Slowed down...

Due to my enjoyment of watching 'TV on demand', I've used up our download for the month and so we have been super slowed down. Which makes watching 'TV on demand' impossible and all other day-to-day internet activities (email, reading blogs, checking weather forcast, TradeMe-ing) painfully slow.

The good news is that we bought a PVR the other day (just waiting for it to be delivered), so I will again be able to develop my own viewing times for my favourite shows, plus it will save me chewing up the download, so we shouldn't have this problem again.

The bad news is that I haven't been able to watch the last episode of MasterChef NZ and see all the action, before finding out who won.

But what do you do with them?

A couple of days ago I mentioned that we had eaten our first Feijoas and how I would need to find many different ways of cooking them to deal with the large supply of fruit each tree produces. Well I have made my first Feijoa product - Feijoa curd (also could be known as Feijoa butter, or Feijoa honey). It is basically the same as Lemon curd/butter/honey, but uses Feijoa puree instead of lemon juice/rind. Now we can eat the curd, spread on toast, on sandwiches or used as an ice cream topping; or find any recipe that requires the lemon version and substitute with the Feijoa version, such as the 'Feijoa coconut slice' I made for Bible study morning tea.

Wipers please!

I need windscreen wipers. For my glasses, that is. This morning was the second foggy morning for the winter (Monday was the first)... and my glasses fog up horribly while riding to work. So I have the choice of either not wearing glasses and being able to see vaguely, or having completely fogged-up glasses and not being able to see at all.

What makes that more scary is that at least half the cars out there this morning didn't have any lights on at all, despite visibility being down to less than 100m most of the way. I had my bike lights on to make myself as visible as I could...

Dodgy power companies...

When we bought our house, we didn't know who was supplying the electricity and gas - we asked the estate agent and they didn't know. We probably wanted to switch suppliers, but that seemed to require knowing who your current supplier was to start with. So, we figured we'd just wait until we got a notice of some sort from a power company so we could pay the bill and then switch suppliers. Yesterday, more than 6 weeks after living in the house, we got a "final notice" from Mercury Energy saying that they would disconnect our power within a week if we hadn't paid our bill. This was the first thing we'd heard from them. So, last night we rang them up to organise to pay the bill. All fine and good, we thought.

Except that, this morning, our power was disconnected. Obviously they didn't bother actually checking whether we'd contacted them. And they're trying to claim that we now need to pay a reconnection fee. Good luck with that, we're not paying anything more than our bill, seen as we hadn't been given any opportunity to pay any bill to start with.

Needless to say, we're not staying with Mercury.

We just ate our first feijoas!

This means that we really are starting to become locals. The feijoa would probably be NZ's second national fruit (in relation to prevalence/popularity) - just behind the world famous Kiwifruit. We are planning on growing a number of these trees into a hedge on the fence line of our property to reduce the noise from the cars. So we need to get used to eating them and finding many different ways of cooking/using/preserving them, as we will have a large harvest of them when the hedge is fully grown (we currently only have 1 tree planted, so it will be a little while yet).

On dry land...

This morning the kids had their last swimming lessons until next spring. They could keep going right through winter - as it is a heated indoor swimming pool - but I like them to have a break over winter, both for financial reasons and to give a bit of variety, so they don't get bored of it.

Joanna has progressed a lot with her skill level and can kick strongly, paddle her arms and blow a few bubbles at the same time. I think she has really enjoyed the 30min of 1-on-1 time she gets with me during the lesson.

I can't comment much on Ben, as his lesson is on while I'm in the pool with Joanna. But what I have seen is that he is a lot more confident in the water and is willing to try new things.

Did you know?

That red kumara (sweet potato) is the colour of green snot, when it has been peeled, cooked and pureed. And Naomi loves it! (it does taste nice and sweet)

My arms are sore...

from pulling apart pallets. The take a bit of time AND a bit of strength AND a bit of brains to deconstruct into useful pieces.

What are we doing today?

Painting window frames, AGAIN!

Well actually we have finished all the painting we are doing for today. Five windows now have undercoat and 1 layer of top coat. There are still 2 windows left - one has been scraped and just needs sanding and painting; the other we haven't done anything to yet. Plus we have yet to do anything with the windows+doors that cover the whole wall next to the deck! (I'm trying to convince Peter to replace the lot with bi-folds now - which is what we ultimately want to do there - instead of spending hours + money preping and painting it, just to replace later anyway.)

