Away

Finally we get the internet working properly again just as we are about to take off. Teacher only day at school tomorrow so we are heading down to Auckland early. It is my brother's 40th birthday on Saturday - yay looking forward to that.

Mum is coming back up with us on Sunday and is going to stay with the boys while Andy and I take off for some much needed "us" time. I wonder if we will find enough to talk about without the boys interrupting and fighting the whole time. A real whistle stop tour with a night each in Rotorua, Napier and Tauranga before heading back home.

So my blog will be quiet for a bit, but you are already used to that lately anyway. Have a good week and Happy Thanksgiving!

Internet

I love the internet and the ability to stay in touch and access so much information. But boy, when I can't get my connection is it frustrating! For 2 days now we have had incredibly limited access only getting on at 9pm. I need more of a fix than that! I ring my ISP and they say it is telecom's fault, you ring them and they know nothing - sounds like my kids. I want a reliable connection.

CJ Sneak Peeks

I have had a very productive wet weekend. Andy took Alistair over to the lake to throw down a bit more grass seed and add some fertiliser, the other two boys have been here with me watching tv. I managed to get stuck into Jo's circle journal and finished that, this is a sneak peek here. The second pic is a sneak peek of Gina's journal that I finished and passed on last weekend. I am really enjoying doing these journals, seeing all the different ideas and styles of scrapping is great and really good for my idea banks too.
 

Life Lessons

It has taken me a while to get to posting about this, but now that everything is OK, I figured I would put it here. Monday last week Alistair was experimenting with a can of petrol and a cigarette lighter. He was in the section next door and had poured a small amount on the ground and lit it. The flame was quite good, but he wanted it bigger and decided to pour a bit more petrol on it. Big mistake. Long story short we ended up at White Cross where they treated him for burns to the tops of his fingers and thumb on his left hand. 2 second degree burns and the rest surface burns. For the first week we were up there every day after school for dressing changes and then this week everything is healed enough to have his hand out in the open. I rang my homeopath and I am sure the remedies and solutions to bathe in have really sped up the healing process.

Alistair now knows what happens when you pour petrol on an open flame and has learned a very painful lesson (I am so relieved that it was such a minor lesson). He also knows that there are many men out there who have tried similar things with varying results and that if he asks there will be someone around who can help him experiment safely. I can't get over how many horrific stories I have heard from all the adult men around me.

Happy Birthday Mum

Hope you have had a wonderful day especially after having to listen to us sing happy birthday this morning. I know my brother and sister and their families were all heading on over to have dinner tonight, wish I could have made it too, but unfortunately that wasn't to be today.

Altered Projects

Finally after this little organiser has sat on my desk in an unfinished for the last 3months I have got round to decorating it. I have been wanting to do this since I first saw Yolande's work in Up 2 Scrap. So much fun making this, I loved playing with all the paints and mod podge. My family does not appreciate my art though. Every single one of my blokes queried why I had painted over the edge of the paper and Andy really can't cope with the fact that the letters aren't stuck on straight. C'mon guys, I wanted it to look like that!!

The last few days have been so nice and warm and the bush of daisies up our driveway has been looking particularly good. I went out with the camera and had a play with the macro setting. I think I have a pic here of every flower in our garden. We don't have green fingers and the only flowers that grow here are very hardy ones that need no care. 

Thank yous

"Dear Mrs B...
We appreicate your help. with making the candy floss you are skilled. You must like it better than housework. You won't beelieve how much money we raised $1057. What would you have rather done made candyfloss or go to the guy and stayed home. Without your help we would not have made 500 bags of candy floss.
Yours sincerely
Tommy B..."

"Dear Mrs B...
We very much appeciate your help. Was it a yum job? Well it tasted gretat at the Country Fair. Thanks for helping us we could not have raised $1057 without your help. Do you know me I am Alex. What I enjoyed most was stick in the sand.
Yours sincerely
Alex ..."

