My Birthday - Part One

I woke up Friday morning to a very wet and somewhat gloomy day outside, however my perspective immediately brightened with the loving birthday wishes of my sweet family followed by some morning phone calls from family in the States. While I was on the phone in bed, upstairs Meggie was busy making me toast and jam, and she and Katie were helping the little girls draw me birthday cards. The big girls had actually used their own money to buy me cards - buying cards is almost, but not quite, against my religion, given how much they cost, but getting them from my little darlings who spent their own money was a huge blessing.

After the card and present presentation in bed I got up and went swimming with my swim group, who also had remembered my birthday and welcomed me, late as always, with happy birthday wishes. Dugald took the day off work to tend to some business on the home front, and later in the afternoon Kate and Ant, Ben and Wills stopped by for a visit. They are in town to get Wills settled in at Victoria University where he will soon be starting classes. Ben has taken up painting and showed us this amazing oil on canvas he did for Lloyd, we were most impressed.

I also got a lovely bunch of flowers and gifts, thank you very much Howard family.

Later that afternoon we headed out to Rob and Liz's for a celebratory barbeque. Liz's birthday is the 22nd so we were really celebrating for both of us. It was such fun, Rob makes the best burger I've ever tasted and that's saying something!! The Kiwis all put beets on their burgers, but I just couldn't bring myself to try it.

Hamish and Delaney

Rob, Ant's brother Roger Howard, and Dugs.

Rob grilling the yummy burgers. As an aside, it is hard to believe this man is related to my husband. . . I mean aside from the fact that he cooks, often, can you see how clean his grill is????

The girls having Hugh help them open the trunk full of Groovy Girls dolls. Such fun!

I made the cake because I wanted an excuse to have my favorite and everyone sang to Liz and me, then we blew out the birthday candle together.

Hamish, Hettie, and Hettie's boyfriend (can we officially say that? ) Stuart, or maybe Stewart? I should have verified the spelling!

Me and Jo.

Hettie and her mom.

Liz, Ben,Wills, Ant and Rob. Sometimes it's just easier to take pictures when they aren't paying attention.

Ellie getting a cuddle from Delaney. Hamish and Delaney have offered to take the girls to the Marine Science Centre over in Island Bay in a few weeks so Dugald and I can have the afternoon off, how excited am I? It's a bonus that Hamish is actually studying Marine Biology. Score.

This picture makes me smile, seriously those Howard boys are TALL!

Mommy and Meg - you may notice that Katie and Hugh are noticeably absent from my photos of the evening, they were upstairs for most of the night playing on the Playstation.

The birthday girls - we were missing Julie, my other sister-in-law who shares the same birthday as me, but our thoughts were with her too.

Oh here's Katie - I managed to get a few shots with her in them before we left. I also wanted one of Katie and Hettie because several people have commented on how much they look alike.

We had a lovely evening, thank you again to Rob and Liz for opening your home and hosting us all.

Saturday night we celebrated some more, I'll post about that tomorrow. Thanks to all of you who sent me birthday greetings - especially on Facebook, I was overwhelmed by all the good wishes and felt very loved!

Teddy Bear's Picnic

As I sit here uploading pictures and trying to catch up on our blog, Meggie is upstairs making everyone breakfast. I am so loving it. Dugald is out of town (again) and when I woke up this morning she was already heading down the stairs to my room with toast and jam for me. She is eager to learn to cook and has been helping me a lot in the kitchen, but this was the first time she actually went in there and did it all herself. I immediately showed her how the coffee is made, in case she gets it in her head to do this again. She also presented me with a grocery list, she plans on cooking our dinner tonight all by herself and found a recipe in our children's cookbook. I'll take pics and post about that later.


A few weeks ago it was the "Teddy Bear's Picnic" in the Botanic Gardens. Meggie and Katie performed with their Musical Stars group and Josie and Ellie and I went to watch, I don't really need to tell you that Daddy was out of town. . . . you could probably work that one out! Anyhoo, we had a ball, here are some pictures from our day:


Katie during her solo part:

Waiting for the next song:

The audience:

Katie again:

Meggie:

Meggie and Ellie watching more of the show:

I don't know why I'm posting this one, if you looked up "haggard" in the dictionary I'm pretty sure this is what you'd see:

After the performance we went to another area of the gardens where they had jumpers and other activities for the kids. Ellie is a big fan of the jumper. Meggie was an awesome big sister and took her over there, stood in line with her, paid for her and watched her play while I was in the "hair and makeup" line with Josie and Katie.

Katie getting her "makeup" (face paint) done:

And Josie getting her hair done:

I'm thinking the girl doing Katie's makeup isn't wearing the most flattering look for her. . .

but look at my little star, she's beautiful!

It was another fun day for all of us. I apologize for the photo quality, my editing tools are on the computer that isn't set up yet. See you tomorrow!

Crusty Demons

So a few weeks ago we were invited by Rob and Liz to hang out with them in their box at the stadium and watch "a motorcycle show". That's really all I knew about it, but it sounded like something the kids would enjoy and I knew I would enjoy seeing Rob and Liz. When we got there and saw that the show was called the "Crusty Demons" I was a tad concerned, but the place was crawling with kids and it was obviously billed as a family show, so I wondered how bad it could be.

