Kindy Christmas
We went to the Kindy Christmas festival last night. Beth and Theo were both dressed up in their little costumes that Sarah and I (mostly Sarah) had spent a few hours making last week. They were wearing (fill this bit in, Tim!) and Sarah and I made them by threading lots of little cut up bits of straws onto strands of wool. Threading the bits of plastic onto the wool wasn't hard, but getting a big enough knot on the end of the wool so the plastic bit wouldn't fall off, that was really hard! It was taking me 2 mins per straw! Sarah had it down pat though, she was knocking them out every 30 seconds or so. Anyway we got them made in the end and Sarah sowed them up.
So last night was great, the kids were very excited when I got home. We got them cleaned up, into their clothes and back off to kindy. When we arrived the children went off into their groups and we went outside to get a spot to view. Far out there were so many people there, it was like half of Taradale was at the event. First up we had the 12 days of Kiwi Christmas and eventually at about the 11th bit of the song Beth and Theo came out in their little costumes. Beth was right into it, but Theo just wanted to stand there and grin from ear to ear at anyone that made eye contact with him. Then were there were a few more songs and Beth was right into it, singing so loudly and doing all the signing that goes along with the words. She did such a great job, apparently she's very good at signing at kindy. Sarah filmed some of her signing and signing which was great, it's not a great video because we weren't in the best spot, but you can see and hear her!
After the concert was over it was sausages and snacks time. Oh yes that was the great thing about the invite the kindy event, it loudly proclaimed "There will be lots of yummy deserts" and then at the bottom it said "Please bring a plate of yummy desert." But yes, it was a lovely evening. Once the concert was over we didn't even see Theo, he just went off to play with all the other kids, not at all bothered if we were even around or not.
Weekend just gone Sarah went to Wellington with Holly, so I looked after the kids. Saturday morning we went and met up with Adrian, Isla and Joseph at Orbit for a coffee and some breakfast. Then we went to Mitre10 to get a replacement fan for Theo, his new fan we got him didn't work properly. Then we came home and the kids played on the slip and slide for a bit, we did some strawberry hunting then I put Theo down for a sleep. Sadly he didn't have one, but that didn't seem to stop him at swimming where he did a great job! Then we all (the Mooneys too) drove out to the Pukutapu for a beer/lemonade then back home into bed!
Sunday I took them to the Ahuriri Street festival, it was the first running of what might be a new thing, basically they closed off the roads at Ahuriri and made it bike friendly, with a few stalls and street performers etc. Beth and Theo took their trike/bike and rode around having a great time. I wasn't sure they'd enjoy it and I sort of banked on them really wanting to leave after an hour, but at about 11:15 I realised we had to go and pickup Peter from the airport and they were both quite sad having to leave the festival, they both loved it! We'd had a good little ride, seen some bubbles, done some chalk drawing on the street and had a bounce on a bouncy castle.
Then we went to pickup Grandad from the airport, there was much excitement when he arrived and got off the plane. We went back home and tried everyone to have a sleep but again much failure there, so went to the supermarket before Sarah arrived back home. Then that evening we went around to Peter's for a BBQ, but it was so hot and everyone was tired, there were lots of tears at the BBQ so it was back home early and into bed for everyone.
Other stuff that's happening - the Aircon in our upstairs room decided to start leaking the other night, that was a bugger. So we got the people around to fix it, they gave it a good clean and said the insulation for the piping wasn't done right when it was installed, so the cold pipe was causing water to condense and drip. They fixed that for us. A day or two later I noticed lights downstairs have stopped working, I'm waiting for a sparky to come and help fix that (the two aren't related). It's be so, so hot these last few days. Really just mental sweltering heat. I've stopped riding my bike to work because I arrive just dripping with sweat and that doesn't seem very nice for my workmates, seeing as we don't have a shower.
Two weekends ago what'd we do.... Can't really remember too much, I know I took the kids for a splash in the pool and they enjoyed that, I trimmed the lemon tree and chopped up about 30 lemons to make a big bottle of juice that we made lemonade drinks, popsicles and a few other things. We went and had fish and chips at the beach on the Friday night, that was lots of fun.
What else? Helped Blair and Cushla with two of their computers, one a mac! I know nothing about Macs, but we managed to fix it and get it working again. The PC was harder to fix, but got there in the end. Have also been helping debug a long-standing crash on the server that hosts this website, getting to the bottom of that I think with the grsecurity team. Be nice to have a fully stable server again! Oh yea and last week I flew up to Auckland for a day, caught up with Tony Wicks of all people on one of his new projects that I'll be somewhat invovled with.
I think that's about it, I better get ready for the morning onslaught!
Tim