Phew! We need a holiday to recover from the holiday. Well it was only really a holiday for me, it was pretty much business as usual for Sarah. Though I've been able to help out a bit more in the mornings so that Sarah can have a bit of sleep in, take Beth for walks etc which has been nice. Sometimes during the working week I only get to see her for 40 minutes in the morning, then maybe an hour in the evening before she's off to bed for her long night time snooze.

So anyway the lounge room looks really good now. Nice and bright and light. I can see a few issues with my painting, especially one spot on the roof, but overall it's a pretty good job. Painting's harder than I thought it'd be, at least rollering is. I thought I'd done a really good job...

Yup, we've been painting. The loungeroom that was once a sort of odd orange hue is now a much brighter and less odd shade of white. Quarter Spanish White actually. In case we ever need to go back and look it up. Sarah and I put the first coat on Saturday and Sunday. Then on Monday Peter came over and like a speed demon from hell put on the second coat. He's an amazing painter, he just rolled like a fiend and it was done within an hour and a half. Yesterday I put on a third coat. I can see bits where I haven't done the best job (you can see different colours) so I'm not sure how's best to do that, probably a fourth coat! Arrrgh. But regardless, the lounge is looking so much nicer and brighter, rather than the dark cave it was.

We've also been to...

Or is it 11, I'm not sure. Either way it's a good amount of time off, I've taken the Tues, Weds and Thurs next week off, so I get the whole of next week off. The current plan is to paint the loungeroom, which I hope we can get done. We won't be able to start until at least tomorrow because none of the hardware stores selling paint are open today. Happy Good Friday, btw.

A massive storm blew over New Zealand yesterday. In Auckland roads were totally covered in water, trees were blowing over etc. Down here last night it was pretty bad too, some of the wind gusts were massive. The rain was pelting down and the wind so hard that the porch at the back of the house filled up with water, it usually stays dry when it's raining. It didn't totally fill up, Tui stayed dry...

Beth was 7 Months old yesterday. She celebrated by being very upset all night when trying to go to sleep. She was so miserable, poor little chicken. We got her up a few times and she was OK if she had us to talk to, but if she was in the room by herself she just cried and cried. We even left her for 20 minutes to settle herself, but that didn't work either, poor little duckie.
In the end the other thing that got her to sleep was to take her for a walk in the pram around the block. It always seems to settle her down and sure enough when I wheeled her back into the house she was fast asleep. From there I can just lift her into her bed, she looks at me a bit miffed of but goes back to sleep straight away.

She's starting...

It was Adrian and Katie's combined 70th Beer Festival at our house on Saturday! It was quite a lot of setting up, on Friday night after I'd gotten home from Wellington I setup lighting around the place, including a lovely light in the Port-A-Loo Holly had hired. We were worried our toilet wouldn't survive having 50 odd people wanting to use it, plus who wants 50 people in and out of your house all night, especially when you don't know half of them!
While I was setting up lighting, Sarah was around at Peter and Mary's with Holly, making German Pretzels. And Sausage Rolls. Yummo.
We stayed around there for the evening, had some hot curry and conversation!

Earlier in the week Adrian and Holly had been over to setup the massive Lion Red beer tent. It was a first rate beer tent, massive, had a beer logo on the...

We had a huge burnoff yesterday. I started a small fire in the chicken run, thinking I'll probably never get to burn off everything that has piled up since we moved here. Soon the fire was roaring though, huge flames and plenty of heat, so it become rather easy to chuck everything on and up she went.
Peter and Adrian helped too, they arrived while I was doing the burnoff, Peter racked up the left over bits and chucked those on. It was great! We got rid of heaps of dead trees and branches and all that sort of stuff. It was the perfect day for it too, it'd be raining all night before but it was still a calm.

Otherwise it was a fairly quiet weekend, we just did stuff around the house. It was cold on Saturday so we lit the fire. I took some rubbish to the...

Beth had her first haircut yesterday! Her hair was getting so long, it was in her eyes all the time. It seems like 6 months is too early to cut her hair, she's still a little baby!
But a little baby with a lot of hair. So off to the hairdresseser lady we headed yesterday, the lady was one recommended by Holly.
Beth was really good, she thought the whole thing was mostly amusing and spent most of her 5 minutes in the chair eating the barber's cape she was wearing. Now she looks much more presentable.

Peter came over in the afternoon (I was working from home) and helped pick a bunch of Feijoa's. Sarah also picked some Quinces and last night made a boatload of Quince paste. Which is awesome, because I love quince paste!

Tim