Remember Remember The End of Movember!

It's been a hard month, and I mean hard! A group of us have been growing mo's and to be honest, we all look ridiculous!

Here I am after a full month:

Actually, that's not me - that's my Dad in the 80's! Here I am look:

Whoops, no that's not my mo either - although I am in that photo! Here's the final pic:

And for posterity, here's all of the Mo Bro's from work:

Thank you to everyone who has sponsored me. I think I raised over $300 for a good cause! Roll on Movember 2008!

Commercial Breakdown

Spend an hour listening to commercial radio, or watching commercial TV you'll see NZ is a little bit more relaxed about what it broadcasts. The radio on an afternoon has plenty of words that most UK DJ's would be taken off-air for, and to be honest, it's quite funny.

TV is the same too, and some of the TV ads that have been on recently have been great. The humour level is definitely more to our taste!

This is ice cream advert is a classic, and hopefully - the budgie smugglers will never be back in fashion!



This one's an example of words that generally don't make it onto British TV!



Funnily enough, I played this game a long time before seeing it here. But if you haven't seen it before, beware the spoon!

The ads for Franks juices are exactly that - frank.



Some of the ads on TV here show the breathtaking scenery and the haunting music, but we'll save those for another day!

Look What We Bought....!

So we did it - on Sunday we bought our first New Zealand home!!!

The last few weeks have been pretty busy. We have been here, there and everywhere viewing houses and we had resigned ourselves to leaving it till the new year, as we didn't find anything we liked. Every home we saw was different and some very nice (with swimming pools!), but there was just something 'not quite right'.

Anyway, we decided this house was the last one we were going to look at. It's about 20 minutes outside the city in a gorgeous place called Silverstream. We had so far been heading up the coast looking in the Kapiti area and not really considered going 'in land' - however, good job we did!

We went on Saturday and fell completely in love with it. Here are some pictures and for more pictures you can view the photo tour by clicking here.

It's all on one level, has 3 bedrooms and is open plan living. It's surrounded by the most amazing landscaped private gardens and decking, double garage (which has a toilet!) and all set on 926 square meters of land!

As we didn't want to miss out (NZ homes sell VERY fast here) we rushed in our mate Chris who is a builder, and he gave it the all clear. Then we met with the agent at her office, signed papers and the deal was done!!

As I said things move very quickly here and normally people will move within 2 weeks of selling, but as Christmas is fast approaching all parties are happy to wait till the new year.

We are so very excited, so so excited. We will miss the home we are in (especially the sea views) but there is nothing better than having your own home, and for us having our own NZ home is utterly amazing. We are so proud of ourselves for what we have achieved in the year we have been here and we love life now more than ever.

Roll on January, new year, new home, new life!

Down To 7 Lives

If Bethany was a cat she would now only have 7 lives left. You may remember the story from a while back when she hid from me and I not only lost the plot but it was the first time Bethany faced strong punishment.

Today Bethany lost her 8th life.

Every Monday and Tuesday I have Bethany and another little girl to look after, and normally they play where I can see them or in the play room which is on the same floor of the house but out of sight. Over the last few weeks the two girls have been rather mischievous, with painting things not meant to be painted and ripping posters off the wall and tearing them up into tiny pieces.

However today beats all that. We were downstairs looking for some books to read and the phone rang, I left them to choose books. It was a call from one of my friends in the UK and 10 minutes must have passed before I realised I hadn't heard anything from them. I ended the call and I went downstairs and was faced with the absolute horror of two girls, body lotions, nail varnish, perfumes and sticking plasters everywhere, and when I say everywhere I mean, on the carpet, the walls, the whole en-suite, our bed and in our wardrobe. 10 minutes was all it took for this to happen....

Now you must excuse the blurry pictures, I was a little annoyed by this point and wasn't in the mood for artistic shots!!

The girls were separated and ate apart. I took the little girl to Kindy and left Bethany to scream in the car. She has spent the whole day with me, no treats, no dressing up, no TV and certainly no getting together with her little buddy tomorrow.

I know kids do strange things but this is just crazy. Pure madness for them to think it was OK. Its taken us nearly 3 hours of cleaning now and we are struggling with the stain on the carpet, so if anyone has any suggestions for getting nail varnish off carpets - please let us know!

And if anyone is looking for a reason to not have children - then read this all again!

Long Distant Love...

My gorgeous best friend gets married to her man today. I breaks my heart to miss it, it really does. It's been over a year since we looked into each others eyes, a year since I knew what she was thinking and a year since we last held each other close. I miss her more than ever.

