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Forcing myself to write into my diary again dear diary, sorry I am so slack but of course we've been busy. Feijoa's have been going off again, they're dropping everywhere and they're massive. We've sold heaps the last couple of days, even with a bit of rain here and there we've had enough days of sun to sell them. And they've been going like hotcakes too, I guess because we're less than half the price of the supermarkets.

Friday the 7th of April we all got in the car and drove out to Hastings to see the Lighting of Osmanthus Gardens. We'd talked to Beth about it during the week in the hope that she might get excited about it, which she seemed to be. It was really cool, the lights were very well done and both Beth and Theo seemed to enjoy it, though Theo was more interested in the Ducks that were in the pond. It was packed with people, made pushing a pram around a bit of a nightmare, but apart from that it was great. My new phone can actually take decent pictures in low light too which was nice, we got some good photos of the children enjoying themselves.

I'd love to say that I can remember what we did on Saturday and Sunday, but I can't. Selling Feijoa's would have been part of it and I'm pretty sure I took the kids for a walk or two in the pram.
Earlier that week we'd had dinner at Breakers in Taradale and Theo smacked his head on the concrete really badly. I mean really badly, he tripped over and his head bounced off the ground. It was horrible. Sarah took him to A&E while I argued with the staff about being overcharged (I got my $5 back). Beth and I walked over to see Sarah and Theo in the A&E and on the way we walked through Clive Square which was all lit up with lovely lights. It would have been nice to stop and spend 10 minutes in there with Beth but I was mostly concerned that Theo would be alright. It was a good chance to get Beth excited about going to see the lights later in the week though, she really loved Clive Square being all lit up so I was pretty sure that she was going to love the lights at Hastings too. Once we arrived at the A&E they told us that Theo would be fine, but to bring him back in if he started to vomit or any of those other horrible things associated with a head injury. It was probably an overreaction to take him to A&E but it was such a nasty smack and the huge golf ball that appeared so quickly freaked me right out, that and how he wouldn't stop screaming in pain, poor fella. But yes he was fine thankfully.

Last Wednesday I got Sarah to drop me off and pick me up from work, the weather was coming in because of the Cyclone etc and I was worried I'd get blown off my bike. On the way home Sarah casually mentioned that in fact there were 5 living creatures in the car, not hte usual 4. In the boot was Bunny, Bunny who still doesn't have a name yet but is called Bunny, Bunna, Molly or MuttMutt. Those are the various names that Beth has come up with so far. Bunny lived upstairs in our bathroom for 3 days while we organised a cage for it, turns out that was a stroke of genius on Sarah's part because for the first 3-4 days of owning a new bunny you should do just this, keep them in a large secure room for a couple of days so that they can feel secure. So yes now we have a new bunny, Adrian helped me on Good Friday go over to pickup the cage we've bought for it, at $10 special second hand. We hauled it into the location and then on Saturday Sarah and I got it all ready. Mosquito netting etc.
Sunday when all the kids had returned (Beth went to Church with Grandma) we had an Easter Egg hunt and Beth found the bunny and could not have been less interested because there were Easter eggs to find instead and those were much more interesting. Once everyone had had breakfast, eggs had been eaten etc they were both much more interested in the bunny. Sunday was a bit of a nightmare actually because Beth ate so many eggs. She even climbed up onto the kitchen counter while we weren't looking and ate a whole bunch more. So there was a lot of screaming and tanties on Sunday afternoon, not fun for everyone!

The Cyclone!
Well the cyclone we all talked about on Thursday I thought would be no big deal. Everytime there's been a "watch out it's all going to go boom" warning there hasn't been a boom and it's been the most boring thing ever. So I thought there's no reason to think otherwise this time, pretty much so sick of the NZ Media crying wolf that you pretty much ignore it. Even though the Metservice were saying "This is the worst Weather event we've seen in 40 years" you still have a bit of trouble beleiving. I'd ridden my scooter to work on the Thursday and riding home that night it seemed like any other bad weather day, a bit of wind a bit of rain but nothing to be alarmed about. We decided to get takeaways for dinner and I took the kids up in the car to get curry and Thai. The drive up there was pretty boring, but the drive back holy hell! The storm had suddenly come in. Trees were whipping around, crap was blowing in front of the car, rain was going sideways and around and back up in the air. I was glad to get home without something bashing into the car. I got all my batteries into the chargers expecting the power to go off at some stage. The lights started flickering a few times but we managed to get the kids into bed and asleep before the lights went out about 9:30 or so. Had plenty of torches/candles ready to go, mobile phones all charged up and backup Internet via 4G so we were good to go! I went outside about 10:30 to have a look around with my torch, all the trees in the street were going nuts, whipping everywhere. Spoke to the neighbours who were a bit worried one of our trees was going to crash over onto their house, but I didn't think it would and it didn't.
Woke up the next morning and the power was back on, Beth was a bit upset her new GroClock had reset during the night so Mr Sun hadn't come up when he was supposed to. Went outside to survey the damage - we were very lucky in that nothing bad happened. A few dead branches fell off the Walnut tree but that was about it. Poor Colin's rose bushes had all blown over but when I talked to him about it he said he was kinda glad anyway, he promptly ripped them out and replaced them with some new bushes.
So yea, we survived the Cyclone of 2017. There was a lot of flooding in our front garden and Friday morning Beth and Theo had a great time running around in there splashing and kicking and crashing over into the water. Was quite funny watching them.

Theo is getting really good with his words now, he's strung a few 3 word things together for Sarah. "Mummy gone upstairs" and things like that. We put Thomas the Tank Engine on TV for him last night and he nearly had a fit of excitement. He loves trains and trucks and all that sort of stuff. Beth is mostly excited with her new GroClock that goes to sleep when we press a button, which makes the stars appear on the clock. Then at 7am "Mr Sun Comes up!" and she's allowed to get up. We tried doing the same thing with the Darling Lights and it worked for a while, but the Darling Lights gave no indication of how much longer she might need to wait. The GroClock has 12 starts that slowly disappear over time.

Beth's also growth up enough now that she wants a shower every night, no longer happy with a bath. Theo has a bath while she has a shower. It was good she was in the shower too the other night when Theo decided to take a large dump in the bath! Argh! Time to get out the bleach...

That's about all I think of over the past two weeks worth documenting! I'm sure something else will come to my mind later...

Tim