it was raining when the junior school start time came so the juniors were postponed. The middle & senior school got to run at Medbury & luckily for Brent the rain passed over & there was no rain when he ran. He finished middle of the pack which he was very happy with.

May 18 - Autumn Colours

These amazing colours are on a tree in the Medbury School carpark.

May 25 - Chinese Laundry

That is what my dad calls this.











The bringing in of washing that should be in the laundry into another part of the house to dry. I usually have this drying rack out the back door under cover, but outside the house. It seems to have rained everyday since last Thursday so nothing is really drying & everything feels damp.



What better way to dry things than to bring them & place them in front of the fire? I've had the fire going everyday so why not help on electricity costs of running a clothes dryer & just dry them a bit in front of the fire first? Luckily Scott doesn't seem to mind having these clothes sitting in the main room.

May 17 - Clyde House Church Service

It's not often that the junior school & middle school at Medbury have a service together, but this particular Sunday it was the Clyde House Service. This meant that not only James & Brent were there but also Andrew. Their grandfather also came so it was a perfect opportunity to have a group photo of all the Medbury boys, even the Old Boy.

Saturday May 16 - Football

Saturday mornings in winter are taken up with football. Brent plays his game at Avonhead Park & is normally playing in a 4 vs 4 format. The thoughts of this was that each child would develop their dribbling skills but in truth it seems that it doesn't seem to be working very well for Brent's team. Their kicks are too big for the small field & then there doesn't seem to be much positional play either, it still gets to be bees around a honey pot.


This is Brent about to be tackled.

May 15 - Cob Cottage

We decided to find a geocache on the way to mum's house for dinner. I don't know how many times I have driven right past this cob cottage without even realising that it was there. That's one of the many reasons why I love geocaching, seeing things that have been right in front of your eyes all along.

May 14 - The Weekday morning stop

This is the place that I come to every weekday after dropping the boys off at school. This is where I do my swimming & go to the gym.

May 13 - Brent's Photo

We were driving past Medbury & Brent decided he'd take a photo of the school with the sun setting behind it.

May 12 - More Stampin' Up

I have created another card using the Playful petals stamp set.

May 11 - Stampin Up Creating

I managed to find some time to create a card for the watercolour class.


Supplies: Stamp sets - Heartfelt thanks, Occasional Greetings; Cardstock - watercolour paper, certainly celery, basic grey; Teaparty designer series paper; Watercolour wonder crayons - gable green, pixie pink, green galore, orchid opulence; Accessories - scallop edge punch, silver brads

May 10 - Mother's Day

We went up to mum's for a mother's day lunch. It was a lovely lunch of roast lamb & veges, with fruit salad for dessert.

May 9 - Moonset

This is the moon setting at 7:50am.

May 8 - The Petrol Station

This is the petrol station that we fill the cars up.

May 7 - Strange Sign?

We drive past this sign everyday if not twice a day. It's on Memorial Ave on the route I take for the school run. I just love the pacman!

May 6 - Double Rainbow

Apparently one of the secrets to better photography is to practice & the best way to do that is to take your camera with you everywhere. I have a big camera so I'm not inclined to take it with me everywhere but this particular day I did. I thought I would take a photo of the boys outside their swimming pool where they have their lessons, instead nature offered my something better.

Brent & I were waiting for James to finish his football practice. It had been raining so we decided to wait in the car in the school car park. I was taking photos of windscreen wipers, raindrops on windows & then I saw this.

May 5 - A common view

This is what the boys must see everyday as I drive them to & from school. James took this photo of me driving him home from school.

May 4 - Spring?

Yes it is May & yes if you are in the northern hemisphere you would expect to see bulbs flowering but I live in the southern hemisphere & really don't expect bulbs to flower until September. However this one has decided that it's sick of wintering in the ground & has come up to brighten my garden.

May 3

Today was the first of three mother's day workshops. We are creating a decorated candle, a exploding scrapbook & a couple of cards. Unfortunately no one came.

May 2

I thought it was unusual to see 3 magpies all sitting together on the house. This house is not in the countryside, which is where I think of magpies, it is in the suburbs. I wonder what shiny thing was on the house that they were all drawn to it.

May 1

Sometimes I think it would be really nice to live up on the Port Hills like mum does. The view would really be changing all the time. On a clear day you can see the Southern Alps but on this day we could see the southerly front rolling in & the rain falling in the north western part of the city.

April 30

I spent some more time today doing Stampin' Up! projects. This time I worked on the stamped candle for the Mother's day class.

April 29

With the boys back at school I can start concentrating on what my next project for Stampin' Up! is.

I decided on trying a Box of Fun as a way to get people to just order product without needing to have a workshop if they didn't want to. They get to order a box & each month I'll have different product in the box but they will no that it colour co-ordinates to make their creative process easier. This is part of the May Box of Fun

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April 28 - 1st day of 2nd term

Today was the first day of the new term. This term the boys have to wear their winter uniforms, so of course we had to have the photo opp.

April 27

One of the few flowers in the garden at the moment is this lovely pink camellia.

April 26

A lovely sunny & windy day the perfect kind of day to hang the laundry on the line to dry.

April 25 - The makings of a Mother's day Present

I spent part of the day making a mother's day present.

April 24 - Talking washing machine

Well not really but it does post notes on its screen. This was what it was saying to me today. I can't believe I have done 100 washes already, that went fast.

April 23 - Red Plate

We have a red plate in our crockery cupboard that is taken out when someone has done something really good. Today James got the red plate for getting a good effort card from school this term.

April 22

Mo knows a good warm spot when she sees one. She just loves sitting in front of the fire on cold autumn/winter nights.

