Well Dear Diary, since my last entry many thigs have happened including Christmas! Let me try and start from the start and we'll go from there.
The kids got their school reports, I posted those to my diary as the last two stories. We're obviously very proud of the two of them, both got excellent school reports. Beth was a bit sad she got one "working at" not "working above" like all the others, but we stressed to her that doesn't matter because it says she's putting in all the effort she can. That's what matters.
The last day of Tennis was on the Saturday, the kids dressed up in little bit of Christmas themed happiness and Santa gave them a lollipop at the end of the session. Theo was quite annoyed with Santa for giving him a lollipop that he wasn't very impressed with the flavour. Bad Santa! Then it was time for Beth's second to last swimming lesson of the year, Shrimpy has been a major supporter of Beth these last few weekends at swimming and she was there this time as well, with her little Santa hat on. (Beth takes Shrimpy to swimming and I flap Shrimpy about when Beth's doing well. The other parents must think I'm insane)
Once we'd done that, I went and hired a trailer and got a huge trailer load of soil, which we distributed around in the back garden and planted some plants near the house. The kids helped with the soil etc, took us a while but we did a good job. Once it was done it, of course, started to piss with rain. But the trailer was on a time limit so I kept loading up all the rubbish from around the property and took it up to the tip anyway, the came back and washed out the trailer properly of all the soil etc before returning it. Was quite pooped that day I can tell you!
Sunday was Beth's end-of-year Cheerleading Christmas event. It was supposed to be at Anderson Park but bad weather was forcast so it was held at the Cheerleading centre instead. Good thing it was too because yea, it rained heavily. Theo didn't pick any fights this time, unlike last year when he asked a little boy if he wanted a fight and then got very upset when the little boy fought him. We still laugh about that. Anyway the Cheerleading event was long and Beth's partner didn't turn up so Beth had to work with another person. For an event that went for ~2 hours, Beth's whole dance routine was about 3 minutes long and the poor little sausage looked confused and unsure what was going on for most of it. I suspect they didn't really do much practise beforehand because she's usually really good! Anyway it was a bit of fun for them all, they handed out awards at the end of it and Beth was given the "Best Base" award in her little group so that made the event worthwhile for her. Speaking of Cheerleading she got accepted into the Elite Cheersquad which she's quite happy about, along with her friend at Cheerleading. She's now a Flier which she was initally quite nervous about but seems to be coming around to the idea and is a lot less hesitant/worried about it now. We'll see how she gets on next year I guess.
Monday was Theo's Karate grading! For the week prior I'd been encouraging him to practise his situps, his pushups etc. Because for his last grading he really struggled to do them and you could see the worry and pain on his face, he was really worried he wasn't going to be able to do them and that he wouldn't get his belt! He did a really good job of pre-training though, whenever I mentioned to him that he should be thinking about doing some situps he would do some, counting up to 10 in Japanese each time, doing the required practise of 35-45 of each exercise they'd make him do. When it came time for his grading he nailed it, you could see the massive smile on his face as he finished each set of exercises with energy to spare. I'm so glad he put the effort in to practise ahead of time because it really paid off for him. He wore a huge smile as he was given his Yellow belt. Well done little man, you really earned it!
The kids fiished up school that week. The end of year concert was supposed to be held at 9:30am on Tuesday the 13th at school had to be called off. I'd walked up with the kids thinking "It's not going to rain" but by the time we go to school it started to spit and just as we arrived and the kids got into their classroom it BUCKETED down. So it had to be called off and held instead at a normal, sane time so that working parents can attend at 5:30pm at Pettigrew Green Arena. So we went to that, which was very boring because our kids didn't win anything!! Ok that wasn't that bad actually. No one can undertand why they tried to hold the event during work hours though when half the parents wouldn't have been able to attend.
