Apologies for the lack of effort over the last month. I haven't died or been hospitalised and haven't had a good lung clearing cough in the last week - so maybe I'm on the up. The effects now are that my voice cracks and I can't talk for a minute or two. The team love it....
Home sweet home is .....so great to be back in. We've gone mental with the veggie patch this year so when all comes good we'll have carrots, onions, leeks, cabbage (white and red), broccoli, celery, artichokes, courgettes, tomatoes, beans, potatoes, lettuce, spinach, chard, blueberries, oranges, lemons...... We've also bought the wallpaper for the guest room (we have our first guests in 2 weeks) and the hallway. I've loved the Laura Ashley wallpapers for a long time and was going to splash out over here for them, only to find that if I bought them via the UK website I could get them her in 2 weeks, rather than 12 and pay $300 less for the privilege. So I put on my painter and decorator hat tomorrow - whilst Shandy does the garden.
Halloween came (and went - no trick or treaters). The closest we got was a friend's kids 6th birthday party. Bonfire night was great. It was a really still night here (in fact it's been pretty still for a week now which is fantastic) and a great show was put on. We walked to the top of the hills in Horokiwi (about a mile away) where we had great views of the fireworks in the HUtt Valley (in Petone) and also the Wellington extravaganza - http://www.metservice.com/default/webcam/livecam.php?title=Wellington%20weather%20live%20webcam%20&dkey=831885&awskey=NZKLX&url=20071105/fireworks-2007.wmv if you want to relieve it.
Odd though how a country 20,000 miles away still celebrates the attempted blowing up of Parliament.
So this weekend brings us more sunny weather. the forecast says 18 degrees (which with the strength of the sun feels more like 28 degrees). We have a team walking challenge going at the moment - It's a fitness initiative at work and our team of 8 has so far walked the equivalent of the whole of the North Island and from Bluff to Dunedin in the south Island in the last 8 weeks. WeE're doing a 4 hour walk on Sunday as well as a social event as we want to win.
Shandy and I are also aiming to do team triathlon in february. Luckily plenty of time for training!
Well that's about it for now. We have all our holidays coming up (hurrah) - the last proper break we had was our trip to the UK last November. SO in 2 weeks we head down south for a 10 day trip - New year we head to the Wairarapa, January off to Melbourne for a long weekend and February we go up to Gisborne and the Coromandel for a week. We may be buying a tent to keep the cost down - takes me back.
Hope all is well in Blighty....