Let's just say it was really bad, at least at first. And to my shame it was an American show. Ugh. Before they got started doing all their various motorbike tricks they had some "entertainment" that included the "Crusty Babes" doing a rather evocative dance in rather lascivious clothing on the stage. That was followed by a fear-factor type drinking contest, followed by something (I wasn't paying complete attention - Dugald and I were trying to entertain the girls away from all of this) that involved male participants pulling down their pants and being spanked by the crusty babes on their boxers. Yes siree, we love us some cultural events!!

However, all was not lost, eventually the motorbikes came out and did some amazing stuff and we were all duly impressed. During the preceding shenanigans the girls loved just hanging out with, or hanging all over, their cousins Alex, Hettie and Hugh. All in all a good time was had by all, thank you Rob and Liz!!

If you look really closely you can see the motorbikes doing flips in the air.
Katie hanging out with Alex and her boyfriend, Bobby. Everytime I looked over at them Katie and Bobby were deep in conversation. I can only wonder what that was all about, but God bless Bobby, he was as kind as can be to her.

Mommy and Jo.

Meggie and Daddy. We left Ellie at home since it was going to be a late night.

Liz and her sister Jane in the middle and another friend.

I'm catching up with all our pics!! I'll post more tomorrow. Hugs!!

Some pics in the house. . . more later!

Here are some random shots from around the new house. . . I haven't gone around taking pics yet because I'm still waiting on furniture to be delivered, I'm doing my part to help the New Zealand economy. You're welcome.

Here are the little girls putting away their laundry, the big girls just wanted to be in the picture.

School work at the table. The light fixtures are being replaced by the rental company, the movers broke them when the owner moved out.

This is a terrible picture, but Ellie is in it. Just looking out onto the deck, kitchen is to the right. This little bit of tile is the only part of the entire house, excepting the bathrooms, that doesn't have blue carpet. If anyone from the states wants to send me some Spot Shot it would be most welcome.

Dinner on the deck, we've been doing that as much as possible!

Meggie and Josie playing in a tree in the backyard.

It's nice to be missed!

Hi there everyone! Today we've been called and emailed so much from people thinking we must have fallen off the bottom of the earth that I thought I should finally update. It is nice to know you care :). We haven't fallen off anything, in fact we're doing pretty well, I just haven't taken the time to dig out from under our boxes to get on the computer for more than a status update on Facebook.

I found the USB cord I needed and managed to get the camera connected to Dugald's computer so I'll be sharing some older photos for a few days. These pictures are from our final days in the other house - you can see the lovely boxes and suitcases in the background. Our friend Molly sent the girls some photos albums awhile ago and they have been a huge hit! On this particular day they were busy dividing up stickers and decorating pages.

Here are Meggie and Katie working on one of their pages:

Josie and Ellie were working together, in theory, but as you can see Ellie was really just being a pain!

I'll post more pictures tomorrow, including some of the new house.

Thank you for your emails and phone calls, we love and miss you all!!

This is too funny

We still haven't sorted out getting pictures on here from my camera, or Skype, but I have high hopes it will happen this weekend. Dugald had to travel twice this week so I didn't have my computer guru around to help me with all things technical. In the meantime my friend Teresa sent me this hilarious clip. . . enjoy!

Happy Birthday Margaret!

Today is my lovely mother-in-law's birthday and her present is still sitting, not yet wrapped, on my bed. I am still so utterly disorganized since the move - I am losing everything because it doesn't have a place yet, and I'm unable to plan ahead at all, thus the present on the bed. So, happy birthday Margaret!! We love you and are thinking of you today and hopefully your gift will arrive in February.

Dugald is in Australia, but when he gets back tomorrow I'll be begging him to help me set up the cords necessary to download photos - otherwise it won't be until the end of February when my new desk arrives and we can set up my mac. This past weekend was quite fun and I have some good pics to share, so keep checking back. One of the weekend's events was the Teddy Bear's Picnic in the Botanic Gardens and the girls and I were there - Meggie and Katie performed with Musical Stars. We never see the news (on TV anyway) so I was surprised to hear from a few friends, and Margaret, that Josie was shown on the 6pm broadcast. Our neighbors across the street recorded it so we'll head over and see it tomorrow with Dugs.

Today I started swimming again which was wonderful and since I had a babysitter I went to the bank afterwards to sort out all my new cards that came in the post this week. . . not sure if I mentioned on here that my wallet went missing in the midst of the move. So annoying - lost my eftpos (debit card), visa, New Zealand driver's license, Texas driver's licence (don't even know why I had that one in there), my swimming card that was only 2/3 used (had to buy a new one today for $120), a fair amount of cash, all of our library cards, a voucher for a bookstore, and the list goes on and on. . . . I am still hoping it turns up, but I get less optimistic as each day passes.

And while I'm griping - did I mention that of the two men the company I hired sent to move us, one was in his 70s or later and had a bad back? Oh yes, I paid these people an hourly rate and he moved at the speed of a slug. And they put together the children's bunks incorrectly, which was one of the main reasons I hired help in the first place. I wanted to call since the move ended up costing more than double what it should have and I did much of the heavy lifting with the younger guy myself, but Dugald didn't think I should. If you are a Kiwi reading this blog I wouldn't recommend Kiwi Move.

That is all for now. I thought Grey's Anatomy was starting back up here last night so I got the children to bed early and got myself set up on the couch with a glass of wine and a blanket, only to realize I was wrong!! I don't even know when it starts, or how in the world I thought it would be last night, but I did discover a new addiction - the 24 movie was on and it was SO good, so now I know how I'll be spending my Thursday evenings from 8:30 - 9:30 (or thereabouts, New Zealand tv rarely starts when it is scheduled to, go figure).

Tata for now!!