Tour de France... here we come

Merry Christmas!!

Mom and Dad arrived safely and have been gifted some great weather for Christmas and Boxing Day. So far we have been to the beach twice, gone for a few walks, been bike riding and played a few games of petanque. Lots of de-stressing activities! Perfect for all of us, at the end of this busy year.
Christmas Day we picked my parents up at the airport in Santa suits, then took them off to the beach for a picnic, after a walk through the Botanical gardens in Wellington. Later that day we flew kites and played petanque on the beach. John and Cushla arrived on Boxing Day (Bryce's aunt and uncle) and we had a Christmas feast with them (our second ever roast we have made!).
Merry Christmas to you all and hope you are enjoying the season as much as I am. It is fabulous to have Mom and Dad here and show them the "real" kiwi lifestyle, instead of just the touristy trip they were able to take last time. Less hectic this time around, but not so many sights to take in. The next week involves a trip to Rotorua, Coromandel and anything else in between!

The man is 35!!

Bryce's birthday is next Friday. And 35 he will be. Yep. 35. I can't picture what I will be doing when I am 35. It is so far away from now. : )

So for his bday, I organised a gliding flight for him. My friend Delio, who I play volleyball with, is an instructor, and he took us both out for a flight. I had not planned on going on a flight myself, but Delio gave us each our own flight. Thankfully, Bryce's flight lasted much longer than mine did. If it had been much longer I would have thrown up in a very small cockpit and it would have been so unpleasant. It was such a cool experience, since you sit at the front of the plane and see everything! However, I think I took too many pics, cause I lost the sense of the horizon and just felt nautious most of the time. All good though. Bryce's flight was about 30 minutes and Delio let B take the controls for a while. Long enough even for Delio to call me on the ground and freak me out that he wasn't paying attention to the flying! Anyway, he just called to tell me to watch closely. And then they did two loops; full circles with the glider. Bryce was pretty happy with the flight when he got back on the ground! Lucky his 35 year old heart was able to take the distress!

Last days....

Work is done for another year and wow, what a year. Toughest one as a Dean yet, I think. And my last one too, as I move on to more subject focused work next year, and not so much pastoral. I don't know which I will like more. We shall see. So we had our staff party yesterday, all day, as per usual. So much fun. We started off as geisha's as part of my endeavour to keep the men in our office as cross-dressers as much as I can get away with. They seem to do it without much complaint each year, so I persevere. It was Hose's last day with us too, which was pretty sad to say goodbye to him. He is an amazing teacher and we will miss having him around.

The Shack

I have just finished reading a book called, "The Shack" by William P. Young. It was amazing and I would read it again with enthusiasm. It was such a neat way to see things differently about the world and God and our place and purpose in all of it and how incredibly important relationships are, as opposed to following a set of rules. Fully recommend the book.

One quote that I felt was nice, especially being far away from my "home":

You can kiss your family and friends good-bye and put miles between you, but
at the same time you carry them with you in your heart, your mind, your
stomach, because you do not live in a world but a world lives within you.
(Frederick Buechner, Telling the Truth)

A long week...

After the chaos and excitement of dance performances all last weekend, I am had strangely recovered by organising to take 9 14 year-olds away for 5 days to the Volleyball Junior National competition. Lucky today I am just chilling out and recuperating. The week wasn't physically exhausting for me, just a mental game of support and re-grouping after every win or loss to play another game with a fresh head.
The girls did well, although not as well as we could have done, had there been stronger resiliency in the team. We beat several teams in sets by at least 15 points, but then would lose the 2nd set and then panic into the third set. They got themselves sorted by the end of the tournament, but it was too late to prove their potential by then. Ah well. It was a good learning experience for them (and me) and they won there last few games to put the spring back in their step before coming home.

The best things of the week: fun silly team games at night, one of the girls falling through the side of a trampoline (she was totally unhurt), and the extremely funny competitiveness of my assistant coach when making up games with two couches, a ball and a Canadian.

On the drive home we noticed a big scrub fire on the side of the road. We called the fire department and then proceeded to drive past the fire (as we had seen several other cars doing). It was extremely hot and smoky as we drove past as the flames were crossing into the actual road. We drove on about 100 metres and noticed another fire on the same side of the road up ahead. We stopped because we saw police cars and fire trucks up ahead beyond the fire. About 6 other cars had also followed us and were now trapped in between the two fires on the road. We were safe, but stuck in the heat of the day (gorgeous weather here!) with all the girls getting louder and louder with no way get any cool breeze due to so much smoke. Not too comfortable. Exciting though. Delayed us about an hour.





