Our October Long weekend

At long, long last, we have made it to another holiday long weekend in NZ. It's been a long time coming folks. Last one was way back in May. But the wait has been worth it as Mother Nature has given us a break from the wind and the rain and the general misery, to show clearly that summer is on the way. Yes, it's 22 degrees, gorgeous blue skies and I am alone in my house, drinking wine. Truly this is the way Labour(less) day should be celebrated! Don has gone out fishing with Chris. I'd be thrilled if I never ate another piece of fish but I do try to support my hunter/gatherer. Connor has gone to a friend's for a sleep over - woke us up at 8:30 to ask if he could head over - we restrained him until 11. And Aidan is next door at Jack's, being electronically stimulated. I have all the doors and windows open, nary a mozzie to be seen!

It's been a glorious weekend. On Saturday I made my troops start preparing for the 'royal visit' of my mom and dad. They get here on November 19th and I have a list of things that have to be brought up to snuff before they get to cross the threshold. So Saturday was a chore day. But yesterday I bribed, begged, and pleaded and managed to get my guys, plus Jack, the next door neighbor, out of the house for a day trip to Raglan. Aidan gets so road sick that he started to cry when he heard what my plan was. But I did not let his tears and sad little face deter me! Nope, instead I gave him good Canadian drugs (Gravol, not available in NZ!), roped Jack into the action (fed him Gravol too) and promised them all ice cream on the other side. So at 12:30 we pulled out of the driveway, over here on the east coast of the island, to drive all the way over to the surfing capitol of NZ, on the west coast of the island. Whole trip, 2 hours, and most of that was going well under 100 km's. Nifty eh? And the Gravol did the trick, no complaints from the back seat from the 2 car sick prone kids, no need for the air spew bags! We spent the afternoon on the amazing black sand beach, had something to eat, then headed home.

Octber overall has been quiet. We are saving up our dollars for the coming 2 months as we depart for 4 days in Sydney on November 7th and my parents roll up on November 19th. The Sydney trip is meant to be very relaxing. We are using up part of the tickets that we booked when we originally flew out here last January. As I used points to purchase all 4 tickets, they had to be round trip tickets. So we have tickets back to Winnipeg that will expire in November. Rather than loose their value totally we will fly over to Sydney, and rather than change planes, we will just stay in the city. We have cheap cheap tickets to fly back to NZ 4 days later. Connor wants to see the Sydney opera house and we have a day planned at the zoo, which is supposed to be an amazing place. I personally want to cuddle a koala.

We did manage to celebrate Thanksgiving here. It was rather spur of the moment. I had committed to Don that I would make pumpkin pie (as I believe I mentioned in our last post) and I did. Don couldn't find me any evap milk, so I found a recipe using melted vanilla ice cream, and there are no such things as pre-made pie shells here so I had to go buy 2 pie plates while Don purchased pre-made bricks of pastry dough that we rolled out. I did bake and puree our own pumpkin and voila, with only a few hurdles to get over, I made 2 very credible pies. Don also felt moved enough by the occassion to buy one of those pre-stuffed rolled turkey breasts. On the Sunday we went for a walk on the beach, and as it was windy enough, we then went blowcarting out on a course for a belated Aidan birthday gift. Sadly, the camera had no batteries so you don't get pictures of that. Blowcarts, for the uninitiated, are like little sailboats on wheels - you use a sail to control your speed and direction. Very fun, you can get up onto 2 wheels even. I've imported a generic picture for your consideration.

Anyways, we got back a little later than planned, 4 pm, found Chris and Jacqui up to their knees in a spur of the moment back yard project, and decided to pitch in. So while Don worked himself up a major blister (such an IT guy!), I scurried around stretching our Thanksgiving meal from 4 to 9. Involved rustling up 3 veggies, lots of tatters for the mashed potatoes, and doing some chicken strips to alleviate the pressure on the turkey breast. It worked out marvelously as we introduced out kiwi friends/neighbors to the bounty of a thanksgiving meal and the adults sat on the front stoop, looking out over the estuary and discussing what we were grateful for. Pumpkin pie is not big over here (our neighbors had never had it) and they were very very taken with it. I believe I have a request to make it for the next birthday even!

