Downtown SF taken from the Bay Bridge.
Cable cars and trolleys were everywhere and an added extra to keep an eye out for.
Woohoo, let the shopping begin - the huge tourist trap of Fishermans Wharf, but oh so fun and a great place to be.
Alcatraz Island always impresses me with its history.
Hundreds of miles of man made canals taking water to all the farms we drove by.
You have to pay tolls to cross the bridge into San Fran.
We went over the gorgeous Bay Bridge - a wonderful way to enter the city and what spectactular views.
The Golden Gate in all its glory.
Into the smog! The winds were blowing in LA and had blown all the smog away - we found where it ended up on the other side of the hills.
We were quite amazed to see lots of oil wells round here too.
And fields of cotton plants that looked like they were nearly ready for picking.
Man, the smell emanating from this cattle farm was horrendous. These sheds went on for about 4 miles and they were full of cattle enjoying all their corn.
We hit the road today and drive the 380 odd miles from Los Angeles to San Francisco. Andy drove through the built up areas, but I got put my foot down on the open road parts.
We spend lots of time taking pics out the window as we drive along so figured I should get a pic of that very common occurence.
A quick peek of Los Angeles city as we race on by. We hope to get into the city itself next weekend.
I have heard of Six Flags amusement park and all the roller coasters that are there and we went hooning past that too - my tummy flipped just looking at all those different rides.
Racing past the trucks as we climbed up to 4000 feet through the hills.
The finished job on the new exhaust system. It sounds pretty close to what is loaded on the Corsa site 
One very happy boy who has just got back from test driving the new sounds! The interior looks black in this pic, but is really chocolate brown.
Kathryn and Mike took us up to Orange Hills restaurant for dinner. The aim was to get there in time to watch the sunset. We were sat up high in the hills round a fire pit sharing a few drinks and a few nibbles taking in the amazing views. These pics really don't do it justice.
Kathryn and Mike sharing a geeky moment.
The very shiny blingy grill! It is huge!
Mike coming in from the very first test drive.
Off with the old exhaust and on with the new.
Yay, we made it! A very uneventful flight which reminded us how much we hate long distance flying and trying to sleep. We are just loving being here. We landed to gorgeous blue skies with no clouds and it is like that again today with temps around the 25 mark. Just perfect. So cool to catch up with everyone and have a few laughs. Kathryn came and picked us up in the new truck from the airport. Man that is some machine. I will show you some pics later, Andy has just popped up the road and the camera is in the truck.
We really just cruised yesterday and reacquainted ourselves with a few stores. We forgot to bring a converter with us so we could plug in and recharge all our electrical bits, so that was number one on the list of things to get hold of. Tried a few stores yesterday but it wasn't until this morning we were able to find one. Found a new electrical store which was twice the size of our old favourite - BestBuys. We spent ages in there just looking.
First up this morning Andy, Grant and Mike got stuck in and ripped off the old exhaust system and replaced it with the new corsa one. Man, I thought the truck sounded pretty good anyway, but you should hear it now - we sure won't be going anywhere and just sneaking in.
Once this was all installed there were quite a few test runs to make sure they could hear the difference properly and then we headed out for lunch and a touch of shopping at the mall. I managed to get into the handbag shop and scored myself a gorgeous handbag. We had Mike, Grant and his two boys with us too and they were not interested in looking at what Kathryn and I wanted to, so didn't get too much of a chance to have a decent look round.
Off our for dinner now so will post some pics a bit later.
I am getting excited now - it seems like we have been waiting for ages but the time is now getting really close. On Friday night Andy and I fly out to Los Angeles for 2weeks all by ourselves! The boys are a bit bummed that they aren't coming too, but they are very excited about having Nana come to stay and look after them. I think Nana is a little apprehensive and quite excited too.
We are taking a laptop with us so we can keep in touch with everyone and hopefully I will even get keen about updating my blog a bit more regularly. Lots to do, because we have left most things till the last minute because it all seemed too far away before. My mind is working overtime and that is why I am up again in the middle of the night.
