It's back...

I thought I'd got away with a relatively mild dose of the tummy bug that's been doing the rounds in the family... until yesterday. Yesterday afternoon I suddenly came down with it again, and this time far worse than on Monday. I've managed to avoid throwing up, but still feel like death warmed up.

Salad garden is in action

A couple of weeks ago we dug over and chook-proofed an existing garden bed to be our salad garden (it gets a fair bit of shade from our big tree out the front and the house, so the lettuce etc. won't go to seed too quickly). The other day, while I was sick, Peter installed a sprinkler system (there are no outside taps on that side of the house so the options were either, get a mega long hose, cart watering cans around there or run irrigation piping under the house from the existing outside tap). Today, I finally got around to planting some seeds in it, in the hope that we will have salad greens in time for Christmas (although I'm slightly afraid we might have left it a bit late!). I'll put up some photos of it some time, maybe once the plants have started to grow - at the moment it just looks like a bare dirt prison, so not very interesting.

Goodbye mitt

We've had the same oven mitt since we were married (we were given it as either an engagement or wedding present). But they had got to the stage where they weren't much better than using a tea towel (the wading had all compressed giving no insulative qualities to the mitt anymore). For at least a year now we have been making comments to each other about the need to replace them...Well today was the day, I was given a new oven mitt for my birthday and the old one has found it's rightful place in the rubbish bin!

Funny chooks.

A few months ago when cleaning out the gutters we discovered just how much chook food was getting consumed by the local sparrows rather than our chickens. Apparently the sparrows like to pick up the food and then fly up onto the edge of the roof and consume it there, not only wasting chicken food, but blocking up the gutters with their mess as well. So, we bought a Chooketeria to try and get around the problem. This requires the chickens to remember how to open the thing, which is as simple as putting a foot on the pedal out the front. Our chickens still haven't quite got the concept - they do it, but it seems to take them a little while to remember how each morning. Have a look at the video to see what I mean!

Blasts from the past

Mel got herself a new phone for her birthday (a fancy new Android job)... so we copied all the old pictures that she'd taken over the last few years off her old phone. All 16 of them. The pictures aren't exactly fantastic quality, but they bring back memories!

We had to use our old dinosaur laptop to get them off as

well... the only way to communicate with the phone was to use infra-red... which is something that has disappeared from most modern

laptops.

Movie Marathon

While I was sick yesterday (with no energy to do anything except lie on the couch) and recovering today, I've had a bit of a movie marathon. There were a few movies that I'd recorded on the PVR and hadn't got around to watching, so in the past two days I've watched:

• Charlie's Angels (well only the first 30min of it, the PVR stuffed up the recording - luckily, I've seen it before, so wasn't greatly annoyed)
• Runaway Bride (which I also have watched before)
• RV (which I haven't watched before)
• Catch me if you can (well I'm actually only 1/3 to halfway through this one - had to stop watching when Ben and Joanna arrived home from school/kindy - I have also watched this before)

I've been enjoying watching movies for a change instead of episodes of TV series...it's nice to have approx. 2hrs for the storyline to develop etc. instead of it all been squeezed into a 40min TV episode.

And again...

It was Mel's turn last night. She popped out to the shops to pick up groceries after the kids were in bed, feeling very tired, but otherwise OK. By the time she got back she was feeling decidedly off-colour. During the night some dinner returned. So that's all the girls that have had the bug - I think I may have had it on Monday and managed to avoid throwing up. Which leaves only Ben...

Tummy bug strikes again

I got a call this afternoon to tell me Joanna had thrown-up at kindy and could I please come and take her home. I found out from another school mum that there is a tummy bug going around the school. Funny thing is our 'school boy' has yet to catch the bug, but the hangers on (ie. his sisters) have now both had it!

Walking, walking

I'm going to attempt walking to school to pick Ben up (and obviously walking home again). Will see how tired he is when we get home.

Don't slice bread straight out the breadmaker...

All you get is a hack job of bread pieces.

(I know the instructions tell you not to, but I really needed some bread for Naomi's lunch!)

Freshly baked bread crusts...

YUM - crispy, crunchy and warm!

Christmas decorations found!

After some unpacking and tidying of stuff, I have located the christmas tree decorations in a box.

Sick girl

Naomi threw up twice yesterday afternoon/evening and a little during the night. Hoping it is just a 24hr bug, but for now have a reasonable unhappy girl.

can't find the Christmas decorations!

I can't find the Christmas tree decorations. Don't know what has happened to them since the move - are they still in a box that hasn't been unpacked? Hopefully I can find them in the next couple of weeks.

Sailing...

Yesterday, we went sailing. One of Peter's friends from work lives on a yacht with his family in Auckland Harbour. So we went sailing out to Motuihe Island for a play on the beach, then tried some fishing near Rangitoto island before getting back to the Marina in time for dinner. Ben got a chance to "drive" the boat and the kids had great fun playing in the sand on the beach...unfortunately we didn't catch any fish (although one of the other guys from Peter's work did!).

Am I a Kiwi or Am I an Aussie? At least I know I'm turning One!

That was the theme of Naomi's first birthday party. She was born in NZ, lives in NZ, but since July has been an Australian citizen.

So we decorated the house with Aussie Flag and Silver Fern balloons.

