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Flew down to Wellington on Friday for the Prophecy 2017 Christmas Party.  Or was it the 2016? It's hard to know, it was sort of a combination of both I think.

Bruce came and picked me up from home about 8:15 and we went and picked up Jordan, then headed into work.  Rachael and Sandra went to get the sandwiches from the Café and then we were off to the airport in the car.  A quick flight down to Wellington, hire the car and we drove off to the 4x4 and shooting place.

Had a great afternoon, we split up into two groups, we did shooting first of all while the others did the Quadbikes. I sucked at shooting which wasn't a surprise to me, I've never been that good at that sort of thing.  Quadbikes was a bit different, I knew what I was doing this time but it seems that Health and Safety has ruined any real fun that you're allowed because my lordie was it a slow affair.  The bikes have 5 gears and I never got above 3rd and even then that was for a few seconds.  We were always behind someone.  I mean sure it was in wet, muddy trails, lots of big rocks etc so not a great chance to go super fast, but it just wasn't quite as exciting as I thought it was going to be.  Alas.

After the bikes were over we all piled back into the rental car (I'd been tasked with driving one group of people) to our accommodation for the evening, a nice motel.  We were 2 to a room, causing a lot of upset when we first got there because they hadn't unlocked the second room, causing a lot of people thinking they were going to have to snuggle close to their mate in the double bed.  Housekeeping came by a bit later though to unlock the rooms and everyone was much happier.

The only real downer on the whole day was the fact that it just rained and rained and rained. Even for the BBQ afterwards at the Motel, it just pissed with rain.  We of course made the best of it, standing around under the umbrellas in the pool area, having beers and a nice BBQ.  Eventually after 5-6 beers we hopped into the Spa Pool.  But, sadness of sadness, my little mini phone was in the main pool! I have no idea how it ended up there, I only took it down to Wellington to show Liviu because he's a big phone nut like myself.  It was in my jeans pocked, the only thing I can think of is that it flew out when I took my jeans off to get in the spa.  I wasn't pushed into the water or anything.  I just turned around and said "Umm is that my mini phone at the bottom of the pool" and I went in to fish it out and sure enough it was.  Very sad.  Oh well, it was kinda useless anyway because the damn GPS didn't work properly and it was very slow at doing a bunch of things.

But otherwise it was a good time, got up bright and early (5:30am) the next morning in time to drive the rental car back to Wellington airport.  When we were filling up the car with petrol next door to the airport a bunch of fire engines flew past us and when we got into the airport the fire alarm was going off.  But no one seemed to be giving a shit and after 10 minutes it just turned off.  So made it back to Napier on time.

Once we got back from the airport we tidied up the house a bit then Beth's friend Liam from Kindy came over.  It was a nice day so they played on the slip'n'slide out the back for a bit, picked some of our Strawberries and generally had a good time.  Then it was time for me to take Theo to his first Jillyfish lesson of the season.  He was supposed to go last Saturday but of course he'd been up all night with the hurping bug so we weren't about to expose 500 other children to that.  He did good for his first lesson, but we had to get out a little bit early because another child had a "Code Brown" and it leaked into the pool.  Erk, everyone out, I think that was probably the end of swimming for the day for poor Jillyfish!

Sunday Peter chats come over in the morning and bought us coffee, I spent time out in the garden just weeding things and seeing how my "Weed and Feed" of the lawn earlier in the week was working out. Took the kids for a swim in the pool too, they seemed to enjoy it until I realised they were both freezing cold.  Ooops.  Our swimming pool is finally ready for swimming again, I mean it's probably been fine all Winter etc because it never went Green or anything, but I don't trust swimming in it until I know it's chemically right.  What if all my hair falls out?  I guess no one would notice.  But after a couple of weeks of balancing and checking and levels it's now ready to swim in.  

Didn't really do too much else exciting yesterday really, filled up the BBQ gas bottle, downloaded "The Lorax" for Beth.  Saturday night had been a bit rough because lots of people were already letting off fireworks and Beth didn't like it.  She didn't get to sleep until ~11pm or so, that's the problem when you get her to have a sleep during the day now (like she needed so she was in a good mood to play with Liam) she doesn't feel at all tired until later that night.

Last week we bought some CB radios for everyone - we got a 4pack.  They're just little handhelds, nothing special, but they're actual proper CB's with full 80 channel UHF support.  Beth has one by her bed now so she can request assistance in the night.  Basically it means we can talk back to her and say "Please just go to sleep Beth, no Daddy isn't coming down for whatever silly reason you've dreamed up today" or similar.  But they're also handy when I'm out in the garden and Beth wants a snack or something like that.  Theo can't figure his out and just keeps pressing transmit in and out, in and out, so all the other radios just get that "click" noise just as the static shuts out.  Click, Click, Click.  After 10 minutes we turned his back off again and he hasn't really noticed since.  The only problem with the radios is they take 3 AAA's each and of course they can only go for 20-30 hour runtime before they're flat.  I just bought some good quality rechargeables though and just keep cycling through them, seems to be working.

Tuesday night the Aquarium had a "Sea Monsters Disco" for Halloween.  I thought that Beth would love it, Sarah had made her a little Mermaid costume and I took Theo too as a Gruffalo.  But we weren't even up the stairs before Beth saw some other kiddies dressed as skeletons or other scary type things and she lost it totally.  We sort of limped around the Aquarium for 30 minutes and had a little boogie at the end where the Disco was, but she really didn't enjoy it.  Which is a shame, especially because Theo thought the whole thing was excellent.  Hopefully next year she can enjoy it without being scared of people in costumes etc.

Have had problems with water from our water tank having a rotting smell when you first run it.  Have tried lots of figure it out, talked to a plumber who said he'd never heard anything like it before.  Don't really know if I've fixed it or not, I turned us onto just bore water (no pump pressure, not from the tank) for a day and the smell didn't come back, so I thought I'd isolated it to the tank!  So I switched us back to tank water and... the smell hasn't returned at all.  Which is good because we don't want the smell but bad because nothing I did really should have fixed any bad smelling water.  Anyway, fingers crossed it's sorted...

Got home tonight to see that Beth, Theo and Sarah had put down some mats in the shed for me and bought a little punching ball and skipping rope for me.  I've been saying I want to try to get out in the shed early in the morning to do some upper body exercises.  I'm riding each day to work now and my legs are getting a good workout, but not the rest of my body.  So that was a nice surprise from everyone today, I'll have to try and get out there tomorrow mornign to do a bit of push-iting.  I have to finish cleaning the shed out though, it's still a mess and there's a rat that's been living in there again, little fuckers.

It was Fireworks night last night, Sarah found some we had left over from last year so we let them off.  They were all pretty lame really, but still a good little bit of fun.  This was after the kids were asleep mind you, I don't think Beth would have enjoyed them at all.

Sarah goes into Hospital on Thursday for her big to little operation.  A bit nervous about it I guess, I just want it all to work out and for her to be happy at the end of it.  Which I'm sure she will be.  I've got Thursday and Friday off to look after her and the kids etc.

Finally I caught up my diary.  Phew.

Tim