Happy Birthday to Naomi!

She's one today...the year has gone so quickly! She is still a cruisy, cutey that we all love very much.

More photos on flickr.

MasterChef

Our kids LOVE MasterChef (and Peter can't stand it!). We've been watching the 2nd series of Australian MasterChef. Ben knows George and can recognise and name a number of the contestants! We also have conversations about MasterChef at dinner - Ben and Joanna start discussing whether Peter or My dish that night would make it on MasterChef! It has also increased Ben's interest in getting into the kitchen and helping to cook dinner or bake stuff (he has always liked cooking, but he is now volunteering to help more regularly, plus making suggestions for recipes).

The age of technology

Our washing machine isn't working properly...but it looks like we might be able to save the time/frustration/money of having to deal with an appliance repair man! We bought the machine just under 5 years ago (just before Ben was born), we spent a reasonable bit to buy a machine that would cope with a growing family and so ended-up with a FisherPaykel EcoActive Smart water saving washing machine (one of the ones with the electronic push buttons and LCD display).

This may seem over the top to a lot of you, but the advantage of the LCD display is that instead of us now wondering why it has stopped mid-cycle with water still in the bowl, it has given us an Fault Code - number 37. So we've stuck the this into Google and found out that most likely the problem is just some foreign object (probably out of one of the kids pockets) is blocking the water pump. And to fix it, all we need to do is tip the machine a little, undo 4 screws (on the front right-hand corner) and remove the offending object!

Will let you know what the object is when we get around to taking it apart on the weekend.

Fallen off the face of the earth?

Peter pointed out to me the other day, that we had a all time low of only 2 posts last month. Sorry for the silence. Two major reasons for this were/are:

1. I was on holidays in Oz for a month, so although we had internet access most the time, I was trying to have a bit of a holiday from sitting in front of the computer.

2. I have been crazily busy since we got back (2 weeks ago), trying to get family life in some kind of order - which has been made extra difficult by having Ben at morning kindy and Joanna at afternoon kindy.

I hope to get back into blogging a bit more, but unfortunately there isn't much time for it at the moment.

Spring in the Waikato...

On Sunday I went for a long run and managed to get sunburnt - the sun was really hot and it felt reasonably warm (even if it did only manage to get to 17C for the day). By yesterday morning, we'd got a nasty blast of cold air... it was a decidedly cold 5C and raining on my ride in to work, with snow apparently falling on Mt Pirongia about 20km away. By the afternoon, the sun was out, with more rain in the evening. And sun again this morning.

I think that's spring - if you don't like the weather, wait an hour or two and it will be different!

I guess at least we're not underwater like half of Brisbane seems to be at the moment...

IKEA

We took a trip to IKEA while in Brisbane - I wanted to get some more of their kid's plates - BUT in true IKEA style, we ended up buying a whole house of curtains, some new light fittings, plus a couple of other things (but no snakes!).

Holiday achievements

While we were away, Naomi decided to achieve some of the many milestones that seem so important in the 1st year of life.

First, she started crawling - after a few weeks of skill development, she started fully crawling the day after Peter joined us! (go here to see proof)

Second, she got her first tooth - the day after starting to crawl!

Back...

We're back from our Aussie holiday. Arrived back at 12.30am last night, so today was a bit of a write off (various members of the family only woke up between 8.30am and 10.15am this morning).

Squelch squelch splash

Ah, the sounds of tramping on Mt Pirongia. I just got back from a trip up to Pahautea Hut on Pirongia. The weather forecast was for pretty atrocious weather - wind, rain, hail, thunder etc. But hey, it couldn't be that bad, could it? Well, it wasn't - I survived perfectly adequately.

I decided to try going up a way I hadn't been up before - the Tahuanui track. It was a nice enough track - very muddy up the top, but that's kind of expected: this is Pirongia after all, and it has been raining for months now. As we got higher, we got more exposed to the wind - which was pretty ferocious at times. Finally, we made it to the hut to try and warm up. Some chicken biryani was soon bubbling away and warming us up.

After a good night's sleep, the hut was still standing, despite being thoroughly shaken in the wind and massive amount of rain (I'm guessing 200mm of rain fell overnight - there was a sink outside that was filled up that much - and there's no other way for water to get into it... it really was raining!). After some coffee and porridge, we got walking, and the weather got back to raining. By the time we got to the top, it was hailing again, along with wind gusts that must have been getting up around 80km/hr. With the temperature being somewhere well below 10C, it was certainly cold! The track had turned into a stream by this point, so there was plenty of splashing all the way down. I managed to get down only falling over 3 times, which isn't bad considering how wet and slippery it was.

All up, a good trip - it was nice to get out into the bush again! Next time I go there, I think Naomi might be with me for her Dad-and-daughter tramping trip... hopefully the weather's a little better then!

Why does it always rain on me?

It seems to have been raining for months here... we had a wet June (~220mm), followed by a relatively dry July (~56mm), and then a wet August ~165mm). And September has, so far, been wet (~70mm in the first 12 days). I'm looking forward to summer arriving sometime... and dryer weather to go with it.