My baby is 10!! Where on earth did all those years go? I am sure I can remember not so very long ago tearing my hair out with 3 young boys hooning round our house! Happy Birthday Tommy and sorry I am a week late posting this pic of you at your party.
Wow, I really think summer might be starting to make its presence felt. We woke up to a glorious day on Saturday and decided to make the run up the Lakes with the new caravan. I was having a major worry session about how we were going to get the van off the section and on to the road and also how we would park it on our site. All that worry was needless as it turned out, everything worked like clockwork and we pulled it all off without a hitch. One of the highlights for me of the weekend was watching Andy and Alistair working together to get the van level on the site. It was so cool to see Ali down doing all the bits that Andy normally does and Andy standing back and watching. I loved seeing the pride that Andy felt watching this boy of ours growing up.
Oh man Nick is laying this on me really thick at the moment! Thursday at school he was playing soccer and fell over, a whole bunch of guys landed on top of him. He was whinging about a sore arm and I told him to get hard!
This morning he was racing with Tommy to try and get to Andy's scorched almonds first and fell over landing on his arm again. He put on a huge hollywood which we figured was to distract Tommy.
After discussion with DH we decided that maybe he might be a bit sore and we better take him to the doctor. Turns out he has a fracture to his arm just above the wrist. Ooops! The doctor was most surprised that a boy of 12 could break his arm by falling on it and suggested we really up his calcium intake. Suits me because if Nick had his way all he would eat would be bread!
He now has a back slab plaster and we go back in 10days for a full cast. Oh dear, I am sure I get the worst mother award for today now.
I asked him a little later in the day whether he had forgiven me yet, and he gave me a huge grin and said yes, but I bet I will hear about this many times in the years to come. I know I would definitely be repeating it, if my mother did that to me!
Yeah these are really quite fun to do. The first layout was done earlier this week and again a very easy page with just adding pics to it. Jessica really has made the whole learning process very simple with layouts pretty much completed and just teaching bits at a time.
This second layout I have just finished now at midnight! Starting to dabble in brushes now and the learning curve goes up a bit more, or maybe it is just too late at night and my brain is going to sleep. I know that I am definitely going to sleep now.
Tonight Ali and I sat down and went through his choices of subjects for next year. We have been working towards this for a few weeks now investigating different career options and which subjects will give him the most options. They have to take English, Maths and Science and then they have a choice of 3 other subjects for 5th form. His current choices are French and Graphics. He has not enjoyed French since we shifted - something to do with the teacher, so has decided to drop that subject, pick up Economics and continue with Graphics. The way he is leaning at the moment he is looking at two career paths in marketing and/or sales, and these two subjects seem to keep the most doors open for him. His third option is PE. Can't believe that isn't a standard part of the curriculum still.
His next task for the evening was to sell his choice of subjects to Andy and prove that he had done the research to back his decision. Very scary to think that Ali will be in the 5th form next year. Really starts making me wonder where on earth all those years have gone, especially those ones with the annoying toddler that I never thought would finish.
Woohoo, my first ever digital layout! I enrolled in an online course that Jessica Sprague is doing. Her instructions and videos are so clear that anyone can learn to create these layouts, really enjoying what she is showing us. I am also slowly starting to learn a whole heap more about Photoshop Elements and what it can do. Amazing piece of software.
Nick went for a sleepover at his mates place on Saturday - I don't think they slept a wink all night. When I went to pick him up he was only in the car about 2minutes before he fell asleep. We also had Tommy's rugby prizegiving which was a heck of a lot bigger than I was expecting. Turned out to be the whole of the junior boys division with about 200people there and the bar open and all. My first experience with rugby club prizegivings.
