Tuesday 28 July - Wardrobe

What a wonderful surprise today after the gib stopper had left. He vacuumed up all his dust from sanding back the gib stop & I was able to go down to my bedroom. To my surprise I have the wardrobe door back in their rightful place. For a while now they have been sitting at my back door so that they wouldn't get broken when the ceiling & roof came off. It is almost looking inhabitable down in that end of the house now.

Monday 27 July - Spring's Coming

This is a photo of some of the buds on my daphne bush. It really looks like it is going to have a lot of flowers.

Sturday 25 July

Today's photo is really more about what happened on Friday. The electrician & the gob stopper were the only people at the house on Friday. The electrician has cut the holes in the ceiling for the light fixtures while the gib stopper was doing more gib stopping.

Friday 24 July - Slava Snowshow

On Thursday the Christchurch Arts Festival opened & one of the shows that is playing through the festival is Slava's Snowshow. I had no idea what it was really about but thought I would take the boys to one "cultural" show this year. The booklet said that the snowshow had clowns so I thought this might be right up the boys alley especially after they had heard Scott & I talking about Cirque Du Soliel. I bought the tickets online so I was a bit worried that I might have bought seats that had beams or poles in front of them, because they didn't have a map for me to see what seats I was buying. However the boys seemed kind of excited.

The excitement when I picked the boys up from school yesterday was palpable, James had been counting down the sleeps since Tuesday & then Brent was very excited when he got in the car because a couple of boys in his class went on Thursday night & had told him it was awesome. We went home & had a couple of chicken drumsticks to eat beacuse the show started at 6pm (a bit of a difficult time when it comes to kids & dinner) & then headed into town to meet up with Scott. We then all walked down to the Issac Theatre Royal. When we stepped into the foyer there was white strips of paper on the floor & a lot of people milling around. We were in the stalls row B seats 7 - 10. The door to our seats was still closed so we bought a couple of programmes & shortly after the doors opened. We went in & the usher told us we had wonderful seats & she was right! We were in the second to front row, Scott sat in the aisle seat so kind of over to the side, but not where we couldn't see. In fact we were very close to a speaker stack that was playing the sound of a train coming in & leaving a station. It was quite loud but not scary. There was white paper on the floor & a bit on the seats & we wondered what we were in for.

The show started with that train music & dry ice that floated off the stage & covered us. James sat next to Scott & cuddled his jersey & blocked his ears but he couldn't hide his eyes, he was mesmerised. Brent was just as mesmerised but he sat through it all & didn't flinch until he got some water sprinkled at him. I won't go into much more detail in case some of you get to go. There was some loud music that went right through us (probably because we were so close to the speaker stack) & James got scared once when a clown came off the stage & climbed on to the seats right next to him. Otherwise it was a fantastic show! The boys both loved it & at the end they went & shook the clown's hand, because he was just sitting on the stage beside us.


This photo is in the 1st half of the show & those are bubbles that the clown is catching in his net. Those bubbles came towards us & the boys just had fun popping them & watching them.

I have to say this is one show that I would recommend front row seats for. We didn't have to crane our necks & the front rows can almost become participants which makes it very exciting for the children but also for the adults that want to be child like for an hour & a half.

People were saying it was better than Cirque du Soliel I just say that they are 2 different shows. Cirque has different people doing a range of different circus feats, this show was about 6 clowns who mimed & let us enjoy being childlike for a while.

Thursday 24 July - Progress!

Wow look what we have now! We have a fully batted house that has ceilings & even .... gib stopping! The difference in the temperature of the house is amazing, it is no longer frigid in the house. I reckon those batts went in just at the right time too, because there's a cold southerly blowing & it is supposed to get cold soon.

Wednesday 22 July - James the Star

As a reward for being published in the poetry book we gave James the red plate. It was nachos for dinner after having been to a swimming lesson at 5:30pm.

On Tuesday he got to stand up in school assembly while the principal made a "special mention" of his achievement. Apparently after assembly a lot of the year 5 boys (Brent's year) that know him came up to him & congratulated him. Then at lunchtime a group of year 1 boys (Andrew's year) came up to him & asked him all about his poem. I think that it really made his day being recognised throughout the various parts of the school for his wonderful achievement.

Tuesday 21 July - Look what we've got!

Yes we have now got a brand new hot water cylinder for our ensuite. We also have our water plumbed back on. The electrician was here today sorting out all the wiring. He needs to come back tomorrow & do more electrical work & then I suppose yet again once the gib is all on. At this stage it looks like we will have a ceiling on & new pink batts in on Friday with gib stopping happening next week. HRV are booked to come in on 11 August so maybe we will soon have a warm house again without it costing us a fortune.

Monday 20 July - Go Cart Fun

The boys had Monday off school as it was a teacher only day. James had a lot of fun finding a new place to call his hideout & watch the builders from. In the afternoon he found the go cart & also found out that by getting moving backwards & forwards on it while standing up, he can get a little forward momentum.

On the house front, we have all new tin on the roof & even building paper going on inside the roof. Our house is nearly fully watertight we just have a little bit at the end of the roof to get fixed up & then it will be watertight.

