Walk of Wonders / Diggin' a Trench / Day Off / Dinner at Craggy / XMas / Books

So let's wind back to Friday night two weeks ago. Friday the 13th in fact, though nothing bad happened.  We had tickets to the Dumplings Night at Craggy range so we went to that, it was a nice evening.  The food was really good, lots of little dumplings to feast on.

Saturday was Tennis as usual in the morning, then we went to the Munn Christmas party this year hosted at Peter and Mary's.  It was thankfully a perfectly sunny day, just great for the kids to get in the pool and splash around.  They had a great time, lots of nice presents received from the everyone.  Theo got a skateboard, some spiderman walkie-talkies and Beth got a Doll that she's called Watermelon.

Sunday I think we just did gardening and stuff around the house - I can't really recall.  Monday I had off to look after the kids because it was a teacher day.  I took my unpaid day as the Monday and just hung out with the kids, we went down to Ahuriri and had Hot Chick and then played on the playground.  Then we came home and got an icecream.

This weekend I've spent some time diggin' a big ol' trench.  It has to go from the side of the house, down along the fenceline to the pump.  It has to be 600mm deep too, which is the fun part.  Digging a small trench, not that hard.  Digging one over half a metre deep - pain in the arse.  All the mozzies are out there, because the ground water is so high up too you dig too deep and it starts to just fill in with water.  Anyway I made some good progress on Saturday, I was pretty knackered by the end of it.

Saturday night we went to the Walk of Wonders at Black Barn - it's been postponed two times previously because of COVID, but it was finally one 6 months later than originally planned.  It was packed with people, in fact we saw Peter and Mary there, and some of my workmates.  It was really cool though, lots of fantastic lights, walking down between the vines with big towers of flame going off either side, the Gingerbread house, the cool mushrooms etc.  Heaps of fun.  Theo started out with a really sore tummy, probably from all the berries he'd eaten, but a few runs up and down the amphitheatre at Black Barn (the huge Disco ball area) seemed to set him up right as rain, which was good because I didn't want to carry him around the entire thing.

It was a very fun night though, the kids were totally knackered by the time we got home.

And in other news Sarah bought a huge bunch of books for Beth - the Roald Dahl complete set was part of it, a few other full sets, lots of kids dictionaries etc.  A massive score for $20 anyway!  Beth is loving reading them, Matilda she was half way through but seems to have got a bit bored of, she's currently reading Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.  She burst into tears tonight at 8:30pm because she'd actually read up to chapter 14 instead of chapter 11 like she was supposed to.  We had to go and explain that both of us used like trying to read "just a bit more" once it was lights out time.  She was still very upset - not sure why, I don't think anything sad/bad happens in Charlie.  She kept telling us it wasn't because of anything in the book.  But yea, she's loving reading these kids books, which is great.  I'm really glad to see her want to pick up a book and read instead of just pickup the iPad all the time.

Tim