Last weekend we did some Bike Riding training with Theo.  He's so scared to ride his bike with the training wheels off, so we though to meet up with Grandma at Anderson Park and she could ride her new e-bike around next to Beth on her bike.  Sarah and I spent an hour with Theo encouraging him to ride without his training wheels.  He was very scared and nervous at first, but with some encouragement and flat out bribery (you ride back and forth 5 times and you can get a treat from The Warehouse) and he did a really...

Well here we are already, the first post of 2021.  I'm going to wind back to Christmas Day and go from there.

The kids woke up super early on Christmas Day, as expected.  It was about 6am I think I heard all the banging of jumping off the bunk beds at the Bach, giggling and excitement.  I managed to get out to the lounge just as they were looking at what Santa had left and were about to start tearing everything open.  I stopped them and they waited, pretty patiently for everyone else to get up.

Once we all awake...

It's Christmas eve and I'm sitting on the deck at Lake Tarawera.  Holly, Adrian, Jojo and Isla are out on their new boat again, Beth's on her bunk watching the iPad, Sarah's fast asleep on the couch and Theo is watching Netflix in the other room.  The weather has sadly been a bit of a pain in the butt since we arrived yesterday.  It'll be cloudly and start raining, then that'll clear up for 30 minutes and the sun comes screaming out, so you start to plan to do something and a huge black cloud will come back over and...

Theo had his operation on Saturday.  I'd been stressing about it for probably the month leading up to it, I mean I know it was such as simple basic thing but the thought of putting the little fella under aesthetic freaked me right out.  It doesn't seem right, he's so little!  Anyway it all went fine, of course.

Saturday morning the time finally came, Theo got up and I just avoided giving him breakfast without saying anything.  He didn't notice either, which is sort of normal for the weekend, usually I'm asking them 62 times to sit down and eat...

Beth had two birthday parties on the weekend, busy little chicken.  Saturday afternoon was Daisy's and then Sunday after was Ruby's birthday party.  She had a great time at both by all accounts.  She certainly was utterly exhausted both Saturday and Sunday night.

The ditch digging is slow progress, Adrian is going to get a couple of people to help me.  It's such a PITA, every time I dig down below about 400mm it just fills up with water.  I'm not actually sure if it'll even be possible to get it dug properly before Friday, because it won't f**king stop...

So let's wind back to Friday night two weeks ago. Friday the 13th in fact, though nothing bad happened.  We had tickets to the Dumplings Night at Craggy range so we went to that, it was a nice evening.  The food was really good, lots of little dumplings to feast on.

Saturday was Tennis as usual in the morning, then we went to the Munn Christmas party this year hosted at Peter and Mary's.  It was thankfully a perfectly sunny day, just great for the kids to get in the pool and splash around.  They had a great time, lots...

We took the kids to the speedway on Saturday night.  We had Joseph with us too because we were looking after him for the night.  We've heard the speedway from our house hundreds of times, but never actually been.  The main reason for going was to see the fireworks display, it was firecracker night during the week but we don't tend to do it anymore because they're so expensive and they're usually so disappointing when you let them off.  Much better to go and see a professional display.

The speedway was pretty awesome, packed with people because it turns out...

It was Halloween on Saturday night and the kids had a great time!  During the week Sarah had helped them make Bats from old toilet rolls and spooky lanterns from old milk bottles.  Beth had a Ghost sheet and Granny had sent some presents over during the week, one of which was a skeleton costume for Theo which he loved and was his Halloween costume.  About 4:30pm the first few trick or treaters starting showing up, I guess you have to get in early these day to ensure you get treats?  After that it was a steady stream of children visiting...

Finally got the Digger guy to turn up on Friday.  He's been really hard to pin down to coming over and actually doing the work - I'd have usually given up long before and gotten someone else, but we had the voucher we won back at Casino Night (the same night I caught Chicken Pox) to use, so I had to keep pestering him.  Anyway he turned up and got halfway through removing the walnut stump before he also managed to dig up the power running between the house and the pump.  Two things though: The pump still works, so...