Friday 17 July - Excitement!

This is going to be my photo for today, not that it is really a photo or one that I took.

We have just got back home from sitting in the hot pools at Wanaka to find a wonderful email from Miss Flynn, James' teacher. This is what the email contained. Click on the picture to view it at a bigger size.

When we get to Christchurch James will be getting the red plate!

Thursday 16 July - Hawea View

Not much of a view though! It was a cold, grey drizzly day so we decided to take Robin & Phyllis & go geocaching. We tried to do a multi cache around the front of Lake Hawea but we couldn't find the second waypoint. Instead we sat & had lunch & then tried one final time to find that elusive way point.

We didn't find it so we headed off to Hawea View to do this cache. We have tried this cache 3 times previously & each time we have been stumped by the tour buses that pull up & everyone taking their touristy photos. This time we waited for a car to pull off & then retrieved the cache. Then the inevitable happened just as we were going to rehide it a car pulled up. We got out the cakes & sat down & had something to eat & of course a photo, while we waited for that couple to leave. Eventually we managed to re hide the cache.

Wednesday 15 July - My 3 Boys

Yes I know one of these "boys" is actually my husband but really what man isn't a boy at heart?

Tuesday - Very Frosty

What a very frosty morning, it was about -3C. The boys didn't mind though because they went off skiing with Scott. I got the whole house to myself which was just bliss. I was able to listen to the radio & catch up on the housework & I even managed to place an order for Stampin' Up!

Monday 13 July - Skiing

One of the wonderful things about having a holiday home in Wanaka is that it is great no matter what season of the year it is (maybe except around the equinox when it is windy). In winter there are 2 really close skifields - Treble Cone for the more advanced skier, & Cardrona for the beginner/intermediate skier. The boys have only just started to learn to ski so Cardrona is our skifield of choice at the moment.

Monday was a perfect day for skiing, not a cloud in the sky & the snow was lovely winter powder. We arrived up the mountain at 9:40 but we weren't early enough to get into the top carpark. We had to catch a ride in a shuttle, which happens to be a trailer pulled behind a ute, up to the ticket office. We decided to put the boys into Kids Club for the day. At Kids Club the boys get 2 2 hour ski lessons plus lunch & are generally looked after from the time they arrive until the time they are picked up from their ski instructor.

Scott took off & went skiing by himself leaving me to sit in the cafeteria & think about the possibility of getting my knee looked at seriously so I can ski with the boys.

The boys both started off on the beginners slope but Brent quickly moved up to the pomma slope. By lunchtime both boys were on the pomma slope & by the end of the day both boys had down a run using the chairlifts. The boys both know how to stop & turn doing snowplow.

This photo is on their very last run of the day.

Sunday 12 July - Fun Geocache

There has been one geocache that was hidden on 30 January this year that we haven't been able to do & it has been bugging us. This geocache has a level 4 difficulty for terrain (with level 5 being the hardest) & the reason is that it is on an island. Today we decided to take a crack at it. We got the little dinghy, that has an outboard on it, out of the garage & decided to see if the engine would still go. We drove around to Waterfall Creek ramp & launched off for Ruby Island. James was very excited about the whole expedition & was even more pleased when Scott let him drive the boat back again.

What I never knew about Ruby Island is that there was a cabaret built on the island during the 1920's & it attracted parties from the "mainland" until it was burnt down. All that remains now are the rocks showing where it would have been.

As a child we used to go across to Ruby Island & play in the water & catch cockabullies. I never realised that there was anything else to do on the island. There is a wonderful walking track there now, a loop one which only take 20 minutes to walk.

It was a fun cache to do & we were all very pleased to get this "closest to Wanaka house" one finally off our list of to dos.

Scott has arrived Saturday

Yay Scott has arrived. I have to say that I was a bit worried about the weather & whether he would be able to fly in to Queenstown. For the last few days there has been low cloud all around Wanaka & I was worried it would be the same near Frankton (where Queenstown airport is). He rang at 8:30 to say that there was a 50 minute delay due to low cloud at Frankton. We left Wanaka at 9:15 & pulled in to this spot, to find a geocache at 9:45.

It was good timing because Scott rang to tell me that they were boarding the plane. We found the geocache & signed the log, but I agree with the owner of the cache that our reading on the GPS wasn't 45S either. It was very cold, about 2C, as you can tell by the boys standing with their hands pulled up into their sleeves.

We arrived into Frankton at about 10:50 & as we were arriving I saw the plane coming in to land. We parked & picked up Scott & then went through to Queenstown to get some morning tea. We then drove back to Wanaka, stopping at Lowburn to find another geocache. This was a nice easy cache to find & we even took away a travel bug (Nemo) away with us. We arrived in Wanaka & had lunch. After lunch Scott took the boys for a walk to the dinosaur park & managed to brave the cold for a good couple of hours.

There are forecasts for snow over night & I say, let it snow, let it snow, let it snow! because all is right with the world now that Scott is here.

Frigid Friday 10 July

The sun never came out today so it's been very cold. We have spent a lot of the day in front of the fire although we did spend half an hour down at the dinosaur park.