I have become a right bookworm again just lately. I was lent a copy of The Bronze Horseman by Paullina Simons. Wow, that lady can really write a good book. I have been sitting up reading before I head to bed at night and several nights this week time has run away with me and before I know it, midnight is here. I finished the book this morning and can't wait to get into the next books in the series. I picked up a copy of Tully also by Paullina the other day, but I think I want to save that for a bit.
Lucky for me I have a couple of scrapping magazines to read instead.
for Tommy was this morning in the pouring rain. Unfortunately he has been suffering with a cold for the last few days and his throat was too sore to go this morning. Not sure if it really was because it hasn't been sore for the rest of the day but I sure didn't want to stand in the rain so I didn't query him too much on that one. Oh well, I am sure he will still enjoy prizegiving next Sunday just as much.
We have managed to find another caravan to replace the one that was stolen and signed up for that during the week. It is off getting an awning made now ready to take up residence at the Lake in the next school holidays. Really can't believe that it is almost time for summer again - mind you with the weather lately I am definitely ready for summer.
I think we need to change the water filters in the house, it takes forever to have a shower lately as the water trickles out of the shower head. Strange that they need replacing already our filters at the old place were replaced annually. I suppose we only filtered our kitchen water though.
Gee don't I lead an exciting life - 10.30 on a Saturday night and I am blabbering on about water filters!! Man, I need some excitement.
Woohoo! I reckon this has to be my dream job - a bit of admin work, updating and uploading products to a website, parttime hours - 9.30 to 2.30 Monday to Thursday, great people to work and the icing on the cake is the wonderful products I get to work with. Yep I started work today at Scrapbook Studio in Mt Wellington. I enjoyed my day so much and couldn't believe it when it was time to come home. Very excited about going again tomorrow.
Wow, I think my scrapping drought has been broken and I have creating like crazy. Lots of challenges have certainly helped this creative burst. This first layout is created for the No 8 Wired blog and their current dare to create a layout that celebrates a real Kiwi saying.
Next layout is one I created for a challenge at SBO which was set during the cybercrop held last Friday night. I really did enjoy that crop and that seems to have sparked my scrapping burst. This challenge was to scrap a layout about a name. 
The final layout comes from another SBO challenge to scrap a layout in a different size that you haven't done before. I decided to try the currently popular 6x12 size and am very pleased I did. Loving that size and it is great when you have only pic that needs to go on a page.
Lots more to tell but my scrapping desk is calling my name and I gotta go :-)
Yay, the fourth store in the chain opened today. Andy has been working major hours lately helping with the setup of the shop over at Lynmall and today was the grand opening. We went over at lunchtime to take some pics and check it all out. A very cool looking store and completely packed with people while we were there. I can't believe that even though Lynmall was the first ever shopping mall in New Zealand I have never been there before. Probably I didn't really miss much because it seemed very much the same as every other mall, but there you go, a mall in Auckland that I didn't even know existed!
I don't think I have linked the New Zealand version of Howards Storage World website before. This was the project that took a lot of Andy's time shortly after we shifted down. I have also been involved with it in the uploading of products and taking pics of different things that catch my eye when I am in the stores and then loading them onto the website too. An ongoing job but one that I am very much enjoying.
Finally I am getting to add this recipe to my blog. Janine shared a delicious sounding butter chicken soup the other day and challenged everyone to share their favourite recipes. I have been dabbling with lots of recipes lately and have been trawling the Weight Watchers site checking out their ideas. We had this chicken and tomato casserole tonight and the boys cleaned up the whole lot - woohoo we will be having it again!
I made quite a few adaptations as it was supposed to be cooked in the oven but I ran out of time and cooked it in my huge frypan.
8 skinless chicken breasts - wow, I only used 4
1 onion, roughly chopped
110g lean bacon chopped
110g mushrooms - the boys don't like mushrooms so I used pitted olives instead
1 T tomato puree - oops never read that properly, I used the whole can
300ml chicken stock - again I used the whole 500ml carton
Brown the chicken, add the onions and bacons and brown these too. Add the chicken stock and tomato puree and bring to the boil. I drained the jar of olives now and added them too. I left the lid off and let it simmer about 40mins until it reduced quite a bit.
