Bike Ride

Today I went on a bike ride. I got 20 stamps and I did 10 laps of the circuit. I won a pen. You got a drink bottle of water and a band and pen case. Then when you have heard the caller you gave your licence to Jo and you got some juice. I was very tired.

Phoebe and me at the start

Speeding away

Getting a stamp on my licence

We were both very tired!

Phoebe did 3 laps

Start of Term

Tomorrow I am starting a new term at school. I am really excited because I would love to see my class room again. I hope I get some new spelling words on Friday. I am looking forward to seeing my friends again.

Tomorrow I will need to pack my lunch and my school bag.

Kaitoke

On Thursday we went to Kaitoke and we spent the night. Thursday morning we had a little play outside and then Phoebe went down for a sleep. I started to draw a picture for Nana and Pop and then I wrote a letter to them. In the afternoon we went for a bike ride. When we got back to the motorhome we had some pasta and chicken for our tea and then some sloppy ice-cream, because the freezer was not working properly. Daddy phoned us and read a bed-time story and then we went up to bed. On Friday morning we went for a walk with the dolls´ pushchair.

At School

At School I have been doing Matariki pictures. I love school. I am not going to school for two weeks because it is holidays.

Maori Language Week

It was Maori Language Week this week and here are some Maori words.

Happy New Year

DEAR FAMILY & FRIENDS..... a long overdue message!

Phoebe & Zoe in the garden
September 2010

Well upon checking back, apart from our baby arrival news in early 2009 and last year's Christmas greeting (saying we'd send some news in the New Year – ooops!) we've been even more slack on keeping you all informed on what we've been up to lately. So here we go with an overview of the last couple of years!

Job catch-up...

Graham is still working for the Met Service in Wellington, more on the IT/forecast computer model side of things. Near the end of 2009, he had a change back to his old Research & Development department which was a relief for him as he had not been particularly happy in the role he was doing after a massive restructure of the Service earlier on in 2009.


Vida continues with variations on the theme of pregnancy, labour, birth and babies: running a birth pool sales and hire business from home, facilitating calmbirth courses (www.nurturenz.com) and volunteering for the NZ College of Midwives (NZCOM) and a local childbirth education course (www.birthwise.org.nz) facilitating home birth workshops and organising other birthy-type events.


Zoe insists that she has a job too and we must write about it here. She started school this year and she LOVES it and has settled in very well. She says (and this is a quote!) “I have turned over a new leaf and have learned to read, and write stories right down to the bottom of the page”.

Chickens, Beer, Plants … (& bees?) …. the semi-rural lifestyle – we love it!
We are loving the semi-rural lifestyle and have had a few chickens (ex-battery) roaming around for the last couple of years. For a long time the three of them have given us an egg each, pretty much every day so we've had a bountiful supply, but now things are easing up and David (Vida's Dad), even though he doesn't eat poultry/meat, reckons they must be ready for the pot! We really must get a bit more country-hardened about these kind of things, it is a little difficult, but we are gradually getting there!



Graham's home brew beer is really coming along a treat and he has a rather neat set up in the garage. We found him an old fridge that someone was chucking out, and David helped him to put a couple of beer taps on it so now he kegs his beer and loads it up ready for the odd pint or two, or more.... possibly with a game of pool as that is set up in the garage too.



Now that we no longer have sheep on most of the land (next door's sometimes graze here for part of the year), we are beginning to plant more... growing our own vegetables and herbs and we hope to have fruit trees eventually too. To further this aim Graham has taken up the challenge of part-time studying. He now has a certificate in Organic Horticulture after completing a year long course at Tech College.

Graham also completed a bee-keeping course – skills he is tucking away for future home projects!








Pets in the family...
We lost Vida's beloved guinea-pig Gus within a couple of months of having Phoebe in 2009. He got cancer and Vida thinks he was feeling neglected with the new arrival hogging all our attention! He'd had a good innings though as he'd been with us for over 7 years. Although we hear constant pleas from Zoe, Graham is not a huge fan of pets so for the timebeing we just have the chickens!

Zoe with the chickens – Lucy, Charlotte & Pipi

Dodgy dancing & even dodgier housing
We have had a couple of low lights in this last year or so. Not so much dodgy dancing, but in early September 2009 Vida managed to slip over down one of our many hills whilst tending to the chickens. It was a very unspectacular fall which caused a spectacular and bizarre saga of events. She dislocated and broke her left elbow in a couple of places. It was unfortunately misdiagnosed by one of the hospital ortho surgeons as relocated and not fractured and she was cast for a couple of weeks before a local physio realised there was still a problem. Unfortunately this then meant a couple of ops to try to correct and a pin was put in place. No driving for about 6 months and limited driving for a couple of months more – all a bit problematic with a 7 month old baby in a ruralish location. The arm will never straighten properly and so whilst Vida can now do most things ok, the strength is not great and she still experiences discomfort from time to time. However, the healing has been helped enormously by osteopathy and ortho-bionomy and the surgeon who did the ops has said that he is surprised by how much Vida can now do following these treatments (although he didn't really want to give them the credit :)). We have really been shown too what fantastic friends we have here in NZ who have supported us in amazing ways, looking after the girls and cooking for us etc...


Another blow this year has been that we were dragged into a tribunal case by the owners of the house that we sold in Wellington 3 years ago. You may have heard of weather tight home issues that NZ has experienced in the last 10 or so years and our previous house has now been classed in this category, and whilst we cannot really believe that we are involved, the issue is complex because of one repair the builder did for us on the roof in the 1st year we had it. It is sadly ongoing and very costly due to the legal fees involved, but we are trying to remain positive about it and hope that the adjudicator will realise our very limited/no fault in this (hopefully a decision will be made in March 2011).

Visiting there & visitors here....
We have no plans to come back to the UK any time soon, but we still have fond memories of our trip back to France in June/July 2009 staying at Graham's Mum's (Pam's) place. It was so lovely to catch up with all of the family and also see some friends too. We hope we may be able to do something like that again. It was great to have a base and not have to travel all over the place to see people as we know we would come back to NZ exhausted with two cranky children!


We still continue to have lots of visitors which is lovely, although it has slowed down. We hunker down for the windy, wet and usually cold winter and then the Summer arrives and the lovely visitors arrive. Obviously Ma & Pa Hargreaves always head back for the Summer with us as they own half of the house with us. Graham's Mum, Pam, always makes a visit and was with us for Zoe's 6th Birthday in November 2010.

We currently have Gareth and Bernice staying with us for this Christmas and New Year just in from travelling around the South Island. We make our visitors work while they are here as you can see from these photos – Bernice was so patient with the girls and Gareth had a stint on our mower! It has been wonderful catching up with them and we even managed to get away for a day or so to Martinborough, a wine region an hour or so's drive away from Wellington where we live. It was fantastic as Ma & Pa Hargreaves looked after Zoe and Phoebe back at our house on the first day and so we were completely child-free to potter around and do lots of wine tasting. David and Maureen and the girls were supposed to join us the next day for some camping, but sadly due to severe winds (160kph!!) making the route over the hills to the wine region too dangerous to drive (especially with their high-sided motorhome) they could not come over. There was also a power cut back home due to the winds and so the girls ended up camping in the motorhome on our drive :) and we got an extra night away child-free, drinking (lots of!) wine with Gareth and Bernice – yay!

Festive greetings...... & happy 2011
Again this year we did not send christmas cards, instead we're continuing our World Vision sponsorship of 6 year old Mathias Kabugo in the Buyamba community of Uganda.

Love to all . . .

Vida, Graham,
Zoe and Phoebe xxxx