Friday was a public holiday in Hawke's Bay, so I took Thursday off as well to make the most of the long weekend. We drove up to Taupo on the Thursday morning, stopping on the way to look at a waterfall. We didn't even know it WAS a waterfall, we just stopped because Beth's tummy was feeling funny and she needed a wee wee too. The waterfall was "quite awesome" and "very cool" according to Beth, though she was just repeating what we'd said to her about it.
We got to Taupo (after a few more stops) and checked into the Anchoridge Resort. Which as nice as it was, isn't really a restort. Motel would be a much better word, though it does have 3 nice pools, a little hot tub, a large "daddy sized pool" and a small kiddy pool that Beth could stand up in. Beth did some...

Busy week last week, work work work. Saturday morning I took the kids into the Stihl Shop to get my chainsaw looked at, the pull cord isn't working properly and it's very hard to start. Then we zipped over to Mitre 10 to buy some more weed spray (I'd run out), some Strawberry feed and some netting. Once home and Theo put to bed, Beth and I spent some time putting netting over our Strawberries so that the birds can't eat them. Silly birdies, trying to eat our Strawberries.
Once everyone had had a sleep, we went over to Holly and Adrian's place to collect Rusty Dog! We took him out to Birdwoods to the Dog show thing that was on, but sadly it started to pour with rain on the way there. I mean lighting and thunder, massive downpour pour. We got there and people were leaving in droves...

We're having pancakes for breakfast this morning, I promised Beth I'd make some so we did. She's eaten most of hers, but there's still some left on her plate. Theo in the meantime has eaten all of his banana and then pretty much a whole pancake too. He's a machine ol' Theo Deo.
We watched Hunt for the Wilderpeople last night. It's got 98% on Rotten Tomatoes so we expected it to be excellent. We were both quite disappointed, I mean it wasn't a terrible movie or anything but it certainly wasn't that great either.
Ok well since I wrote that I've been outside and moved all the wood that was left over from when they came and trimmed the walnut tree. It was getting huge and all over the place, now it's cut back. A LOT. Apparently that's good for them, it's just a shame that they also cut...

Hello from a rainy Sunday morning. We were going to go to the market today, but it's so wet and miserable and everyone slept in a bit too long because of daylight savings time. Beth's in bed asleep now (well, I hope she is) and Theo's sitting in his highchair having a bit of a micro grizzle I guess because I'm on the couch typing this instead of helping him to eat his lunch of a chicken leg (chopped up, people, I'm not mean). He woke up from his sleep after only 45 minutes, I'm pretty sure because the civil defense sirens were going off. Those things sound so spooky, even Beth says "Daddy, I don't like that sound". They do have a real air of horror to them.

Phew ok, update number two. Beth's definitely asleep, I know this because I have just been out doing some whippersnippering and...

Another two weeks fly by and another lack of updates by me. I think I've even given up telling myself that I'll get around to it soon, just have to try and get around to updating when I can.
So.. hmmm..... what's been happening? Last weekend I got up on the roof and cleaned out the gutters, that was exciting. We planted some new plants in the front garden, the bit of the garden that's looking nice, not the terrible bit. Beth helped and also stood on a few plants. Nothing major! Theo crawled around, I got out the mulcher we bought off TradeMe nearly a year ago and mulched some sticks. It's the first time it'd been used... Good to know that it wasn't a dud purchase.
We went and had icecream at the beach on Sunday afternoon, it was a lovely sunny day but it was quite cold...

One of the many lovely presents I got for my birthday was a Fitbit Blaze from Sarah. It's a very nice watch/fitness tracker, my only gripe is that it's not waterproof like my old one, so I have to take it off to shower etc. But I'm used to doing that now, so even that's not really a problem. Oh and charging it every few days can be a pain, but again that's easy enough to do while I'm at my desk at work. Anyway, my point was that our Health Insurance have a little scheme setup called Healthy and you can link up your Fitbit account to it. If you walk 7500 steps in a day you get 3 points, 10,000 you get 5 points and 12,500+ you get 10 points. There's other things you can do to get points, at the end of a year if you have...

Happy 3rd Birthday Bethany Bongles! Can't believe that you're 3 already. There's some photos from her Birthday Party yesterday. Sarah had organised a few people from Jenny's to come too, some of her little friends, but everyone piked at the last minute, same as a bunch of people for my 40th. I guess it's just what people do these days, it's a bit crappy though. Anyway we had the family here which is the main thing. Sarah (and Beth) had made a papier-mâché piñata, then decorated it with bees. Sarah also made an amazing Winnie-The-Pooh birthday cake, my contribution to it was to shape a few of the bees decorating it. We had a lovely little party, the weather managed to hold it together for us as well.
After the party Bethy tried to have a little sleep but didn't really manage, so I took her and Beth up...

I took last Friday off, so that we could whizz up to the snow at Ohakune. We set off about 11:30am, after Theo had woken up with a full car load of kiddie items and some parent items as well. We took the shorter road, the Napier Taihape which wasn't the best idea, in places it turned into a goat track. I had to get the GPS out of the glovebox (no cellphone coverage) to be sure that were still on the right track. Poor Beth got car sick again, but we were prepared this time with a little yogurt container. Beth was a champion too, she knew where she had to aim! So the carseat (and Beth's clothes) survived unscathed this time around. Phew. We drove past lots of little bits of snow on the ground, pulled over and touched a bit of snow by the side of the...

Wow, so much has happened since my Birthday. Well, maybe not heaps, but there's been a lot going on and I haven't written about it! Argh.
At the moment Theo is in his high chair, he had a terrible night waking up every hour from about 1am onwards. He had a massive temperature as well, I had to give him both Pamol and then a bit later on some Neurofen to help keep him cool. Even then he was a little space heater. I had a terrible night's sleep of course, basically I only got 3 hours because just as I'd drift back off to sleep Theo would wake up again, so I'd go down and sing to him and give him some milk etc etc until he finally relaxed enough to go back to sleep. It was a very hard night for everyone.
Today I stayed at home from...