Our little boy is 5 years old today!  I love this photo that Google Photos popped up to offer me today.

He was awake nice and early this morning, playing with the noisy robot one of his friends gave him at his birthday party yesterday.  Once he'd had some breakfast he unwrapped his presents and he got:

• My first scalextric
• A GUP-E from The Octonauts, plus all The Octonauts Characters
• A New Schoolbag and Lunchbox
• Some new SUPERFAST shoes
• A Transformer, plus a lovely hand-knitted Jumper and some pants from Granny
• A book about NZ Sea Creatures from Pa

So he's had a very good day, even though he did complain to Sarah this morning that he'd only got "3 new toys" to play with.  Someone's a bit greedy I think!

Yestderday we had a great day for his birthday, the littel cars Sarah hired turned up right on time...

Been an interesting couple of weeks, I mean not really THAT interesting I guess, but some slight changes from the usual. I've been sick the last couple of days with a nasty cold, Beth had it ~1 week ago, so I'm not surprised I caught it.  I started to feel a bit off on Wednesday and I figured I was getting sick, Thursday sure enough.  I was pretty much laid up on Friday and again yesterday.

Beth's last day of Term yesterday, we were telling her it would be her last day at school where she was the only Harman there.  We had to explain a number of times that because when she goes back next term, Theo's going to be at school too!  Then Theo didn't understand and thought he was missing out, the whole explanation backfired badly.  Eventually I think they understood, at least the upset stopped.  We...

I had to walk late last Tuesday night/Wednesday morning, so I knocked off early and I took Biscuit for a run in at Anderson Park.  But we'd only be there 5 minutes and I threw his Frisbee and instead of chasing it like he usually does, he sat down and started licking at his rear paw.  Then walking on it, he was limping a little bit.  Oh bugger.  So I stopped that and instead went back home.  I tried to have a look at his paws but I couldn't really see much, one did seem to be a bit red though (The sore one) so I thought maybe I'd better just take him to the vet the next day anyway.  We also noticed he wasn't his usual self, very calm and relaxed way too much, when he's usually dialled up to fullscale bonkers during a normal day.

So off to...

Got back yesterday afternoon (I took Monday off) from a nice little weekend away in Taupo and Waitomo.  Here's some photos for those that can't be bothered reading, photos are always more exciting anyway.

So yes we packed up the car on Friday afternoon, dropped Biscuit off at the doggery (they said he was a lovely dog the whole time and they enjoy having him, good good) and set off for Taupo.  The drive was pretty easy, a few spots of crappy rain, but we made it to Taupo no worries and got some dinner at the Mexican place.  The food looked small so we ordered a few things and that meant a massive feast was brought out to us.  Nevermind.  Then we went and checked into our hotel, they told Sarah the hot water might not be working in our room and they'd upgrade us to a Villa if...

I walked Beth up to school this Monday and half way she said "Daddy is it OK if we don't walk to school anymore?" and I worried asked why. "Because I can't really feel my nose, it's so cold".  Oh dear poor little sausage, I'm sorry!  So yes, Beth is just going with Sarah in the car now, she's right, it was getting very cold.  I had also realised were pretty much the only ones (of at least about Beth's age) who were walking.  There was still the odd kid scootering.  It was nice walking to school with her, and she wants to do it "When it gets to Summer" which'll be nice because of course, Theodore will be able to walk with us!  It'll be great.

Little bit worried about Theo's speech at the moment.  It's great, he's got a massive vocab and he's talking constantly, but he's started...

I've been walking Beth to school each day this week. It's really nice, though today was freezing cold.  I also go up afterwards and wait for her - the new protocol to collect your child is you wait outside the gate, the teachers all look at see which adults they recognise and then send out a child when they see an adult they know.  I must say I'm quite impressed that they can remember each parent and which child is theirs.  I'd never remember, I have trouble enough remembering my children. Ok that's not quite true.

Anyway it's nice to walk up with Beth and have a chat to her, though she seems to enjoy playing "pretend" games, which consist of her telling me 500 time "Just pretend that I'm...." followed by something.  The thing is she spends SO much time explaining what we have to pretend that we never...

Well dear diary here we are back at level 2.  Shops are open again, we can get haircuts, takeaways are back.  It's been so long since I last wrote that things have changed quite a bit.  I really should have been keeping better tabs on the whole thing, but then again I also think I'm really kidding myself if I'm going to come back and read story upon story of being stuck in our house for weeks on end.  Here's a few of the things that have happened since the last 3 weeks or so when I last wrote:

It was Peter Chat's 70th Birthday last weekend.  We all went over to celebrate, even though that was to some degree breaking the lockdown rules.  He was given the most amazing electric bike for his Birthday, I don't really think he's ridden it much yet because it's pretty big and we...