The rest of the week was the rest of the week, the kids were off School on Thursday and Friday, Sarah dropped them into work with me for an hour or two on the Friday. I just put them in front of their iPads on the work couches. Speaking of work the big annoucement at work is that we are now 100% owned by Mercury, instead of just their 48% stake they had in us. So we are no longer a small independant ISP, we are just part of a massive huge power company now. Which I guess is fine we needed the investment money etc etc, but I'm really quite sad about the whole thing. I LIKED being the little guy taking on the big guys at their own customer-service and performance game and kicking their butts at it. We've OF COURSE being told that nothing will change, but there's never been a merger in history where the first thing you're told is that nothing will change. We'll have to wait and see what happens, I'm sure the NOW brand won't be going away quickly. But Mercury already own Trustpower which is another huge ISP. They're not known for their customer support or anything like that though. Jordan was freaking out of course when he hear the news, the company he'd been working at prior to starting at NOW just went though this exact thing, a big company bougt out their small company, promised that "Nothing will change!" and then within about 2 weeks half the staff had quit and all sorts of changes had been made. I don't think he needs to worry about THAT happening at NOW, but who could say for sure?
Saturday was a bit of fun, it was Beth's last swimming lesson so I dropped her and Sarah off up at Taradale and then Theo and I drove all the way out to Te Ana Falls to meet up with his Karate group. I overshot the turnoff (thanks Google Maps) and had to turn around in a panic on the highway. Anyway we arrived just as everyone was getting ready to set off. There was a ~30 minute walk before they got to the Waterfalls. It was pretty cool watching a whole bunch of people in Karate Gi's walk through the muddy forest, but it was even cooler watching them all lined up, IN THE WATER, doing their punches and kicks and that sort of stuff. Theo utterly loved it, a massive smile on his face the whole time, got into the water again at the end of it to have some photo's taken. Who knows what the other people who'd come to the falls though of 30+ Karate members piling into a waterfalls to do Karate moves thought, but hey. It was great! On the way back Theo said to me multiple times "Can we come here again I really like it, it's so peaceful" etc.
Sunday I don't think we did much, I can't remember. I've got no photos of interest in the photo album so probably we didn't. That might have been when we re-did the garden and put the Jasmine out there? It was around this time anyway. Then the last week of work was just two days for me, Monday and Tuesday. Oh, Greg had come over on the Friday night to pickup the Williams Warn and load it into his car. I had tasted the beers prior and was pretty happy with them.
Tuesday afternoon was the Technology Christmas Do at Greg's place. I'm happy to say the WilliamsWarn beer was a bit hit, I left at 5pm with Jordan to come home for a dinner with Peter and Mary. But when Greg dropped the Kegs off on Thursday morning they were both empty, there was about 1L of IPA left in the IPA keg, I guess the dipping tube wasn't making it all the way to the bottom. But yea, that's 20L of beer that everyone drunk so I was quite happy/proud of that!
Tuesday was also the day that Dad decided he wouldn't be coming over for Christmas though. His bum was still giving him trouble after his routine colonoscopy he'd had done on the 1st of December. They also snipped out a few 'roids and he's been in pain and discomfort ever since. It was supposed to all heal up within a couple of days but 3 weeks later it still hadn't so he made the decision not to come over for Christmas. Probably the right thing to do, the medical system in NZ is utterly fucked these days, it takes 2 weeks to book in to see a Dr, they're all tired and overworked. So that was a bit of bugger, we were all looking forward to seeing Pa come over, the kids were quite excited and a bit dissapointed to be told that he wouldn't be coming.
The next few days - no work anymore - were spend just getting the place ready for Christmas and having people come over. I mowed lawns, re-planted some plants in the back yard (Jasmine), stained the back deck steps that weren't stained yet. The kids just pottered around, playing in the Garden in the teepee, in the pool, playing on their iPads etc. We took them up to the Taradale library and they got a shell each to adopt. The library made you name them and gave you an adoption certificate, all you had to do is promise to read stories to them. Of course because the damn shells are tiny they kept getting lost and every 5 minutes it seemed like for a while there a child was a tears because their shell was missing/lost forever! Only to be found again 5 minutes later.
