Camping at The Mount / New Windows

We got back last night from 3 days camping at Mount Maunganui.  We had a great time, though there was a lot of grizzling about various things while we were there, which put a bit of a sour note on the whole thing for me.  But anyway, we drove up on Friday morning (Hawke's Bay Anniversary day), stopping in Taupo for a quick bite to eat and to fill up, before trucking on all the way to the Mount and finding our camping site.  We had a really good camping site, right at the very foot of the mountain.  We put up the tent, got everything sorted out, Sarah went into town to get a few bits and pieces (mostly hammers to put the tent pegs in properly) then we went out to get some dinner.  We had pizza from the local pizzeria which was amazing, then went to the hot pools for a swim.  Theo and Beth loved the hot pools, as they always do.  This one had a tiny little slide the kids could do down, first of all Theo wasn't sure at all but soon he was going down forwards, backwards and sideways.

Saturday morning we hopped up bright and early, I went down for a shower in the worlds most annoying camp shower.  It was great, warm and excellent pressure, but it only went for 10 seconds until you had to press the button again for more water.  10 effing seconds.  The entire time I was pressing the button pressing the button.  I know what they're trying to do etc, but man it crabbed me off.  After a shower we all went over to the Coffee Club for breakfast, where we also met Tom and Paulette, friends of Peter and Mary's since forever.  Sarah had a good chat to them while I took the kids around the waterfront on their scooters, and of course stopped to visit the toilet 5 times.  We made plans to visit Tom and Paulette later that night, then went back to the tent, got into our togs and went down to the beach.  Sarah found a really good spot right on the corner of the beach, we took down our chairs, the boom and some snacks.  We had a good time there, then Sarah's old flatmate and friend Kelly arrived and Sarah and her had a good catchup while I played with the kids.  I tried to get them to have a sleep, they were knackered, but the tent was warm and all they wanted to do was annoy each other and giggle, so that was an hour of wasted time.  We all tried to have another rest, before heading off to visit Tom and Paulette for dinner.  They had cooked us a lovely meal, which we ate and then the kids hopped down and played with a box of toys that Tom had found in the garage. Some really amazing old toys in there too, they had a great time playing with that.

Sunday morning up bright and early again after a very rough night with Beth, she had contracted the cough/feeling unwell thing from Theo so she was up every hour during the night for a cry and every second hour to go to the toilet for a wee.  Where so much wee came from we'll never know, but it was many trips to the toilet and much grizzling, all the while Theo managed to stay asleep, how I don't know.

Once everyone was up, we packed everything back up into the car and went for breakfast again.  The kids were very upset that we weren't going to the hot pools again!  Once we'd packed up we headed off to visit the Hairy Maclary statues in central Tauranga.  I must say, they were rather awesome.  Everyone looked as you imagine them except Slinky Malinky.  But as Sarah pointed out (she agreed he didn't look "right") in the books he's so black you don't ever really think too much about his body, it's his face and his eyes.  Anyway, art critic Harman aside, they were very cool.  Then we met up with Sarah's old workmate Bevan who has just moved back from Ireland with his wife Ashling and their two kids.  We went and had some lunch, then we were back on the road.  Both kids had a good little snooze in the car (HOORAY!) so as a reward for being good and not grizzling we stopped in at AC Baths in Taupo on the way home for an hour's swim.  They had a great time, playing on the slide there, splashing, swimming, diving under, putting their hat on the waterslide and all those fun things.  So that was a nice way to end the weekend, they both had a really good time and didn't grizzle the whole time.

We got home, having stopped on the way to get Fish and Chips, everyone had a shower and off to bed!  Today's another public holiday (HOORAY AGAIN) so I'm going to get out there in a bit and clean up the street next to us, it's a right mess of overgrown grass and mess.  I'll try and make it so the neighbours aren't ashamed of me anymore...

What ELSE has been happening since the last update diary?

Well I've been keeping up on my pre-training plan, which now turns into an ACTUAL training plan as of this week.  That's right, it's officially 30 weeks until the Marathon now so it's training plan following time.  I did it all last week apart from the Saturday run, we were camping and I didn't take my running gear.  But yes I have been getting better, I can do 3km now without stopping and I hope this week to do the 5kms without stopping.  From there it's just up and up and off we go!

NEW WINDOWS!  Yes we finally got new windows downstairs.  I say finally, it's been something we've been meaning to do for ages.  But now we have lovely double glazed, open-properly, look nice, aren't ratty windows.  They're not quite finished yet, we'll be getting a new front door too.  And then the windows need skirtings etc to finalise them.  But they're installed and now there's plaster dust everywhere from where the old ones were pulled out.  Some of the windows that were previously split down the middle are now just one huge window, and it makes some of the rooms feel a lot bigger because they're now 1 window.  We have a lovely sliding window we can open in the lounge too.  It's great!  Now we have a carport full of old windows that I'll put on TradeMe and hopefully someone will come and take them all away...

AND Sarah got air conditioning installed in the office upstairs.  I'm so glad she did, it gets SO hot up there on a sunny day and trying to work in melting conditions isn't any fun.  So now she'll have a nice office that's a decent temp no matter how hot (or cold) it is outside.  The installers did a really good job too, very good attention to detail.  And Sarah got a Wifi model too, so she can control it from anywhere which is pretty neat.

Beth's reading is progressing really well.  We are constantly amazed at what she can read and how well she can read it.  The thing that really throws me is she'll get one of the "hard" books I got her from the library and read it, while holding it as if she was reading to a class, so she's got to read the words pretty much upside down.  

I don't remember last weekend in much detail, too long ago!  But I know we went out to bowling for one of Beth's friends birthdays, it was supposed to be funky farm but it was cancelled because of too much rain. It was also a nice warm weekend I remember, we put the cover back on top of the trampoline while the kids bounced around on it.  I also got into the garden and got rid of lots of weeds and got the Strawberry patch into some sort of decent happy shape, hopefully we'll get some soon enough!

Whooops!  I just realised my last story was all written but sitting there unpublished!  What a numbnets.  I was sure I'd written something after the Marathon entry, but it wasn't showing.  Anyway it's there now, doh.

And that's enough dear diary.  Beth's up looking at me and getting annoying I'm not paying her lots of attention and/or feeding her breakfast, so I'd better go and do that.  I'll write in anything else I remember soon...

Tim