We are now pulling apart and de-nailing a stack of free pallets we got from Mitre 10, so we can use the wood to make some raised garden beds; a chook house; and try selling some as fire wood on Trade-me (the planks that snap/break in the process of us taking them apart).

Picking up the pace

Now that Ben has started morning kindy, it means I can get to the gym 4 times a week (I was only going 2, as there was only 2 days where there was space in the creche for all 3 kids, but now I only have 2...).

I've also mastered my 2km run and so have spent my runs this week working out a new, slightly longer route. The other day it was a bit of a cooks tour, as I didn't know how to get from the bike path I was on, up onto the road (the road is a bridge over a creek and the path follows next to the creek), so I ended up taking a longer route than I intended. Today I ran in the opposite direction to see if I could work it out and found there is a path from the road down to the creek. I still need to find out what distance this new route is, but the change is not only a further distance - this new route also has a couple of hills (my original 2km route was totally flat).

My main motivation at the moment is to lose a bit more of my baby weight so I can fit into my long pants for winter - if I don't I only have 2 pairs of pants that fit me and I don't want to have to go out and buy a whole new collection!

Friday afternoon...

Is movie afternoon. I wonder what the kids will pick? They have a choice of:

• Charlotte's Web
• A bug's life
• Wall-E
• Shrek the Third

The unexpected...

It's weird how unexpected news/change to normal routine can make me feel like my whole world is turned upside down for a little while. My mind needs time to process the before and after and absorb it into my 'normal' life.

Sad, frustrated, annoyed...

Just found out that our church's young mums bible study group is stopping from next week.

Bunk beds!

The beds that Ben and Joanna have been sleeping in since we moved here are designed as bunk beds, but we haven't been able to use them as such because we didn't have a ladder and bed rail for them. So, we had to come up with a plan: we didn't want to make holes in the beds by screwing something into them. A few weeks ago we happened to be at a furniture store and saw what one of their bunk beds did, to attach a bed rail, so we just copied the idea. And this is the result:

Ben and Joanna were both super-excited about sleeping on the bunk beds - Joanna wants her turn to sleep at the top and was rather disappointed to find out that she had to sleep on the bottom bed. She'll get to have her turn on top during rest time sometime...

I'll get around to varnishing them one day...

My favourite new baking recipe...

Honey cakes (out of the Donna Hay, Off The Shelf cookbook). They are quick to make (takes about 10 min prep and then 20 min baking), all the ingredients I have in my pantry and they taste delicious!

I only discovered the recipe yesterday (I was wanting to make m&m cookies, but our internet was down so I couldn't google to find a recipe) and I have just made another batch now for Bible study tonight.

Showery day...

Not good with three kids and pram visiting outdoors recycled building supplies store and hardware store. (It always seemed to shower just when we were in the process of getting into or out of the car)

Learning new skills...

Here's a collection of a couple of clips showing how Naomi progressed in the skill of bubble blowing. (As you will see from the clip, currently from a short distance it looks like she is foaming at the mouth and hence may assume something is seriously wrong.)

Naomi's water aerobics

Naomi LOVES bath time. She can be grouchy, whingy, and tired at the end of dinner, but as soon as Dad takes her for her bath and she hits that water she is a happy little girl, with lots of energy!

5 things we have learnt about painting window frames

1. Preparation always takes longer than you expect or want.
2. The blades on the paint scrapers are reversible (each side is a sharp blade, so when one side gets blunt, you just have to take it out and put the opposite side facing outward - not pay $10 for a new blade).
3. A heat gun makes the job a lot quicker - not necessarily 'quick', 5-6 layers of paint still takes a while to scrape off.
4. I quite like re-puttying.
5. Peter will never again wear his good jumper when using liquid nails!

Painting!

Today we have started painting some of the windows that we spent last week scraping. Three will get an undercoat today. Because the overnight temperature is getting down to 6 degrees C, we can only do one coat on a window each day as the temperature has to be above 10 degrees for application and drying (which isn't reached until approx. 8:30am) and the lower daytime temperatures (approx 20C) slows down the drying time.

Scavenging void?

Watched an episode of River Cottage Autumn last night, where they went traveling round the local countryside harvesting free produce (fruit and veges) from the roadside. I think it sounds like a great thing to be able to do - means I don't have to try and grow as much myself - but it seems to me to not be a viable option in places that I have/currently live (Brisbane and Hamilton). The editor of the big gardening magazine here in NZ talks about being able to do this type of scavenging in Auckland, where some of the council's footpath trees are actually fruit trees (they even had some 'novice' gardeners go round collecting stuff - the locations of which they apparently found on the internet). But I've just spent some time on google and don't seem to be able to find any help in locating 'free' produce here in Hamilton. Anybody else ever collected free street food?

