Oh man, where'd those two weeks go? Saturday the 30th Sarah, Dad and I went out to Elephant Hill to take Dad out for Dinner.  That was his Christmas present for us, a bit lame I suppose really when you're also taking yourself, but we were pretty sure Dad would love it (he did) and it's a great place. 

We were very lucky with the weather, we had an 8pm booking and we got there about 7:30 or so, just in time to sit outside and watch the colours of the sunset (though we were facing the other way to actually see the sunset).  We had a lovely 3 course meal, everyone enjoyed their food and the wine/drinks were good too.

Last Thursday night (4th Jan) Sarah and I went to Bistronomy for Dinner while Dad baby sat the kiddies.  The kids were great, no issues for Dad which was...

Well I've been very slack as usual in updating my diary.  I just can't find the time to sit down and write it all out, even though I know full well I need to.

At the moment Beth and Theo are out the back playing in the HUGE tent we've borrowed from Holly and Age.  Dad and I set it up in the backyard yesterday while the kids were still snoozing during their daytime nap. They were both very excited to see the tent when they woke up!

Trying to have a sleep in the tent was another matter, it was all way too exciting.  Not helped by the fact it doesn't get dark until ~9:30-10pm fully and there's no curtians in the tent to make it dark like their rooms.  Theo couldn't really handle and kept saying he wanted to go back inside, so of course once I carried...

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...

Spent most of Sunday putting down a heap of bark out the back garden.  It looks much better now, instead of a weedy horrid thing it's a nice layer of clean bark.  Blair from next door very kindly lent me his trailer.  Theo was such a champion helping, I got the trailer into the back yard and for a good 30 minutes he helped me with his tiny little scoop take bark from the trailer to the garden.  Over and over he went, copying what I was doing.  Beth had done the same but gave up bored with the whole thing after about 2 minutes.  Theo didn't give up though!

Once the first load of bark was done, Sarah, Theo and I went down to the landscaping place to look at stones for around the pool and to get another load of bark.  Plus we went to the cafe to...

Rough night last night, both Sarah and I were up for half the night with coughs.  I was fine when I went to bed, but about 11pm woke up with a super annoying cough.  After a while I moved into the spare room because I was pretty sure I'd be keeping Sarah awake with all the coughing.

Had a good weekend, though the weather was pretty average.  Saturday morning flew around the house getting it nice and clean because Beth's friend Gwen came over for a playdate.  The two girls had a great time playing with Effy the Unicorn, drawing and just generally having fun.  Theo even ran around a played with them, but not really the same thing.

After Gwen left it was time for Theo to go swimming, he did a pretty good job too until he saw Adrian (Uncle Adrian! Uncle Adrian!) and then he couldn't really...

It's been a busy week here at Harman household.  Thursday last week I had the day off so that I could take Sarah in for her surgery later that afternoon.  Didn't really do heaps with the day otherwise, got out and did a bit of gardening and cleaning up around the place, kept the pool ticking along etc.  Then it was time to take Sarah out for surgery.  Always a bit of a scary time really.  The scariest part of the ordeal though was Sarah taking off her wedding band.  She'd already annoyed her finger by taking off the engagement ring, so when it came time to get the wedding band off it wouldn't budge.  The nurse said oh don't worry if they really need to take it off during surgery they'll just cut it off.  No one could relax until the thing was off, Sarah told me about the...

Flew down to Wellington on Friday for the Prophecy 2017 Christmas Party.  Or was it the 2016? It's hard to know, it was sort of a combination of both I think.

Bruce came and picked me up from home about 8:15 and we went and picked up Jordan, then headed into work.  Rachael and Sandra went to get the sandwiches from the Café and then we were off to the airport in the car.  A quick flight down to Wellington, hire the car and we drove off to the 4x4 and shooting place.

Had a great afternoon, we split up into two groups, we did shooting first of all while the others did the Quadbikes. I sucked at shooting which wasn't a surprise to me, I've never been that good at that sort of thing.  Quadbikes was a bit different, I knew what I was doing this time but it...

Ahhhh, Friday night.

I've just got Theo into bed and I sit down on the couch to have a beer.  Sarah is putting Beth to bed, Beth's all happy and smiles and reading a book.  Everything's going well.  Theo starts to cry quite a lot on his baby monitor, no worries I think to myself, he often does this just before he drifts off to sleep.  Sarah gets Beth all tucked up into bed, I go and read her another book and she's happy and off to sleep.  Theo's still making some noises, but I'm sure he's about to drift off to sleep.

Sit on the couch, start to relax.  Theo's monitor is going off still.  Think I'd better go and check on the little fella to make sure that he hasn't.... vomited all over the floor in a huge pool of pasta filled hurpy.  OH BUGGER.  Help him into...