Halloween is the next 'big thing' on the boys' radar and I'm afraid they may be very let down. Halloween is not at all a major deal here. There are a few costumes in the Walmart like store but I haven't seen any decorations for it, nor little bags of candy. I understand that if kids do come to the door, you may get 8 in total. So the pillow cases full of candy aren't going to be happening over here, which is just was well for me since I eat so many of the kids' treats. But the kids will be very sad. Oh well, grandma and grandpa are coming!

Ah, the washing is done, time to go hang it on the line. Oh the drudgery! Then I'll water the garden (just planted some silver beets, red peppers, lettuce, eggplant and tomatoes in my postage sized garden). Then I'll refill my wine glass :)

Wishing you all much happiness

V

Well, that was September!

Howdy folks! I bet all our faithful readers can tell, just two words in, who's writing the blog. You are all blessed with the female perspective this time around. It's 7:15 pm during school term break so the kids are outside with their friend Jack going over a tiny wee ramp on their scooters and bikes, and Don and neighbor Chris have taken themselves out night fishing. Chris recently had his boat outfitted with lights so now the poor fishies are never safe.

September is my favourite month - I was one of those geeks who enjoyed going back to school - so it was different to be experiencing it in the opposite hemisphere where there was no big going back to school hoopla, no lovely fall weather. No, the only thing that remained constant were the birthdays, mine and Aidan's.

We had made a few plans for September, foremost among them was going skiing on Mt. Ruhapehu, the primary skiing mountain for the North Island. Neither of the boys have ever skied and I had solemnly promised them in Winnipeg that we would take them in NZ. So we duly made a reservation at the tiny little ski town that supports the mountain way back in May when we were in the area checking out our options. We decided to pay our money and take our chances with the weather which is notoriously fickle up on that mountain. Well, wouldn't you know it, the weekend we were due to go down was the weekend that all of New Zealand was smacked down with a fearsome wind/rain/snow storm. My mom said it was even reported on your Weather Network.

Yep, it was a doozy, covered the whole nation and just shut everything down. The cabin fee was non-refundable so we decided that we could sit at home in a storm, or sit in a cabin, on the side of a mountain, using someone else's heat, and suck up the ambiance. So we went for it. The ski hill was shut down for the whole weekend but on the bright side we had a snow ball fight, experiencing snow for the first time since last January. I personally found it really cool to be tucked into a cabin with the heat pumping as the winds howled around us (more than 100 kms at times) and the sleet/snow/rain poured down onto the tin roof. It went on not for hours but for days! Don near lost his mind at nights trying to sleep.

That particular wind and rain storm sat over NZ for 6 days and caused millions of dollars in damage as lots of fruit trees came down, electricity was out all over the place, the snow in the far south has killed thousands of spring lambs, and it collapsed roofs in the region and the rain farther up country flooded lots of communities. So believe me when I tell you, we are feeling and empathizing with your crapacular weather!!

However, after the storm has finally, at long last, come warm spring weather. It was a long time coming but just in time for our birthday weekend, as well as the term break, mother nature has decided to ease up on all the grumpy desperate Kiwi folks. So last weekend we finally saw some lovely sun, blue skies and the temps starting to rise to around 20 during the day. The birthdays themselves were relatively low key. Aidan asked one friend from school over for a sleep over. They watched movies and played x-box while Don and I dozed in the bedroom all night. Exciting stuff. Then we did a birthday bbq with the neighbors, where Jacqui made a big chocolate cake - shown half eaten in the photo (you know it couldn't be a birthday for me without chocolate cake!), and on Sunday we hit the wave pool for 2 hours at Aidan's request. It was at the wave pool, in the afternoon, that we were reminded that the time change has happened! So yes, those of you keeping track, in NZ we are now only 6 hours behind MB, 5 behind AB, and 4 behind BC (never mind that we are also a day ahead). So the light is just now dying and it's 7:45 pm. Lovely.