The things people will pay money for...

We've just finished another round of selling stuff on Trade Me. It was basically just trying to get rid of stuff we no longer want or need that was taking up precious space in our house/garage. One of the items was a blender, which I'd been thinking of selling for a while because I didn't use it much except for making milkshakes/smoothies for the kids. But a couple of months ago I went to get it down off the shelf to use and in the process accidently dropped it on the floor, which smashed a large-ish chunk of plastic out of the base of the jug part. (It still worked fine, but I had been waiting for an excuse to get a food processor thing and thought that this accident justified it.) I didn't want to just throw it in the rubbish, so decided to try sell it online - and get someone to essentially pay me to dispose of it! Well somebody ended up paying $5 for it.

(We also like Freecycle for getting rid of stuff we don't want anymore, but somebody else might find useful - plus they come to your door and pick it up! - like the 25 year old dishwasher that was in this house.)

Busy day...

After spending all weekend busy outside, I spent today busy inside trying to get on top of all the day to day jobs that have been neglected over the weekend. Washing clothes, vacuuming, cooking up veggies for Naomi, grocery shopping...

Easter traditions

Many of you will remember that this past Christmas I tried to start some Christmas traditions for our family that help to put to focus back on Christ instead of all the secular stuff (see here, here, here and here). Well I tried to start to do some this year in the lead up to Easter. Now I wasn't as organised or put as much thinking into them as I did at Christmas (even though I don't have a newborn anymore - like I did then), but I attempted to start doing stuff.

First thing we did were Easter Advent readings. Each day for the week leading up to Easter we read a passage from the Bible about the events that happened leading up to Jesus death, as well as the actual crucifixion and resurrection. The readings I followed are thanks to Karen (published on Nicole's blog). There was also a simple activity that relates to each one, which I thought I'd attempt to do at least some of with the kids, but was so busy that I didn't manage to do any of them (oh well, I can always try again next year).

We also had a Jesus is Alive cake on Easter Sunday - the idea came from Nicole, and I think it is a good way of combining the whole chocolate thing, with the more significant meaning of the resurrection.

The kids also watched the Veggie Tales DVD 'An Easter Carol'. And I had planned to find the clip from the Jesus Storybook bible for them to watch, but never got around to it (but thanks again to Nicole, I now have it for next time)

This evening...

We're going to a friends house for dinner. Will make a nice break/end to the weekend of working on the house.

Bad patient

Remember how I hurt my back the other week. Well I haven't been doing the exercises the physio gave me, which means I've been avoiding tasks that I feel are a higher risk for injuring it. But I feel this is impacting on my quality of life as I can't do things I want to do - like dig over the garden (although I haven't actually had time to do this yet anyway). So I really need to start doing them regularly I think, but there are so many other things to do with my time - agh...I hate this vicious circle.

Easter LONG weekend

As proud new home owners (and hence relatively poor ones) we have entered to phase of life where we spend our holidays working on the house (and spending money doing it) instead of spending money on going away for the holidays. The job this weekend has been 'repainting the window frames' (it is a condition of our loan that we have this done in the next 6 months because they were so bad), but we have realised that we aren't going to be able to totally finish it this weekend, so for a sense of accomplishment (so we can cross some things off the list - we're both that kind of personality) I guess I better break it down into the smaller tasks that we've done:

• scraped paint off the window frames (3 extra large, 2 large and 1 small window) - am really over doing this job...it is taking a very long time as there is at least 5-6 layers of paint on most of the windows that we have to strip back.
  
• chiseled out old cracked putty from around windows
  
• re-puttied windows - I was nervous about having a go at doing this job at first as it require a certain level of skill and there is pressure to do it right so it keeps the water out of the window frame so it doesn't rot. But I've done a few windows not and am actually enjoying doing it - it's the kind of thing that the more you do it, the better you get at it.
  

We had hoped to at least get a coat of primer on at least half the windows, but have learnt we have to wait at least a week for the putty to set before we can do that! So it looks like it will be taking at least another month before we get them all finished - we still have a whole wall of windows and glass doors on the deck side of the house to do. The urgency of it all is that we have to get it done before winter sets in because winter in Hamilton is cold and wet - not suitable for painting.