Poor little Bethany. She's been sick for what seems like 3 weeks running. First of all the dreaded cold and flu that lots of people have, then this week she seems to have caught something else that's being going around, a really bad fever. She's been very grizzly and upset the last few nights, I had to work on Wednesday Night/Thursday Morning and while I was at work Sarah said Beth woke up crying and she was nearly 40c! Some Pamol and cuddles and she was OK and back to sleep. When she woke up, she seemed much better, happy, ate breakfast, no tempurate so we sent her off to Jenny's as normal. But Jenny rang Sarah about 11am and said she was beside herself, hot, flushed and crying. Poor little chicken pie. I came home for the afternoon and helped look after her, we went up to the library...

On Friday night I drove out to the Hastings Countdown Supermarket to spend 9pm-11pm scrubbing the bottom shelves clean. Sounds like fun, right? It WAS fun! Sarah had seen on the SPCA's page that they were fundraising and wanted as many people as possible to help out. So I decided to do that. Turns out I was pretty much the only "random" person to turn up, almost everyone else was a SPCA volunteer. People were very snapped out that I'd just turned up out of the blue after reading a Facebook post. But it was a good night, the shelves in the supermarket were filthy. Disgusting. Ugh. It was a lot of hard work, having to take all the product off the shelf, clean it, then put it all back. And then cleaning the dirty water every 10 minutes. Oh well, it raised $500 for homeless doggies, so that's...

We got back from a nice little Mini break in Taupo yesterday. Sarah booked us at The Hilton a few weeks ago when they had one of their specials on. We drove up on Saturday, after a mini hiccup before we left, Mary's new car. The seatbelts are a bit different to the other cars we've put Beth's carseat in, so I had to rush back home to find the special clip that the chair came with. Eventually after digging through a lot of a papers it was located, phew! So Beth was dropped off with Peter and Mary for the night and we drove up to Taupo. We checked in, caught up with Ben and Di then went into town for some lunch. After Lunch we headed back to the hotel and lazed in the Pool and Spa for a couple of hours. It was really cold in Taupo...

Sarah was telling me on Wednesday how Beth was running around all afternoon saying "Pretzel Bum! Pretzel Bum!" and Sarah kept saying "Yup, you're a Pretzel Bum" without really knowing what was going on. Until she took her clothes off to change her nappy and discovered about 10 pretzels shoved down her pants. She really was a Pretzel Bum!
Beth didn't sleep at Jenny's yesterday, so that was a fun evening. Everything was just too emotional for her. No, I don't want Riddup (the inflatable frog). Yes I do want him. NO I DO NOT WANT HIM GET HIM AWAY FROM ME WHY CAN'T I TOUCH HIM. After a power dinner and power bath (power = super fast), some Milkies Milkies calmed the whole situation down. We read the Maisy Goes Swimming book. I got this from the library for her, it's still a Maisy book though it doesn't have...

Mowed some lawns today. Took Beth for a long walk around the block. It's a short walk for me, it's a mission for her. She loved it though, we talked to each other the whole way around and jumped up on down on the sewer grates (Stomping Daddy! Stomping!) - We went for breakfast this morning to Emporium, Sarah's food was cold. We asked for them to fix it, they bought back new heated eggs but with no seasoning or herbs. Mine was nice though. Then we did a bit of shopping until Beth got fed up and tired and wanted to go home.
Yesterday I took Beth for a big long walk around, we walked (Beth in the Pram) to New World, got a pie for breakfast for me, then went to Anderson park and feed the duckies, swung on the swings etc. Then we walked down to visit...

Tui Harman. We got her from the Auckland SPCA on the 28th Aug, 2010 and she passed away 28th May, 2015.
Photo taken on the 17th May - The reason I took it was because I thought "I haven't taken any photos of Tui in ages since Beth was born!"

RIP Tui, my fine fluffy furry friend. I'll miss patting you, your excess drool since you had your teeth removed, having someone to talk to on a Summer's afternoon on the back porch (often in your mogbox) while everyone else was snoozing. I'll miss getting angry at you for bringing in birds, hurping up cat biscuits and flicking cat litter everywhere. I'll miss laughing at your flabby bits wobbling as you walked, coaxing you out of trees, the black stare you used to give me after I applied the hated flea juice.
You were so lovely and gentle with Beth...

I flew into New Plymouth for work on Monday morning. It's a two hop flight, so you have to fly to Wellington first, then back from Wellington to NP. NP is a lot like Napier really, the airport is tiny and there's not a lot happening. The work I was there to do was interesting as well, I was there to mentor someone in the role of being a Network Architect. I think the mentoring went quite well, it certainly was a bit of a challenge for both of us but I think/hope that I did alright at it.

I just stayed in a little motel that was close to where I was working. I checked in Monday night and then went for a walk into town, it was about a 30 minute walk and of course it was raining. In fact the whole day was pretty miserable. When I'd...

Poor Beth! She's got quite bad eczema on her chin and around her cheeks. Sarah's taken her to the Dr's but they didn't really have much useful advise, they gave her some hydrocortisone cream to try and clear it up, but it hasn't helped. So the last two nights has been a bit of a different routine, I've carefully cleaned her face with a clean flannel and then put some cream on the area. Now, me being Mr Father and a bit of a doofus, didn't super check the cream I was putting on. It was more of a nappy cream than a face cream. It was fine the first night, but last night... Beth seems to have licked/eaten a lot of it. So at 9:30pm, 30 minutes before my night work was to begin, she started crying so we got her up. Sarah was nursing her when BRRRRLLKKKKK. She...

Flew back to Hobart last Thursday for Chesty's Wedding. I haven't been home since I was there for Dad's 60th I think, at least that's the last time I remember being there, I haven't search my trusty online diary to see if there was some other time. I thought it was before we went to the UK initially, but Sarah reminded me I'd been home more recently than that.
Anyway the flights over to Hobart were pretty boring really, nothing special. Sarah too me to the airport and waited with me until it was time to fly. Far out it was so windy taking off and it was super bumpy for half of the flight.
Anyway, after a whole days travelling I made it into Hobart, Dad was there waiting for me. Thanks Dad! We got back to Dad's place and I went to bed cause I was knackered.

Friday...

It was Isla's christening today. Beth slept in until 8:30am! I was getting worried about her, why wasn't she awake yet? She usually wakes up at 7am, so by 8am I was starting to worry and by 8:30 I pretty much went in to check. I tried to creep in but I think I woke her up.
Sarah went to the supermarket to get all the magic for making club sandwiches, Beth and I went for a walk up to the sheep and down to the chickens to try and tire her out. We tried to put her to sleep at 9:30am and she went for about 20 minutes, tops. Then just grizzled and cried and wanted to get up. But Sarah and I were too busy on the Club Sandwich production line. We churned out some beauties though. Very tasty.
We ran around, got dressed, got Beth dressed and...