We had this with white rice and silverbeet. Gosh reading the recipe I left out heaps of stuff and added a heap of stuff that I wasn't supposed to. Oh well, if you are interested they also added 2 bay leaves and salt and pepper.
is a very funny thing. One never knows how one will react in a given set of circumstances until it happens. Sometimes you get a little premonition of how something will go and when it plays out you can recall how you imagined you would react. Often the forethought fails to take into account all the emotion that happens in real life and the reaction is quite different.
It is very interesting how other people react to these events too and how many or few people come to assist when a trap has been set and sprung. A study into this would be rather interesting, especially if you could work out how to change the events once they start rolling as first imagined.
No, do you want it louder?
This was the very first conversation when we picked Tommy up from school yesterday. He asked the first question and I asked the second! "Oh Mum, it is so embarrassing to have to come to a car where your Mum has the stereo going hard out".
Oops sorry Tommy, didn't realise you were going through "that" stage. At least I was listening to a current hit and one of my current faves, Teenagers by My Chemical Romance. Hey, it could just as easily have been Mika and then I would have understood the embarrassment. My 9year old baby is turning into an old man!
and updating my blog. I was getting sick of looking at the lake and figured this sunset pic that I took from our deck a week or so ago would make for a different scene. Now to work out how to get it centred. I think that will be a job for tomorrow though because my brain isn't working now.
I knew this, I really did, but I was having a convenient memory lapse. I had a huge list of jobs that I needed to get done today and one of them of was using the walker as it was intended to be used. Getting changed into my exercise clothes was the key I think, because after dropping the boys at school I was motivated to go walking - that and I was too darn cold to sit down without layering up a bit. I only walked for 10minutes but 5 minutes of that was running so feeling pretty good about myself because I don't run!
One of the jobs I had to do was to complete my circle journal and pass it on to the next person. I have been having nightmares over this and the pressure of having to produce an amazing work of art. You see I have to pass my cj onto Nic. You know the Nic whose work is so stunning that she has just had a book of it published! Awesome book by the way and you can get your own copy from the link on Nic's blog. I can't tell you the relief I felt when she had a look and was very complimentary - hey maybe I can get a book of my own too - yeah right! Maybe I will just line up for comedy position instead :-)
Thanks Tracy :-)
My roommate and I once: Drank lots of wine and told lots of lies.
Never in my life have I: gone up the sky tower.
High school was : lots of fun hanging with my mates, although I wish I had studied more.
When I’m nervous : I trip over my words.
My hair : needs a cut.
When I was 5 : I got my first bike and rode down the hall with my trainer wheels on.
When I turn my head left : The window overlooking the paddocks - it has finally stopped raining :-)
I should be : supervising homework.
By this time next year : We will be living in our own home again.
My favorite aunt is : Not sure really, probably Mum's sister.
I have a hard time understanding : People who have to pull into the middle of the road to make a left turn.
You know I like you if : I hassle you
My ideal breakfast is : Coffee.
If you visit my home town : you’ll get lots of sunshine and warm days - hmm I think I need a trip back there.
If you spend the night at my house : You will be wined and dined to excess and then crash out.
My Favorite blonde is : Me
My favorite brunette is : Andy
The animal I would like to see flying besides birds : Riiiight!
I shouldn’t have been : snacking all morning on those potato chips.
Last night I: Stayed up too late trying to catch up on emails and blogs after being away for 3 days.
A better name for me would be : Dreamer
I’ve been told I look like : No-one.
IF I could have any car, it would be: I love the Chevvy Tahoe but it is too big for me on NZ roads, hmm, maybe we need to live in America.
Tagging Ruth.
Wow what an exciting 24hours of weather! I can't believe the amount of garbage we have had lately. We had two powercuts late afternoon yesterday and got to use the candles that I bought specially. It was such a soothing light with the candles that I kind of regret that power didn't stay off longer.