For any of you wondering about the postal system in NZ, I would like to assure you that it is miles better than Canada Post. As a small comparison, I have sent a couple of small parcels over to Canada and have had them arrive within 3 wks of mailing them. I got a birthday gift from my lovely and sweet friend Sharon that, when I picked it up at the post office here, was labelled with a large 'for your birthday, do not open early!' tag. Righto, didn't know exactly what her warning was for since I picked it up on the 25th of September, 2 days before my birthday. Well, then I checked the postal stamp of when she mailed it to me. July 10th people!!!! July 10th!!!! Holy guacamole! My brother sweetly mailed a birthday gift to Aidan at the end of August. We are hoping to have it here for Halloween. :)

The boys are on their second week of term break and we believe that we may need to hyphenate their last name to McLeod-Downey. They spend hours every day over at our neighbors' house as Jack, their 8 year old, saved up all his pennies and bought an X-box 360. For those of you who know the McLeod boys (all 3 of them), this has proven to be a magnetic draw. And Aidan, who was gifted money for his birthday, bought himself his own personal x-box controlled to use over at their house (only one came with the system). If Aidan is feeling especially magnanimous he very occasionally allows someone else to use 'his' controller, but it's pretty much all his all the time. He's not at all a business man as he won't even consider renting it to the other kids to make money!

This past weekend was simply awesome in every way. First off, I treated myself royally and I went to Wellington for 3 days with neighbor Jacqui. She had put together a trip for the two of us months ago that involved going to the World of Wearable Arts show and sight seeing around downtown Wellington. We flew down Friday morning (it's a 7 hour drive) and arrived to spectacular weather. It was blue skies, gentle breezes, good temperatures for all 3 days. It was the kind of weather that makes you wonder why everyone doesn't live in Wellington. Well, that would be because it's usually blustery and rainy in the capitol city and weekends like the one we experienced are the exception, not the rule. Our hotel was right downtown, one street back from the waterfront (lots of waterfront in Wellington as it's a peninsula) and our room had harbour views. Friday we walked the water front, Saturday we did a bit of shopping in their funky shopping district and attended the WOW show. That was a spectacular beyond anything I'd ever seen before. It's essentially a fashion show for art that is choreographed and performed by models and dancers. I would imagine it's not unlike a Cirque show. Here's a website if you want to learn more about it http://www.worldofwearableart.com/ . On Sunday we walked for 6 hours, going thru Wellington's historic shopping district, Lambton Quay, riding their trolley up the 400 foot incline, taking a tour of their parliament building, and visiting their awesome national museum - Te Papa (which is free!). Then we flew home for 8 pm. Simply the best time!

Don was holding down the fort at home, obviously, and was having his own brand of fun. He and neighbor Chris, with a couple of 'supporting' buddies had an all night party in the backyard till 3 am. I think the party ran out when the alcohol did. Needless to say, he was a bit of a hurting unit on Saturday and spent a quiet day apologizing to his liver. But on Sunday he was in fine form again, playing laser tag with the boys at this region's only laser tag centre, which happens to be outside. It was only supposed to be for 8 to 10 yr olds but they needed parents to play to make up some numbers. So Don happily played along. He reported to me later that he 'wasted a tonne of kids'. I'm so proud of my honey!

So there you have it friends, fans and family. An update from our recent past. The four McLeod's would like to extend their heartiest congrats and heartfelt best wishes to the latest clan member - Tyson, baby boy born Oct 1st, I do believe (the time line runs me afoul sometimes), to Steph and Mike. Yea for more boys! And Happy turkey day all. How weird to think of that going on. I told Don I would tackle a pumpkin pie - and there is no canned pumpkin in this country, only actual pumpkins - so this might get labour intensive. I'll let you know how this works out!

love to all