Saturday morning I took Beth and Theo for a walk up to the playground - had a nice walk in the hot sun. We had a slide, had a walk pass the people playing cricket and went over to fed the ducks. Theo still loves the ducks, I really really loves them. Beth enjoys them too, but Theo gets a real kick out of visiting them. Though he was a little bit crabby by the time we'd walked from the playground to the ducks, it's a long walk for a ~2 y/o. He's doing great with his walking though, he hardly ever crawls now, only if he's really really tired and can't cope. We sat down to fed the ducks and man those things have got aggressive. I had to swat them away with the bread bag, they're basically trying to eat off Theo/Beth's head for bread. Viciously little machines...

It's been a super busy week at work with the Spark project that I've been working on. Quite frustrated and stressed out yesterday, but things are much better today because I feel like I got heaps done yesterday and today's been a nice sunny day.
Theo had a check-up with the physio yesterday, the same lady who came to look at Beth's head when she was little. The lady said to Sarah "yes it's a shame that wasn't caught earlier" which is so annoying because Sarah asked people about it earlier and we were told not to worry. Anyway, Theo just has some weak muscles in his legs and he should come right as rain in a few more months. She was also amazed at how big he was, Sarah explained that yes, he does love to eat his food up. The other night when we were having curry he...

Well since the crappy cricket of the last diary entry, it turns out that they're going to rip up the turf and replace it all. At a huge cost. To the taxpayer. That's me, I'm the damn taxpayer here. Not only do I get crabbed off at the crappy pitch, but now I have to fix it! Oh well.
It was Sarah's birthday the week before last. Everyone came over on Thursday and we had the traditional takeaways and Guinness cake. Last Saturday Mary came over to look after the kiddies, while Sarah and I went to see the Gannets. We got there with 25+ minutes to spare so we went next door to get a coffee. It took them SO long to make us two coffees, it was mental. SArah actually left to go and get us some seats on the tractor/trailer, while I kept waiting. Eventually after I...

What a crappy day Thursday was. After approximately 5 hours of sitting around and getting a small announcement every hour telling us "The umpires will do another pitch inspection in an hour" we were all told to go home. An utter joke. This article here explains it best I think, even though it's satire it's exactly how we felt! I was so annoyed with the whole thing, as I expect were the other ~8000 other people. I just can't understand how the pitch was that bad. 2 hours after the last rain they reported that it was getting worse, that was when the players were out warming up and the crowd were sure that the game was about to start any minute. I'm just so disappointed, I was really looking forward to seeing Australia play live. It's been ages since I've seen that, I think it was just before Sarah...

Wow, the cricket last night. We went from having no chance at all to being 6 runs away. So gutted that we lost, but we deserved to lose. I mean we played terrible apart from the magic man who I'd never heard of, but is now of course classified as an A1 deadset Australian legend. Marcus Stoinis take a bow. It's been a long time since I've been that nervous watching a cricket match.
So, this Thursday we're off to see Aus v NZ at the Napier Cricket Ground. What's the one day, out of the last 6 weeks, that it's due to rain? Of fucking course it's Thursday. I can't believe it. It's still supposed to be 29c though, so there's a good chance it'll just bit a spit here and there. I'm going to be pissed off if I have to sit there in the pouring rain though...

Well, two weeks into the new year and I'm only up to my second diary post. It's getting harder and harder to update the ol' diary I tell you, there's always something going on somewhere. By the time I get to sit down at the end of the I'm so knackered I can't be bothered trying to write anything. I'm forcing myself today, otherwise my brain is going to start leaking the old information. Not that there's any great information in here to leak, but you know.
Theo's starting to think about walking. He's been to the Dr for a referral, just in case something's wrong. But he seems to be doing all the right things, he's always pulling himself up and he can now get from sitting to standing, he just doesn't seem to like it. He's so fast crawling around I guess he's just happy doing it that...

It's been a busy few days here at J Road. We got back on Tuesday after a pretty uneventful drive back. Well I say uneventful, actually we did stop in Hamilton to catch up with Ben and Di which was really nice. Hamilton Gardens, I've heard lots about them but never been. They're quite amazing really, really nice little gardens, we went into Gate 2 which seemed to be the one for the kiddies to play at. And we had to stop a number of times for Beth to go and Pee. But we got back and the house was in perfect condition, the people who had been staying here obviously looked after it well.
We've had a busy week at home. Mostly stuff in the garden - pulling out all the weeds in the front garden (there were heaps and heaps) and totally cleaning up the little Rose Garden...

Day Two we headed down to St Heliers for some breakfast. We thought at first it was all a bit too flash for people with kids, but the place we finally took a gamble with welcomed us warmly and then trotted out the kids menu and some colouring books etc for Beth to play with. So that was really nice. We had a nice breakfast and Beth did a bit of people watching, Theo did a bit of bus watching (Beth's comment was that it was a very bus-sy day). Once we got back I took Beth back to the playground, we walked all the way there and she climbed up the first bit, climbed down (odd, I thougth) looked at me and said loudly "I NEED TO DO A POO!". Great, there's no toilet at this park! So I carried her back home. Poo completed, we then decided to...

Beth was quite good at sleeping last night. She took a while to go, it was all quite exciting in someone elses bed, but she finally got to sleep about 8:30pm or so. She woke up again at 11, I can't quite recall what for because by that stage I was fast asleep myself. She was then up and awake at 6:30am, which isn't too bad really considering her room is super exciting. Last night she said to Sarah "I wish I had a room like this" and then looked at the ground like we were the worst parents ever.
Once everyone was awake and fed, we set off in the car to Butterfly Creek. Took ~20 minutes to get there which isn't too bad. We were there pretty much on opening time too which worked well for the butterfly enclosure, as it wasn't packed with screaming children. Just ours...

Was woken up by Beth Christmas morning at 6am. Very excited because the Reindeers had eaten all the Reindeer food, plus Santa had eaten the pie that was left out for him. There was some concern because silly Santa hadn't had a drink of the water that had been left out for him. Theo woke up about 6:30am, probably due to all of the screaming (excitement) that was going on.
Man the kids got so many presents this year, I don't even think I'll be able to list half of them.

Beth got:
Some nice books
Some lovely clothes
A hamster house thing
A wooden cooking set
A swing
Binoculars.
A hoola-hoop
Some space icecream

Theo got:
A car set, which he nearly died of excitement when he saw
Some togs
Some jandels
Two new trucks (a noisy one and a wooden one)
A seal that swims in the bath...