It still feels weird...

It's the middle of summer, but I wore jeans all day today (as well as a jumper for half of the morning) and didn't feel hot at all - including a walk to the shops and back...a 2km round trip!

Back to reality...

I feel like a sheep, as what I'm about to say, I have read similar words on many other blogs in the past couple of weeks... Tomorrow school starts again...which means going back to the busy morning getting ready for school; school drop off; gym; kindy drop off; school pick up; kindy pick up; bible studies; playgroup...

I have really enjoyed the school holidays, with a more relaxed routine, some extra spontaneousness in schedule/activities and having family visit/stay with us. And as regular readers would know, I've managed to also fit in a bit of holiday surgery! I am relievhat ed that I have totally recovered without any post op complications and feel I have the energy and ability to function normally again (which is very important to be able to deal with all the start of school year stuff). It has meant that I haven't been able to do as many jobs around the house that I would like to have done while not having all the busyness of the school routine, but I did manage to do a couple of things that could be done sitting at a computer (this terms kids church plan - I still have 1/2 of the worksheets to do-, and selling some more stuff on TradeMe). And today I got Ben's school books all covered and labelled, so he is all prepared for tomorrow.

Anyway, we'll see how I go with blogging this year - I still feel like I have lots I'd like to say, but finding the time to type a few words on the screen not as easy to find.

Thanks Wilma (part Two)

I had planned to go tramping with Ben this weekend as well - going to the Pinnacles Hut up above the Kauaeranga Valley on the Coromandel Peninsula. The weather was forecast to be a little rough on Friday night but clearing by Saturday morning, so I figured it should be OK to still go. As it turns out, it would have been, except that the road up the valley got badly flooded and damaged, so there was no access at all.

So, instead of that, Ben and I went for a little stroll at Mt Pirongia, and then camped out in the backyard. He

had lots of fun doing that, particularly seen as we cooked outside and ate dinner and breakfast in the tree house!

Thanks Wilma!

Tropical Cyclone Wilma came visiting the North Island over the weekend - we only really got the tip of it here in Hamilton. But it was enough to bring down a big branch of this tree in our yard. With the wind still blowing and the rest of the tree waving dangerously, we decided to chop it down in a controlled manner before it came down and clipped the corner of our house. Next job is to chop it all up so we can get rid of it!

Rainy day

Great day for staying inside...

• watching a movie (Body of Lies)
• reading a book ( a Nora Roberts thriller)
• drinking a cup of coffee (Rocket)/hot chocolate (Cadbury).

Foodie frustration...

As a lot of you would know, I enjoy food - both cooking it and eating it. And a week since getting my tonsils out...I'm frustrated. I'd like to get back in the kitchen and cook some yummy food, but don't have the energy...not to mention that a lot of food I can't eat at the moment, or can't enjoy eating because it is still quite sore to eat (both chewing and swallowing).

Procrastinating...

I've spent the last hour procrastinating - avoiding doing more kids church prep. I have read many a blog post, plus explored the blogrolls of some of the blogs that I read. I only have 1.5 weeks of kids church programs to go, plus designing 20 worksheets (I know what's going in them, just need to put it together). Mum and Dad are taking the kids to the lake park this morning, so I will have some peace and quiet. But that opens up a whole new range of possibilities for alternative activities...

Back to kindy...

Joanna goes back to kindy this afternoon. Which is the start of the normal routine starting to build up for the year. Only two weeks until Ben goes back to school and hence all other normal activities start again (gym, bible study, playgroup, kids church...). I hope I am feeling dramatically better by then (my throat is still feeling really sore and I still don't have much energy).

Kids church prep...

While I'm confined to light duties due to my tonsil op, I've been taking the time to prepare Term 1 kids church program. It needs to be finished, ready to use in 2 weeks time, but I had been delaying working on it over Christmas/New year, as I knew it was something that I could do while recovering. Although it is easy to decide to watch a movie or read my book instead, and I hadn't anticipated being so tired and needing to sleep so much.

Veggie patch in full swing...

Well our summer veggie patch is definitely up to sustainable production levels now. We are harvesting cherry tomatoes, zucchinis, beetroot, carrots, cucumbers and strawberries daily. We have also harvested a couple of rounds of potatoes.

Tired

Tonsils are gone! Feeling fairly tired, even though all I've done this morning is lie in bed. Throat isn't feel too sore (much better than it was yesterday).

Living in a daze...