"Dear Mrs B...
I enjoyed rock climbing and bandey jumping. Thank you very much.
Yours sincerely
Lachlan ..."

"Dear Mrs B ...
Thank you for helping us with the candy floss you were a big help. Everyone loved the candy floss. My favourite part of the country fair was the climbing wall it was $2 for two goes. I thought it was $2 for 1 go on the climbing wall. We raised bucket loads of money $1057 that about 500 bags of candy floss!
Yours sincerely
Daniel ..."

Splash Day Fun

What a wonderful day with glorious weather over the whole weekend. We had a huge turnout for Splash Day with a whole pile of new kids turning up. We managed to teach them a huge amount of water confidence with 2 of them going out on the tobaggan for the first time, it is such a reward to see their smiles of joy as they all come in having done something new.

Handicaps on Sunday morning saw lots of puffy eyes as we pulled them out of bed, I think it was too early for Nick as he didn't have a good slalom session. Ali though being the first skier on the water managed to qualify for the Nationals which was a perfect start to the day for him. 

Tricks.

We have been looking for a new trick ski for Alistair. He has been struggling on a ski and just wasn't getting the tricks despite all the practice. Glen leant him his longer 42" ski and Ali was getting all the tricks - guess this boy is getting bigger. He and Andy were checking out the different options online yesterday and found the weight system was used in gauging what size to buy. Asked Ali to jump on the scales and he was 140lbs - yep all American weights because the skis are American too. I said to Andy that must be about what I am and jumped on the scales to check. I had absolutely no idea because I always weigh myself in kilos. Turns out my guess was way out and Ali has a bit of catching up to do or I have a bit of work to do! No more shirking on the workouts and no more sneaky packs of chips or the odd pie to reward myself after a big workout!

Sticky messes

School fair is on tomorrow. Tommy's class is making candy floss to sell. I volunteered this morning to help make some of the 500 bags they are wanting. What was I thinking when I turned up in my good clothes? Well surely making candy floss can't be too messy right? Wrong! Check out the sexy suit they gave me, still at least I only came home with candy floss all over my face and not my hair and clothes as well. The kids had a ball helping to make this and catching all the bits that keep floating up all over the place. Do you have any idea how itchy it is when candy floss lands on your nose and you can't scratch it?
Anyway fingers crossed for fine weather for tomorrow so we get a good turnout both for the school fair and the splash day we are holding over at the lake. 

Rural Delivery

We have been dealing with the frustrations of the rural delivery mail service over the past few months. We buy quite a bit over the internet and with the change of ownership of our mail run we are now mainly having to go into the main post office to pick up parcels that are "too big for the box". The previous drivers used to bring them to our door. Fair enough, but when we have paid something like $30-50 for postage in the first place then I expect to have the parcel delivered to my door. It is not like we are even miles out of town - a whole 7km from the very centre of town, and the area is now very built up - the city has now come to us. Andy has been working hard on the information mailer for our Nationals coming up, with all the email hassles we have had lately and the file not getting through it was couriered to us on Monday morning from Auckland. We received it in our mail box today - not a very good service NZ Post!

We figured it was about time that we were on the regular delivery schedule so we can have couriers come direct to us. This morning though we started to rethink. Tommy and I were having an early morning cuddle in the lounge when we saw something moving in the back yard - we take a second look and yup, there are 3 cows standing under our puriri tree - hmmm maybe we are still a little bit rural after all.

Quiet

It is very quiet at our house at the moment. Nick left this morning on a school trip down to Auckland. They are gone for 2nights and get to enjoy all sorts of things such as the Zoo, ice skating, Rainbows End, and Waiwera thermal pools on the way home. He was so excited and upset both at the same time last night. He was really going to miss his family. That was a real 'aha' moment for me because I figured he couldn't wait to go - I was definitely looking forward to losing all the fighting for a couple of nights.