A few of our nearest and dearest friends (Mark and Sarah, Jo and Pete) recently were married and the pain we felt from missing those special days will stay with us forever.

Please send out all your love to the most amazing cople, have a fantastic wedding day, doubt I will sleep tonight for thinking of you and your special day but I just want you to know I love you both, and you will always be in my heart and with me despite the distance.

Congratulations....xx

What's That On Your Face Daddy?!

A Good Eye

New Zealand is a stunning country, and because of that I have developed a keen interest in photography.

We don't have a flash camera so my shots are pretty standard, but I am currently compiling some of my best photos soon which I will unleash on you all soon!

I met up with my gorgeous friend Sarah this morning who is always snap happy and takes some amazing photos. Her positive vibes and feedback on my photos is always welcome, and her photos are inspirational, natural and she has such a good eye for a fantastic picture. She took these whilst we were out having lunch - they are great.

I really just wanted to share these as I thought they were amazing, and its always lovely to see photos from another persons perspective.

I am in awe of anyone with big lens (oo er!) and just love the fact it's not hard to find something amazing to take stunning pictures of here. It seems however everyone you meet is a amateur turning pro - and good on them!

Road Rash

"A lesson learned the hard way,

is a lesson you won't forget"

© Michael Dawes 2007.

Now if you're an avid reader of F3NZ, you'll have seen this on there already, but for those who aren't, here's the grizzly details:

It had to happen. After a few months of successful mountain biking, I had my 1st major off. I'm not the 1st in our group (4th actually) so I guess it was just a matter of time.

It was the usual "happened so quick I didn't have time to react" situation. I'd known I'd needed some new tyres on the bike for a while, because the front tyre wall is weak and it keeps slipping on the rim. Anyway, for one reason or another I never actually got round to getting any. After jumping off a kerb approaching Oriental Parade, the tyre wall gave way, the rubber jumped off the rim and I went over the bars, scraping along the tarmac.

My first reaction was to get off the road, and a kind lady stopped her car to see if I was ok. I think she actually stopped because I almost went into her on the next street! So the damage is:

Me:

• Both hands scraped
• Both elbows scraped
• Both forearms scraped
• Crank put large hole in the top of my left foot
• Random shoulder and thigh bruising
• Pride severely dented

Bike/Equipment:

• Seat detached
• Bar ends scuffed and bent forwards
• Bike pump holder snapped
• New gloves destroyed

And if you want pictures to prove it...

Needless to say, it may be a day or 2 before I'm back on a bike again! Well, at least until I've bought some new tyres!!

Sunburn!!

The last few days have been utterly amazing weather wise. We keep talking about the fact this time last year we fed up with the crappy weather and wondered if we had done the right thing moving to NZ!

Adverts on the TV and radio are now telling us to 'slop, slap and wrap' as summer is here - and so it is. Today was just gorgeous and I took the girls to the beach in Island Bay.

It's a beautiful curved beach that has lovely golden sand and a small tide as boats moor out in the bay.

I packed a picnic and we were off, first stop was the play area but they lost enthusiasm in it and wanted to go to the beach. So off we went calling at the car first to leave socks and shoes and walk to the beach bare foot (yeah you can do that here!).

We had a lovely time, simple honest pleasure in nature and I loved the fact I could lay out and watch two cute girls run, sing and dance freely in the beautiful day...

Santa Parade In November!

In blistering heat (22 degrees) we lined the streets with thousands of other people to watch the Santa Parade, and it did not disappoint.

We went last year, which was our first year, and were in total awe of the fantastic floats, wonderful shows and the immense sunshine.

Bethany just loved everything about it, she has been talking about this for a week now, every night asking if we are going to see Santa in the morning!

Obviously I took heaps of pictures, but here are some of the best ones...

Bethany's favourite was the Little Einsteins rocket, and not only because that's her favourite show, but because she got to wave to Tony, Denyse, Madi and Beth who were inside the car pulling it!!

At the end Santa rode down with his reindeer in front. He actually waved down to Bethany and she was so excited. Because of that she is convinced she is getting all she has asked for this year.

It's a strange old affair to have the Santa Parade in November, but even more so in the blazing sunshine. We are still trying to adjust to the seasons here and it is proving difficult to 'get into' the Christmas feeling this year.

Tonight we talked about the days as a child when we would build snowmen on Christmas day and I even remember the snow being so high one year I made an igloo!

Bethany's memories are going to be completely different from ours, when she thinks of Christmas she will remember the warmth of the sun, trips to the beach and the Christmas decorations glistening in the sunlight as they sit on the tree. It may be different but it will be still magically wonderful.