The Bus
Busy week last week, work work work. Saturday morning I took the kids into the Stihl Shop to get my chainsaw looked at, the pull cord isn't working properly and it's very hard to start. Then we zipped over to Mitre 10 to buy some more weed spray (I'd run out), some Strawberry feed and some netting. Once home and Theo put to bed, Beth and I spent some time putting netting over our Strawberries so that the birds can't eat them. Silly birdies, trying to eat our Strawberries.
Once everyone had had a sleep, we went over to Holly and Adrian's place to collect Rusty Dog! We took him out to Birdwoods to the Dog show thing that was on, but sadly it started to pour with rain on the way there. I mean lighting and thunder, massive downpour pour. We got there and people were leaving in droves, dogs were baying, it was a bit of a disaster really. We stayed for about 10 minutes before giving up and coming back home. We returned Rusty to Holly and Adrian slightly more soggy than when we'd collected him. Whoopsie.
Uncle Shane knocked on the front door at about 6:30pm on Saturday night. A nice surprise though not entirely unexpected as I'd been prewarned by Sallee that he was touring NZ and I'd seen a few posts on Facebook from people saying "I hope you're having a good time tripping around NZ" so I figured that they'd pop in for a visit at some stage. Theo had already gone to bed but straight away Beth was fascinated with these two people that had arrived "In The Bus?". I just happened to call Shane's Campervan a Bus when I first saw it, and Beth called it that from then on. She was excited to meet Shane and Pat, but she was MORE excited about the Bus. Especially after she got a little tour inside and saw the downstairs bed, the upstairs bed, the seats, the sink, the little TV etc. Oh and the magical step that popped out at the press of a button.
Pat very kindly took Beth to bed and read her a book etc. We had a catch up with Shane and Pat over dinner which was nice! They were able to camp at our place too because we have a campervan plug in the garage, rather random but a good chance to test it out and see that it works well.
Sunday the first words out of Beth's mouth were "Is the Bus still there? Can I see the Bus is there?" So we had to go and open the curtains and see that yes, the Bus was still parked in the driveway. Once we were all ready to head the Farmer's Market Beth got an extra special surprise when Shane and Pat took her for a drive around the block in it! Beth told us that the Bus "Wobbles like a jelly on a jelly on a plate".
We had a nice time out at the Farmer's Market, it was a lovely sunny day which was nice, a much better day than the Saturday afternoon had turned out to be. We came home, put everyone to bed and I did a bit more gardening and spraying of weeds etc around the place. In the afternoon we went into town to have an Icecream before heading back home to have dinner with Shane and Pat again. The whole drive home from town Beth couldn't stop with "Where's the Bus? Is the Bus behind us? Will the Bus be at home? I think the Bus will be at home when we get there. Where's the Bus?" etc etc. Over and over. It started to grate after a while...
This morning once everyone had been bundled up and put in the car I said goodbye to Shane and Pat, they were setting off today to head up towards Gisborne.
Tonight Beth and I wrote down to Bruce's house to look at his new chickens. I took Sarah's bike with the kiddie seat/attachment thing on it. Beth loved it, it was quite nice to go riding and looking at things with her. We'll have to get another one for my bike and we can all go riding, I'll take chopppers! He LOVES all things wheel related.
That's enough typing for today, I better do some more work, I've got plenty to do and not enough time to do it in.
Tim