So home and relaxing and enjoying the summer weather. 19 more sleeps till Mom and Dad arrive!

The dancer within...

I wanted to dance. So I signed up for a class. Somehow all of that ended up with me in a red sequin dress that was way higher than mid thigh, and fishnets. Good fun though, even with the nervous pees that occured before going on stage each time (4 shows!!).

Cat food conundrum...

Here's Eddie. Today. With one of the two birds she gifted us.

And we have had birds before and rats, and secada's (little fly like bugs) and weta's (horrible crawly insects with lots of legs).

But we have never had a fish brought to us, and left on our doormat. Nor have we had chicken with vegetables.

So why is all the food for cats, not actually food that real cats hunt out and kill? Are we really a society that panders to delicacies for our cats, like we do for ourselves? Is there anything really wrong about bird in a can for my cat? Hmmmm.

A catch up

Some pics from recent days. I never did get a chance to get more photos from the trip home in September. Might do that soon. I have truly hit the ground running ever since the plane landed and this has just been a crazy few weeks. Lucky my job has such good holidays and I will be chilling out in just over 4 weeks!
We have two new calves in the next door neighbours farm block, Smudge and Socks (named for where the patch of white fur is on their chocolate brown body). Very cute.

Carl and Denise were here this weekend for the 12hr MTB race in Wellington. Denise and I had some great time to catch-up and because the race was only 12 hours and no one had to sleep over night, they didn't need us as Camp Mom's to manage the team. We went shopping instead and had a nice lunch on the Wellington waterfront. Denise is 7 months pregnant (I think) and is looking very cute with her big belly and skinny legs. The boys came 2nd in their race. Same place as last year and most of Bryce's last few team endeavours. Says he feels like a bridesmaid, again and again. I remind him that maybe he should really train and take it seriously and the results may be more pleasing. But the worry about that is if they all truly train then they will have no excuse if they don't win, again!

Last Tuesday, B and I went down to Wellington for the Under 17 World Cup Soccer game at the stadium. It was awesome, and awesomely freezing as well! We were fully rugged up in down jackets and toques (beanies) and enjoyed hot chocolate instead of beer. New Zealand played great and scored 3 times against Columbia, who only scored once. Fascinating game and it was true sporting prowess to see the girls get fully tripped or crashed into but instead of pulling a "Hollywood" like every male pro player, the girls just jumped back up again and played on.


Another exciting event that occured was the Junior Vball tournament, where my team came 1st place. They are travelling to the National competition in December (half of the reason why I am so busy) as the first junior team from our school ever to go. Pretty cool. That night a bunch of us teachers went out to watch the rugby game, and celebrate, and ended up making quite the night of it all. Ended up at a bar which had shadow boxes. These are translucent screens beside the DJ booth with a spotlight highlighting the person who is dancing behind the screen. From the dance floor, it is just a silhouette dancing and could be quite sexy, I guess. Probably not so much when we got up there. Fun anyway though!


So I am off to bed now, after eating dinner at 10pm. Par for the course these days. But I think I am finally over the Canadian cold/flu I had! AND the weather today was gorgeous. Super sunny and just gorgeous when I headed to the beach at lunch and could see stunning Kapiti Island and the South Island in the distance. Not bad living in the middle of the Pacific.

From Home to Home....

Had a great trip. Super tired, but wanted to get some pics up first before I crash.
Will tell more stories of trip soon.

Some old pics...

Found these on the computer at my parent's office. Not sure why I scanned them all in or what project I had been working on, but they were cute to see again. And man, what a bruise. It's been along time since I haved bruised like that. Been a long time since I have fallen or walked into something too, I guess. This particular bruise came from the crash aluded to in the first photo, when Bryce and I took a toboggan run a bit too quick, on a GT racer (pictured), which is designed for 1 or 2 children, or 1 adult. Not 2 adults, at lightning speed. Needless to say, the ridge on the back of the GT seat made a lovely 'impression' on me.