First Fire of the year - April 21

We are had our first fire of the year (in the fire place) on Tuesday 21st April. Since this house has no insulation it doesn't take long for it to cool down at night so the fire gets put on.

Aussie Colours - April 20

The gleditsia out by our driveway has been changing colours. It's getting into all its green & gold finery. The gold at the bottom of the tree is all the leaves it has already dropped.

New Bike!

On Sunday 19 April Brent got a new bike. He's very happy with it because it has gears. In fact it has 21 of them! I can't imagine he will use very many of them.

I remember when a 10 speed bike was the bees knees, now it's 21, unbelievable.

New Look Drexels

Saturday 18th April we went to Drexels for breakfast. Imagine our surprise when we got these flash new menus (luckily the contents were still the same) instead of the old green & silver ones.

New Rubbish System Starts! - Friday 17 April

Up until today our rubbish collection was in brown bags that were left at the gate. Today was the first time we had the whole wheelie bin experience for our rubbish. We now have 3 wheelie bins, one is organics (the green one that is collected weekly) one is rubbish (the red one that is collected fortnightly) & the other is the yellow bin that is for recycling, which is collected on the other alternate week. I can see that I will have to have my head screwed on really well to remember which bin to put out when.

Today was green & red.

Organic Bin Arrival

Christchurch has been trying to convert its rubbish system to one that is more environmentally friendly & also one that makes households try & think about the amount of rubbish that is created.

Step one has been around for years, the recycling. The only change was a great big yellow wheelie bin.

On Thursday 16th we received step 2. Step 2 is the organics bin. This bin is for all the organic rubbish, but it must be noted that dead birds & hedgehogs can't go in the bin meanwhile chicken bones, chicken carcasses, meat bones are allowed to go in. This bin gets emptied weekly so it's a wonder to me as to why dead birds can't go in it when obviously they are organic & it's not like they will be sitting in the bin for ages.

Changes!

We got home on Tuesday with a plan. Ever since the fire Brent has been sleeping in James' room & really neither boy slept very well. Brent's room has no electricity in it due to the fire & water running down his walls so it's just safer not to have the electricity turned on to his room. What theis meant was Brent's room although sleep inable was not really conducive to sleep.

When we got back we devised a plan, certainly not a great one saftey wise but more safe than turning the electricity on. We have run extension cords up the hallway to his room & put a multi box in it so that he can run a desk lamp & a heater. He was thrilled to get back into his room & I think James was really pleased to get his room back to himself. I'm pleased because both boys finally get some decent sleep which is important because James' work & behaviour at school this term has been back on track. Sleep deprivation is a nasty thing & really just a few minutes at the end of each day for about 9 weeks really does add up & makes for some bad behaviour.

Now we all just have to watch out for extension cords up the hallway. I so cannot wait for my house to be fixed & back to normal.

Doing .....

The Aussie Rock!

We came home again on Tuesday of course we geocached our way home. We stopped at several places but this one takes the cake! This is up beside Lake Pukaki up a shingled road - the Tekapo side of Lake Pukaki not the Mt Cook side. I kid you not there is a rock that is marked out as Aussie Rock - of course there's a geocache here, because geocachers find really interesting places to plant geocaches.

There you go I told you, it's all marked out, the sign points to it. Looks like a plain old rock to me!

Wow that really does look like Australia split in 2.

What astounds me is there is someone driving along a dusty shingly road in the middle of nowhere & they see these weird formations & say lets sign post it. How many people would drive along this road? I wouldn't think there would be many. The sealed road ended miles back & then in the middle of nowhere there's this.

As I have said before you never know what is sitting right in front of your eyes until you start geocaching!

Climbing

James loves being at Wanaka. One of the things he really enjoys is climbing up all the rocks that make up part of the garden, which really annoys me. Here he is getting into mischief again.

Easter Sunday

The boys just love going on treasure hunts, that's why geocaching appeals to them. They also love that we plant easter eggs around the outside of the house at Wanaka for them to find. They were getting a bit antsy that it might not happen so Scott went out & hid them. They were yelling, "Dad's hiding the eggs!" & were rushing from window to window to see if they could watch where he hid them. Then they were off.

The rest of the day we did more geocaching, this time around, Lake Hawea & Albert Town.

Saturday April 11

We went & did more geocaching today, this time up the Matukituki Valley.






Don't you sometimes feel like this little bug? It was on the surface of the water & everytime it tried to get somewhere it just went around in circles. I quite liked the pattern it was making on the water so I took quite a few photos of it. Obviously that just goes to show that even if you think you are getting nowhere maybe you are causing ripples that will are noticed by other people.

Good Friday - 10th April

My sister & brother in law were competing in a cycle race near Cromwell so we took the opportunity to go & watch them race & also to do some more geocaching. There's a cache in Old Cromwell Town which sits on the banks of Lake Dunstan. We wandered around & the boys found that they could climb on to this horse & wagon & what's more they were even allowed to!

Thursday 9 April

We decided that we would go geocaching today over at Arrowtown & then maybe come back to Wanaka via Cromwell. We went over the Crown Range & stopped at this spot to find a geocache. It has the most wonderful views up the valley & then down into Frankton & the Queenstown airport.



We had a pretty successful day geocaching wise although we did have one DNF at Tobin's Track. It just means we have to go back again & that is no hardship when the scenery is so stunning.

Freezing Day - April 8

When we went to bed on the 7th it was pretty cold but overnight it must have got freezing, because we woke up to this fantastic view from our bedroom verandah.

This low snow line is what we expect to find in August/September when we are down in Wanaka for skiing not at easter time! It really was a stunning sight.

The day did clear up a bit but it stayed cold & by 5pm it was sleeting, hailing & snowing again. None of it stuck around for long thankfully but it was a very cold night.