For food we served food which both Aussies and Kiwis claim to be theirs: lamingtons (the first time I've ever made them - apart from some fuzzy memory of making some in class at primary school), meat pies (the mini party variety), BBQ sausages on bread and pavlova.

We also had a gumboot (for the Kiwis) and thong (for the Aussies) throwing competition.

For the cake we had both an Australian and New Zealand Flag.

Natural pest control

Last night, while I was watering the veggie garden, I was thinking that we haven't had much of a problem with slugs and snails so far. I have been sprinkling around a bit of slug and snail bait (a child and pet friendly one - it's made from a common food additive - but toxic to slugs and snails), but I had thought it might have something to do with the chooks finding the slugs/snails hiding places during the day and eating them. But just now, I found a little wild bird (the ones we call pests for pigging out on our chook food), cracking a snail shell open on our path for a lunchtime feast. Go for it, I say, as long as they stay away from my strawberries!

Bread making update...

After making our first loaf of bread in our new breadmaker the other day, we have made 2 more loaves. The first 2 were just basic white loaves and the 3rd loaf I tried doing a multigrain loaf. We haven't had any flops yet and the kids like eating it. I'm enjoying not having the pressure of needing to go to the supermarket multiple times in a week to buy more bread.

Comparing marathons

(Apologies to those that couldn't really care less about marathons. Go read something else!)

I dug out the times recorded at my previous best marathon - Gold Coast 2008. At that race, times were recorded at 5km intervals, so some sort of pacing information could be plotted, similar to what I did the other day, but without quite as fine a granularity. This is the result, compared to Auckland last month:

My summary of what it shows:

• My pace seemed steadier in the first half of GC - possibly because of having no hills. The first half of Akl is relatively hilly.
• I started slowing down from about 15km already... and it just got worse.
• Somewhere between 25 and 30km I was starting to hurt
• Shortly after 30km is where I started walking - and walked most of the rest of the way.
• A slow and easy first half at Akl ended up being a slightly faster time overall.

Advent planning

Now that birthday season is over, I have time to start organising stuff for our annual Advent/Christmas traditions. A lot of these traditions we only started last year and plan to continue this year. So what have I been up to:

- buying gifts and thinking of other special activities to use in our Advent calendar

- we went as a family to select our Christmas tree (but got to the Christmas tree farm to find out we are too early getting it organised this year - they don't open for another 2 weeks!)

- I've bought ingredients to make Christmas cake and rum balls (to both eat ourselves and give away as gifts to our friends and neighbours)

- Gathering some supplies and ideas for christmas decorations

What I need to do in the next couple of weeks:

- construct the advent calendar

- select the christmas tree (when the tree farm opens!)

- make the Christmas cakes and rum balls

- make and put up christmas decorations

- plan Christmas day menu

- borrow a selection of Christmas books from the library and collect up all our Christmas books to put in the Christmas book box so that they are easily on hand for the month.

Feeling hot, hot , hot...

It feels like summer! For the first time since we moved here, it seems that summer might have arrived early!

Fresh bread...

We got ourselves a breadmaker the other week... and finally got around to making our first bread last night. yum.

Our big boy...

is now a school boy. Here in NZ, you get to start school as soon as you're 5 (if you like - you don't have to be at school until you're 6). So, with Ben's birthday yesterday, he got to start school today. He was very excited about starting school - and we feel like he's ready... he's keen to learn and has started the "keep-asking-questions-continuously" phase.

Busy busy busy...

Life's been busy recently. Too busy to blog. Here's some highlights:

• Naomi's birthday party. Photos here.
• Ben's birthday party. Photos here.
• Ben's last day of kindy. Photos here
• Ben's first day of school tomorrow. (Edit: Photos now here!)

Dissecting a marathon

A few months ago, I got myself a Timex Ironman watch, which does all sorts of cool things. The main reason I got it is that it lets me store up to 75 "laps", which means I can record my km splits during a race, assuming I manage to see the km markers as I'm going past. What that means is that I can work out at what point I start to fade during a race, and work at keeping a more even pace. Anyway, last week's marathon was the first time I've got to use it in a race... I managed to record 23 "laps", some of which were obviously more than just a single km because I missed the markers. A plot of the km splits is pretty cool though (just splitting the times evenly where I missed the markers):

It's interesting to note:

• The first few km were a little slow, as would be expected, because of the crowds of people at the start.
• Between about 12 and 15km is the Harbour Bridge, which is probably the hilliest part of the course, so I'm guessing that's why that's a little slow
• 34km must have been about when I got really tired!
• I managed to hold it together relatively well - the small amounts of walking I did don't really show up that much, which means I must have still been moving at a sort-of reasonable speed.

I'm happy with it, anyway!

Bad time of year to be sick

There is so much to be done:

• naomi's birthday party this saturday
• ben's birthday party next saturday
• ben starting school
• advent calendar to organise
• christmas shopping to organise (haven't be as organised as previous years)
• tidying/organising the house - including hanging some new curtains to block the light in the bedroom b4 it is still light at 9.30pm

sick days

My 'Bad cold' is still bad, so Peter's taken some time off work so I can rest a bit to try and get over it. I am feeling a little better, but I'm still coughing and using a lot of tissues.