Me and Laurie - looking forward to seeing Laurie and her new son Baron on this trip. Laurie and I flatted in university together.

The girls, many years ago. This was the before picture. The "hors dervez" picture was the after picture. (not in this selection of photos, but funny funny night)

Another university photo with Kate, Me, Juls and Katie

The holiday has begun...

It's sunny. That's enough of a treat, but you add in seeing friends and family and enjoying Mom's cooking and Clamato and I am a happy little girl.

Arrived on Friday in BC to stay with Grandpa and Joan for the night. It was great to see them; they both look really good. Grandpa didn't miss a beat on the whole drive to and from the airport and around town. Well, maybe one red light that we almost went through, but Joan quietly reminded him about. But otherwise, he is the best, safest 89 1/2 year old driver I have ever seen. Put a lot of worries at ease for me.... : )

We went out to the Boathouse for dinner with my Uncle Bob and Aunt Lynette to celebrate their birthdays, Grandpa and Joan's anniversary and my visit. The Boathouse is a beautiful restaurant on the water in Horseshoe Bay where people catch the ferry across to Vancounver island. It's a very picturesque setting with tall rock walls that go up away from the trees, and a marina right beside the restaurant. Yummy steak and seafood meals too and 'fat as' wine glasses, which suited us just fine!

We went and visited my cousin Janet and her kids Zach, Rachel and Nathan after that and enjoyed some more family catchup time. Zach just had his bar mitsvah weekend and we saw all the photos from the huge event. I had not seen the family in over two years. The kids were all so much bigger and fully into soccer season here. Vancouver seems to have some nice soccer fields to play on. Everything is being renovated and cleaned up to make the city look good for the world to see it when the Olympics come in 2010.

Grandpa and Joan and I had a great Tim Horton's breakfast on Saturday morning and then went off to search for a rain jacket for Daisy (their Lhasa Apso dog). Daisy was not a fan of the one we picked out, which was a cute little down type vest, but Joan said Daisy will come around to it. They have other little jackets for Daisy, and Daisy wears them with pride so maybe the fashion will just have to wear in.

I left for Toronto soon after and was quite proud that I held back my tears. Decided to be hard this trip and not a softy. Lasted well too, until today, when I had to say good bye to Robyn, after a long day chatting here with her. We only had this one day to hang out between her trip back from Austria with her Mom cycle touring, and her flying back to Canmore. Great day though, with lots of sunshine and shopping. The way a holiday should be!

Sarah came to visit me after church yesterday and we got to catch up as well. Looking foward to seeing how big her daughter has grown since December.

So not sure exactly what the next few weeks hold for me; lots of family visits for sure, and catching up with friends. And getting sunshine, and running. Lots of Clamato's and lots of running. Oh, and Mom's ceaser salad. And..... : )

Nice day for a ride

Today, we had our first totally sunny day on the weekend for the first time this winter! It was awesome. Breakfast on the front deck, jandals, shorts, and a mountain bike ride up on the escarpment to make sure we caught all the views. We could see the snow-capped mountains in the South Island, as well as some of the South Island's coast that comes up almost beside Kapiti which we can see well on a good day. We had a great view of Kapiti Island (which you can see in the background of the pic of me on the bike). Glorious Day! Winter is finally leaving us, and good riddance!

Our first roast

We did it. We finally grew up and made our very own roast dinner. We thought about it all day and planned things out ahead of time so everything was finished at the same time, and we even invited friends (Brent and Clare) over to make sure we put our full effort into it. And it was good! Besides a wee mishap with the gravy, I don't know what we were so worried about. I always thought roasts were a huge deal, but they are super easy, its just the clean up after with all the dishes that was the hardest part!
Looking forward to more culinary exploration......

Some cute pics....
Here is Tim and Zoe, asleep, and proving that genetics is not a farce.


And here is our Li'l Eddie. So cute. So fat and lazy. But we love her!


On to the start of another busy week. Volleyball season is back on, exams, Canada trip at the end of this week and heaps to do before I go. At least I haven't got the "bug" that everyone seems to be getting. I sure hope I stay healthy until I can get at least one cuddle with each of Maire, Raelen, Asher, Abby, Annalise, Max, Zoe, Laurelle, Baron, Jada and Kyla (all the babies I want to see while I am home). And Mom and Dad of course!