We chucked the cat in the cattery on Friday and flew ourselves down to Napier to Celebrate Sarah's 30th birthday! We'd actually been out the night before in Auckland with a bunch of Sarah's friends and workmates for a lovely dinner at what used to be called Joy Bong but is now called Monarchy. The food was really good and the company was lovely, we all had a really good night.

Friday in Napier seemed like a fairly nice day, but by the end of the day it was overcast and miserable. I got the call that afternoon that Sarah's "secret" fishing trip wasn't going to be on. I say secret but it really wasn't, by the time we got to Napier everyone knew the plan and there was no surprise. I was pretty sad that we couldn't go fishing though, after all the build up! Oh well we'll go...

What a busy few days we've had! Saturday I got out the spade and ripped up half the front lawn! We're going to put a garden there instead, so we didn't need all that lawn. Here's what it looked like before we started. And here's what it looked like after I'd taken all the rubbish to the tip and Sarah laid down some rocks to mark the boundary properly.

Edit: We bought plants today and planted them. So now the garden looks like this! A great start.

We still have to plant the garden now, so it's not finished yet obviously! But it's a good start and already the garden is looking a bit more interesting than just a plain boring lawn like it was.

We also go started on painting the fence, we're going from a white fence to a very dark charcoal colour. Officially the paint...

We ripped up the front garden yesterday. There's this horrible little bunch of bushes that we've never liked and are just ugly, so we got to work on those yesterday and sorted it right out. It's now a huge pile of grass piled up on the front lawn, I really should go to the dump today but of course because we've got stuff planned today it's raining. It's been horrible weather all week in fact, annoying enough.

I forgot to mention on the weekend that we bought some Chilli plants. I got a regular Tabasco chilli and also just a little one of these. That should make hot sauce the world will fear.

Tim

We're on holiday! We took the 4 days off (Tuesday->Friday) because then we get 10 days off in total. Monday was a public holiday in Auckland and next Monday is also a public holiday. Tell me we're not clever? It was actually Sarah's idea and it was a great one.

Saturday morning Sarah and I went down to Devonport for some breakfast and a bit of a nosy. I was rather impatient to leave to head back home because I knew what Sarah didn't, that her friend Kelly was coming up from Hamilton for the weekend as a bit of an early birthday surprise. We got home just in time, we'd only been home for a few minutes before Kelly arrived. We tried to have a bit of a sit-outside BBQ but the weather was too cold for that, so we just stayed inside. Still a nice night.

And yes...

Rob, Denny, Miley, Toby and Jamie are back, they got in from their week+ tour around the Coromandel yesterday afternoon. We all had Hell Pizza for tea, Jamie was so funny he spent most of his time singing about something rather than eating, prompting Miley and Toby to plead with him for the rights to eat a bit of his pizza he didn't want.

Weekend was mostly just pottering around home cleaning and doing DIY things. Well Sarah recovered the little couch we keep in the guest room and I totally cleaned the garage, sweeping out all the cobwebs, cleaning the windows, those sorts of things. We also went over to Takapuna on Saturday afternoon, bought ice creams and sat on the beach watching people trying to enjoy the window and only-a-bit-sunny conditions.

We also planted some new plants in our veggie garden. We're getting tomatoes we can eat at...

We went to the movies on Saturday night to see The Iron Lady which I must say was pretty good. I'm not a big Meryl Streep fan but you have to hand it to the lady, boy oh boy can she act. She was pretty awesome and really made the movie very enjoyable. Bravo! Or something.

We went to the Avondale market today and while there I purchased for myself a little collection of chillies. When we got home, I made hot sauce with them, Tabasco style. I chopped them all up along with 2 cloves of garlic, then added them to a cup of white vinegar. Let them boil away for 5 minutes then added a heaped teaspoon of rock salt. Boiled a bit long then put into the blender to chop everything up as fine as possible. Now the sauce sits in the fridge for 2 weeks then...

Rob, Denny, Toby, Miley and Jamie all arrived on Thursday night, having flown in from Tassie for a couple of weeks in New Zealand.

Soon as I saw Rob though I could see that he wasn't quite right, he was very quiet and didn't seem to be feeling that great, quickly confirmed once he asked to come in and lie down! Poor Rob!

Things only got worse for him and we ended up having to take him to the A&E to be seen! Poor Rob, not the best first night in New Zealand. He was OK though and once the Dr's had given him some magical pills to make him feel better he was OK.
Meanwhile Sarah had been left alone back home to look after the boys, a job which she did fantastically.

Friday morning Rob walked down with me to the bus stop so I got to have...