Tommy has been a real lost soul all afternoon and is really quite bored already without his brother to tell him off and annoy him and thump him at least a dozen times in the space of an hour. I know Nick will have a wonderful time, but we also want him to come back soon!

Happy Halloween

A funny sort of a day is Halloween. We had so much fun last year when we got to really celebrate Halloween in style while we were staying with Kathryn. She really got things organised for the boys with pumpkin carving and all the decorations she had all round her house. It was also dark at 5pm on Halloween night so going trick or treating was really easy. Kathryn and I walked round with the boys with a glass of pina colada in our hands - so much fun. The boys couldn't believe all the loot they ended up with. We weighed the 3 pillowcases at the end of the night and between them they collected something like 12lbs of candy. We left most of that behind with Kathryn but boy I could sure do with some of those peanut butter cups - man they were nice!

I got a text from Kathryn tonight wishing us a happy halloween, but without you guys and all the American hype, it really just isn't the same. 

Have ya missed me?

Nah didn't think so. I have definitely been a major slacker with this blog of mine. Partly I have nothing very interesting to say and partly I couldn't be bothered!

Update on that car - yep it is a weapon and a real rocket - I love it almost as much as Andy does. When you need to go, it really goes and it stops on a dime as well. Sooo cool and others think so too. I was driving in town the day and this guy almost fell out of his car in his haste to get out and take a pxt of me in the car. Never had that happen before, cracked me up big time and I had to ring and tell Andy.

Well here it is

And I am getting the major bums rush at the moment because we are supposed to be going to the lake and I get to drive the new red beast - woohoo!

Catch ya on Monday 

What a day!

One of those really busy ones. I rang yesterday about a business opportunity available up here. Today, I went and saw the man and came away all excited. I have signed cofidentiality agreements and now waiting for more info. While I was signing those papers, my bloke is talking to his mate at the car dealership and buying a new car!!

Oops, gotta go pick up the new car, might get some pics up later, otherwise it will be Monday night.

Crack me up

Well it made me laugh this afternoon anyway. I went into the kitchen and there was Tommy looking for salsa for his afternoon snack in the fridge, what really got me though was that he was holding the Sky and TV remotes in one hand while he was looking. Gotta be a boy thing.

Nick came home from school really tired because he spent most of the day running everywhere. So why didn't you just walk? Because the girls were chasing me and if they catch you they kiss you. Just wait Nick, one day you won't be running!

Kids

Had a great time catching up with Mum and checking out her pics and hearing all the stories. The kids weren't very interested preferring to be outside running everywhere and throwing balls to each other. We did manage to round them all up for a pic just before we left though.
This pic is one Andy took of Nick this morning before we left the hotel and I liked it too much not to share it with you. 

Homecoming

Mum gets back from Adelaide tonight so we have decided to head on down to Auckland and catch up with her tomorrow. I am thinking both Michael and Karen will probably be there too so it will be a great chance to see everyone again.

I've been scrapping

Yay, finally I am getting to the huge pile of pics that I have from our trip last year, 2 double layouts done so far, detailing being stranded at the airport, arriving in LA and how we spent our first couple of days. I don't think you will be able to read the journalling, but it is all taken directly from my blog, so that part was really just a cut and paste thing. I was also very lazy taking the pics and didn't take them out of the page protectors so they look a bit blurry, sorry, but you get the idea anyway!
A good friend of mine was complaining about PMS and yelling at her children. I had a real lightbulb moment and figured gee maybe that is why I was so grumpy with DH and the boys last week and took off for my girly time with Mum. Geeze all these years and it clicks. I am not going to ask DH if he agrees with my theory though, or I will never hear the end of it.

We have had a gorgeous day here and for the first time all week I managed to get all the laundry done and dried. That wind has to be good for something. Andy is talking about taking his hand mower over to the lake and doing a bit of tidying up, not sure if we will all go yet or not. If it is really windy it is a bit of a waste of time taking the boat. We will see what the morning brings. Although now I have got started I wanna stay here and scrap!!