Thursday 9 July - Dinosaur Park

This park is on the daily list of places to go. Sometimes we bike there, sometimes we walk & if it's cloudy & cold we take the car. I have noticed that compared to the next holidays this park is reasonably quiet although it does seem to pick up around 3pm when people seem to have come off the ski slopes.

Here's a photo of why we call it the dinosaur park, it probably has a proper name but we know it as the dinosaur park.

The dinosaur is really a slide.

Wednesday 8 July

One of the things that the boys loved to do was to climb the willow trees down by the side of the lake. Unfortunately a lot of the good, meaning easy to climb, trees have been cut down.




We did find this willow tree climbable & to James' excitement there was a hole in the trunk that had ICE in it at 4pm!

Tuesday 7 July - Brent's dinner

I have decided that it's about time for Brent to start cooking a dinner each week. I know that I am leaving it late but in my defence term time evenings are just chaotic & it is better to get dinner made & the boys to bed as smoothly as possible.

Brent decided to make nachos, which happens to be his favourite dinner at the moment. He cut up the onions & did nearly all of it except opening the tins of chilli beans & tomatoes. Even I had trouble opening those tins!

It was a delicious meal thanks Brent! I wonder what you will cook for us next week.

Snowy Trip to Wanaka - Saturday 4 July

We knew that we might have trouble coming down to Wanaka because a couple of days earlier there had been a heavy dump of snow in the high country. We purposely changed our normal course from the Geraldine/Fairlie/Tekapo route to a Timaru/Waimate/Kurow route. It probably was just as well that we took this route because as we were coming up the slight hill (356m above sea level according to the GPS) between the dams & Otematata this is the view we had. It really was a beautiful snowy scene with the glassy lake in the background. Not long after stopping to take this photo we got a stone chip in the windscreen on the passenger side not far from where it connects with the door column.

We got to Omarama at about 3pm & there was snow lying on the ground so we were really hoping we would get through the Lindis Pass. We saw a couple of huge trucks rumble past us so we knew the pass must have been open so we kept going all the time hoping we would get through before it was closed again. We got through fine although we were driving slower than usual. To our surprise there wasn't much snow lying on the ground.

We arrived in Wanaka at about 5:15pm.

Brent's Choice - Friday 3rd July

I gave the boys the camera for our drive to mum's. This is one of the photos Brent took.

Lovely View

I just love the view from the windows of the house down here in Wanaka. This was the view later in the afternoon once the low cloud had cleared. This is looking straight up at the Treble Cone skifield, one of the 2 skifields near Wanaka.

Sunday 5th July - Bye Dad!

After spending time getting the insurance company on to our chipped windscreen, we went into town to get Scott's ski boots molded to his foot & to get the ski binding adjusted. That took quite some time so we quickly had a DaVinci's pizza before taking Scott to the Wanaka airport. It is a wonderfully small airport & really only small planes normally fly in to this airport except for when the airshow is on at Easter time.

We checked Scott in and then went to the cafe that has a wonderful view of the runway to have a coffee. Not that there was much in the way of air movements to watch. Towards 3pm a little plane circled around the airport & landed. It was the Air NZ plane that Scott was due to fly out on. We walked back to the terminal. Honestly terminal is a very grand term for this little prefabricated unit. It is a one man band kind of place. The same man that checked Scott in went to grab the luggage trolley & drive it to the plane & unload all the luggage & then he just drove it to the side of the building & told people to pick up their luggage. The same man then took the outgoing baggage out to the pilot who loaded it into his plane. Then the man came back & announced (not over a speaker system it wasn't needed in this small area) that it was time to board the plane. Scott then walked out to the plane & climbed up the steps to get into the plane. Once everyone was on the plane the "terminal man" then went out to the plane & put the airmuffs on & asked the pilot to turn on one engine. Once he was satisfied that it was working alright he asked the pilot to turn the other engine on. Then when that was going to his satisfaction he unhooked the electrical cable that connected the plane to whatever & then he removed the chocks & the plane was away.

We saw it take off & then it circled the airport once & it was gone in that low cloud.

Thursday 2 July - Trusses have arrived!

The trusses arrived & got dropped off in the driveway. James would have loved to have seen the truck that had the mini crane attached to it, however he was at school. Brent wasn't really interested (he was home sick).

Tuesday 30 June

James loves to come home from school & check out what's been happening around the house. At the moment we have these colourful tarps over part of the roof. I presume it's to keep any rain off any possible leaks that may be in the roofing iron. The roofing iron is still on but all the ceiling from the master bedroom, ensuite, Brent's room & the toy room is gone so you can now look straight up to see the burnt out joists.

I am writing this at 10am Wednesday morning & a truck load of framing timber has arrived but I don't think they are the joists, they just don't look thick enough to be them. Originally we were supposed to get the joists today but Fred told me last night (Tuesday night) that they are delayed but they should be here on Thursday. At the moment the roofing iron seems to be getting taken down so we really are hoping for fine weather on Thursday & Friday. Any dances to the weather gods or praying for fine weather in my neck of the woods would be appreciated.