Friday night we took the kids to see the Christmas lights, it was the first night that wasn't pissing with rain. Honestly the last two weeks, maybe even three, have just been so shithouse for Weather. The Christmas lights were good fun, as they always are. It's a shame that Pa wasn't with us, I think the last time we went to them he was with us. We hadn't done it the last two years of course because of COVID. I'm not even sure they were on, probably not. Anyway we drove around 5-6 houses and found one bunch of lights that weren't even on the "Christmas Lights Map" but was just as amazing as the rest of them. The kids had a great time.
Saturday was the fnishing touches to get ready for the big day. We cleaned, we washed the outdoor furniture. I waterblasted the remaining bits that I hadn't done a few days prior. The back lawns were mowed to ensure they still looked good the next day. The kids wrote letters for Santa. They had a sleepover together in Theo's room. Just after they got into bed a huge Thunder and Lightning storm came over, causing some massive KABOOMS and flashes of lightning. At least we didn't get the golfball sized hail that was also predicted.
Sunday Morning was Christmas Day! We told the kids they weren't allowed to wake us up until 6am and back on 6am they kicked in the door flapping and screaming with excitement. They came down and opened up their presents. I'll try and remember what each of them got:
Beth:
- Magic Mixie Cauldron
- Purple Santa Hat
- Chemistry Set
- Jump The Rabbits Game (Granny)
- Wardini Voucher
- Earrings
- Small Shoulder Bag
- Pink Leather Bag (P&M)
- Animal Crossing
Theo:
- Big Lego Trainset that lights up/moves.
- Spider Robot
- Small Lego Set
- Wardini Voucher
- Telescope (P&M)
- Mario Kart 8
And we got for both of them a Nintendo Switch. I'd set it up the night before with Software updates and all that sort of stuff.
After presents we all got ready for people's arrival. Though during that time Beth did her Magic Mixie thing which was good, lots of smoke, but she sort of went along without really reading all the instrutions so it popped out before she'd done everything. Still it looked pretty cool, lots of smoke and mist. I feel really bad for her though, it was her big present and she sort of had to rush it and it wasn't a super fun thing. Anyway, we've bought her some more potion for it which should arrive soon so hopefully she can sit down and do it all again and really enjoy it.
Everyone arrived (Adrian, Holly, Joseph, Isla, Peter, Mary) and the day begun with breakfast. Thankfully it was a perfect day, the Sun came out and it was out all day which was quite amazing seeing as either side of it, it's been bad. After breakfast, everyone left again and Sarah and I (mostly Sarah) got to work on getting the lunch ready. Peter and Mary came back over and we had lunch outside again. The sun umbrella we bought a year or so ago really came in handy on the day.
And before you knew it, the day was over. Everyone left again, I had a small snooze on the couch while the kids played Just Dance on the Switch. Turns out to be quite a hit the ol' Just Dance. It wasn't even one of the games we got them, it was on Isla got (The Moonies got a Switch too) and she bought it over to show Beth, who loved it. Watching them dance and wiggle their butts is hilarious, Theo especially.
That was Christmas Day done and dusted. Oh I got a Bike Helment that has speakers and lights for safety built in, and a nice cooler lunch bag.
Monday we didnt' do a lot, just hung out, enjoyed the day, took it easy. Sarah realised the pool was a bit Green again so I got to work on sorting that out for a couple of hours. Having a pool is great when it's not Green. Wendesday (yesterday!) we went back to Te Ana falls and had a good time there, it was a nice day and there were quite a lot of people there. Beth, Theo and I got into the falls, it was quite cold but good fun. Then we walked back to the car and drove home, the kids played a bit more on their Switch, went for a swim out the back etc. Today will probably be more of the same!
Tim
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