I feel like I'm operating in a daze this morning. Maybe caused by spending the last 2 nights painting Naomi's room.

Once upon a walk

It's been mentioned that Bill and I went for a walk down in Tongariro National Park from Boxing Day for a couple of nights. I haven't got around to giving details of where we went, so here you go...

The girls + kids were staying in Taupo while we were out in the bu

sh, so we planned an easy first day to give us time to get them into their accommodation and so on. We got to the roadend at Mangatepopo

somewhere around 3pm, with only a short walk up to Mangatepopo Hut where we were going to camp for the night. Once we got there and set tent up, we figured seen as the weather was perfect, we may as well go for a stroll and try to get up Mt Pukekaikiore - a little (only 1692m, next to Mt Ngauruhoe's 2287m) lump of rock

nearby. The walk up and back was reasonably easy - once we'd got far enough around to skirt the cliffs. We were back at the tent by about 7pm for dinner.

The next morning was cold and clear, and looked to be a beautiful day. We started to head up the valley towards South Crater, but as we got closer, a little cap of cloud appeared on top of Mt Ngauruhoe. That usually indicates strong winds up there. The cap got a bit bigger, and by the

time we got to the head of the valley, the cloud was down to

around 1500m and it certainly was windy - probably around 50km/hr. We decided we may as well attempt Ngauruhoe anyway, but gave up when it became clear that we weren't going to see anything and it was going to be a huge effort, particularly in the wind. Returning to the trail, the cloud lifted a little to give us a view of the expanse of South Crater, and a glimpse of snow on the other side just below Mt Tongariro's summit. Bill had never been to any snow before, so we headed across the crater to go and build a snowman. That brought us to

lunch time, huddled behind the one rock in that part of South

Crater to keep out of the wind. The other side of South Crater is the climb up to the top of Red Crater, which was more exposed to the wind - probably gusting around 70km/hr now. The cloud lifted enough to give us spectacular views of the crater and Emerald Lakes nearby. The descent from the lakes was steep and seemed to take forever - walking across some spectacular countryside - all sand and weird rock formations. We finally arrived at Oturere Hut, exhausted from a huge day. The forecast was for the weather to significantly deteriorate - wind getting up to 130km/hr and rain to go with it. During the night, that certainly came true - my little tent got a battering despite it's relatively sheltered position and we didn't get much sleep. We packed everything up

(including the camera in the pack - those sort of conditions are not quite suited to picture-taking!) and headed off.

Fortunately the wind was a north-wester, so it blew us in the right direction down to Waihohonu - I would not have liked to attempt to walk into that sort of gale. The last stretch from Waihohonu down to SH1 (the Desert Road) was pretty miserable - windy, wet, and pretty boring. I'd managed to give Mel slightly wrong directions, so she couldn't find us for a little while. By the time she did, I was thoroughly soaked through and very cold. She was not happy with my directions. Bad combination. Anyway, we did find each other and managed to get back to Taupo to warm up, dry out and get some lunch at McDonalds.

Full set of photos at flickr, as usual!

New banner...

The old one was, well, old. So we have a new one from my most recent tramping trip. If you're looking at this in a feed reader and have no idea what I'm talking about, you'll have to click through!

I want to get a lemon tree

Lemon juice/zest is such a common seasoning in recipes, I really would like my own tree. I don't think I would have any trouble using all the lemons it produced. And it would save me popping to the shops all the time.

Update...again

EDIT: Photos now here.

Well I remained sick for the whole of the Christmas/New Year week, and was still feeling not 100% the day before we left for our beach holiday. Thankfully the whole family was feeling well by the time we left on Monday for our holiday at the beach.

Our beach holiday was really enjoyable. We stayed at Whitianga on the Coramandel Peninsula. We visited Cathederal Cove again and had our 'bath' at Hot Water Beach. Peter and Ben and Steven collected fresh pipis from the shell beds in the harbour. There was also time spent relaxing: reading, playing board games, cricket, kicking a ball around etc. (photos to come)

We got home yesterday and the Colyer's flew out for Brisbane early this morning. So today we have done 4 loads of washing; relocated the kids bunk beds back to their room (which means dismantling and reassembling); totally cleared out Naomi's bedroom in preparation to paint it (in the next couple of days). My parent's arrive on Thursday morning (to help out with the kids while I recover from my operation), and on Friday morning, I get my tonsils out.

Packing...

I've found it less of a terrible task the last couple of times...I think having somebody else to deal with the kids while I do it might help a lot.