I jumped to completely the wrong conclusions too when I had just lit the candle for the boys and told them not to muck about near it and gone back to the kitchen to get another one when I heard a huge crash and immediately started yelling at them for being idiots. Ooops, one of the concrete tiles had blown off the roof and smashed on the deck outside the lounge. We woke this morning to find at least one more smashed tile, the olive tree uprooted and half a gum tree fallen down.
We heard from the tenants in our place in Whangarei and one of the avocado trees had given way. We headed up there today as we were supposed to be staying over at the lakes with some friends. Very weird driving down our driveway and not being able to go in the house. It seems that the avocado wasn't the only tree not to make it with 3 of our aka akas snapped in half too. A bit of a clean up to do.
We tried to make it over to Dargaville but got turned back as one of the bridges was completely under water. We figured we would try and get there via the Brynderwyns and then we heard that they were expecting the town to flood tonight. We thought better of that plan and headed back home again. We might try again tomorrow.
Wow, awesome way to fill in some time over the school holidays. Took the boys over to Botany Downs this afternoon for the late session of ice skating. I had been umming and ahhing all day and finally decided to have a go too. So pleased I did. I had a ball and I haven't seen the boys so excited and happy and enjoying each others company so much for a long time. My legs now ache all over and I know exactly where every part of my calf muscle is attached to my leg! According to the boys I skated like a "nana" (no offense Mum if you are reading this), but "I" didn't fall over and my butt isn't all bruised! I demonstrated the windmill manoeuvre I managed to perfect to Andy tonight and discovered sore arms too, so I guess I did that a fair bit too. And now I am off to soak in the spa pool!
Educational games in the holidays has to be a really bad invention doesn't it? We have got one going at the moment and the boys are lining up to do their times tables.
When I went to see Nick's teacher the other day for parent teacher interviews she suggested playing card games such as last card and snap to encourage the learning of the times tables and practising addition and subtraction.
I picked up a deck of cards and a bag of fudge and now the boys are lining up to "do their tables". We are working through the deck and they are multiplying every card by whatever table we are working on. I was going to give the King as a free shot, but Tommy suggested it could be 13 so we are going up to 13. I left the Jokers in and whenever one of them comes up I get to give them a kiss (I think that is the best part, although the boys call this torture!). Once the deck of cards is finished they get a piece of fudge.
I love bribery and corruption and it is even better when it works!
to the absolute "tosser" who nicked our caravan.
Yes, we do still want it.
Yes, we want all the stuff in it that is still there from 6months of summer use.
Yes, we are pissed off.
Yes, the boys are devastated.
No, we can't remember everything that was in it, although the list keeps growing
No, we weren't planning to have to buy a new van before next summer.
Bring it back or at least give us back all the contents that we can't replace, such as the souvenir caps and t-shirts and all our windbreaker jackets.
Back from an awesome weekend with lots of talking and laughing and not too much scrapping. But I did get to meet some new friends and catching up with others I haven't seen since CC06! We had a challenge pack, I love getting these it is always such an eyeopener to see what everyone else does with the same product as you. My layout is the first in this block. Next up is the class we did with Chris Millar. It was supposed to have flowers on it but I figured that was just a bit much for me.
Last two pics are taken during a bit of a break from scrapping. Do you like the pic of the door? There were really two of us in that pic, but the collage chopped Tracy and me off, you can just see my hand. We were having a nice quite drink of bubbles out of paper cups from McDonalds - Nice! We also went for a wander over to the lake for a bit of fresh air, looks like Ruth and I are dancing, nah just dodging all the puddles. Yep scrapcamp was once again a very wet affair. I remembered to pack my gumboots this time, but didn't think I would need them for the walk to the lake - wrong!
So, so much fun and so cool to travel and room with Tracy and Ruth, lots of laughter and stories. Thanks to Yolande and Lianne for all your efforts and organising it really is a wonderful event and I can't wait until next year, even with the rain.
