As always it's been a busy few days!  I've gotten stuck into the Marathon training, I've downloaded a 30 week plan that you can view here if you're bored.  It's not quite 30 weeks out yet, so I'll just keep week one on repeat until it processes.  You can watch my process over there on the right with the Strava widget I've installed, it's linked to my Garmin profile thingy and my lovely new watch which I know I've mentioned is awesome but it is totally awesome.

We have Rusty visiting at the moment, we took him for a walk up to the shops last night but that walk was very little about Rusty and pretty much all about the excitement of getting an Icecream, and then begging all the way home to eat the bag of M&Ms I bought for Sarah and I.  Still it was fun, if a...

This'll be a big update because it's been quite a few days since I last updated, sorry diary, things get busy.

So LAST last weekend, on the Saturday afternoon I went to the first HopCon at Westshore.  I met up with a few workmates and we enjoyed an afternoon not quite in the sun because it was actually freezing cold, but we still had a good time trying the various beers on offer, most of which had been especially made for the festival. Sunday we went to the market in the morning.

The week just gone was the last week of school for Beth for this term, she started late in the term and it's gone quickly.

Granny arrived on Wednesday evening, the kids were very excited that she was coming and made little banners for her.

Thursday night Beth did her homework for the week and wrote a story...

Hello Diary! Another week has ticked by exciting exciting.  Beth's school seems to be going really well, there's been a few "Don't leave me here's" but overall she seems to be doing just fine.  Friday the School had a Pōwhiri for all the new students, parents invited, so we went along with Theo and it was really nice.  We were all welcomed to the school, the students performed a Haka, the headmaster said some nice words.  There was cake and biscuits (Theo's favourite part by far).

Thursday night Sarah baked cookies for the school's bake sale and took them on Friday.  I didn't see, but Sarah said there was a huge pile of cakes and biscuits.  And Friday when she went to pick up Beth and buy some she said it was carnage in there, people had bought everything.  So that's good I suppose, the school will keep running and educating our...

First of all, a big Happy Birthday to my Brother who turns the big four oh today.  I sent him a picture of the milk carton in the office yesterday, it said on it "Best Before 12th September".  Not sure he appreciated my brilliant humour as much as I did...

It was Beth's first Cross Country yesterday!  She did a great job, Uncle Age was there to support Joseph (and Beth) and got this great little video of her running.  Because it was Tuesday, it was Theo's day to spend with Grandma so Grandma and Theo went along too to support.  And while seeing Beth running along, Theo broke free of Grandma's clutches and joined in the race!  Uncle Age got a couple of little motion photos of Theo finishing the race after having joined in, and then walking back to Grandma after finishing [Click on the photos that pop up...

It was Beth's first full day at School yesterday and what a great job she did!  Both Sarah and I were quite nervous that she'd really not want to go at all, but Sarah said that when she arrived at School, Ms Sinden took her by the hand, Sarah said "I'll leave you with Mrs Sinden now, have a great day" and off she went.  When Sarah picked her up she said she'd had a great day, but hadn't really eaten much food so was extremely exhausted and hungry.  I suppose going from Kindy where they made her sit down to eat, to school where they say "Off you go, eat some food!" is a bit of a difference.

Before it was bath time I got her to sit down and tell me about her day, she's so tired though so it's a little all over the show.

But...

It was action-a-plenty at the Harman household yesterday.  Everyone woke up nice and early, Beth and Theo were excited to balloons already blown up in the living room.  We had our breakfast and I took Theo to swimming.  As previously mentioned, Jill is out for a while getting well, so we had a replacement teacher Denise take us.  I'm not sure if it was because Theo had wet himself during the night and was tired, he didn't like Denise, or what was going on, but he was a nightmare.  He usually loves swimming but this time all he did was grizzle, moan, complain and in the end when I took him out 10 minutes early, SCREAM.  No one was surprise when I took him out of the lesson, he was just being a right little poo head.  Denise had a very different lesson structure to Jill though, I think that...

It was Beth's last ever day at Kindergarten yesterday!  Today she's having a day with Sarah to do some shopping etc, before the big party tomorrow.  They had a lovely little celebration for her at the end of the day.  They got Beth to put the 4 seasons out around a globe, then the teacher would say something about a of Beth's life (You learnt to walk) then they'd all sing "The Earth goes round the sun" and Beth would walk around the sun thing to symbolise another year of getting older.  It sounds a bit cheesy written down and I suppose it was, but it was fun and Beth loved it.  We had photos of various years of her life and she'd walk them around and show all the children.  For the last photo, her wearing her Unicorn dress, she was pretty much forcing the children to look, it...

We came back from the Snow yesterday. We packed up the Snowy house nice and early, got everyone fed and into the car.  We said goodbye to our lovely host Sandy and Beth said goodbye to Sandy's daughter Snow.  Beth said she was quite sad to say goodbye to Snow, so I said that we might write her a little letter when we're back home.  We'll see if Beth still wants to do that next week, after the excitment of the coming weekend has worn off.

Edit: Here's a collection of photos and videos from the weekend.

Once we left Snowy House we returned our toboggans to the hire place, Sarah returned her jacket that she'd rented (I put she'd bought it in the previous post, I got it wrong, it was only rented) and then we went to see the Giant Carrot again.  It wasn't quite as exciting this...

It's Sunday and we're at the Snowy Waters Lodge.  It's a great place, huge with 4 bedrooms.  At the moment Beth and Jacob are sleeping in the end bedroom, Sarah and I are next door, Theo and Abbey are together and then Ben and Di are in the last room.

There's a big TV in the lounge, I've bought all my tech so that I can put the Chromecast on the TV for the kids, share the Wifi etc all that stuff. We left on Thursday at about 12pm, we went and picked the kids up from Kindy and they were both very excited that we were off to Taupo.  We headed through McDonalds to get a lunch then off we drove.  On the way we got stuck behind the most massive truck that was transporting what appeared to be a 100m long bridge part, or something similar.  How something...