Storms

We are getting some wicked heat during the day at the moment and this in turn is leading to wicked lightening storms at night.
From about 7pm onwards the skies get really dark and we have the joy of lightening all over the sky for several hours.
Yesterday it started at 7pm and finished about 11pm.
The sky was a light all evening with a spectacular electric storm but hardly any rain or thunder.
They say that there was about 1700 strikes of lightening last night across the Waikato area in just under 3 hours.

The whole sky just rumbles a low growl for several hours, luckily not enough to upset or worry the boys.

The only thing is that it manages to keep the heat until the rain comes down about 10pm, then you get wind and rain and it goes quite chilly for an hour.

New Shop

We have a new shop that has just opened round the corner from us.
A good old fashion Green Grocers

You know the type I mean, like our parents tell us about when they reminise or the ones you can remember going to with your Grandparents when they did their weekly shopping. The ones where the fruit and veg are huge and juicy looking, fresh and so inviting you just want to buy everything and race home and make a salad of some kind.
A friendly neighbourhood shop where you know the owners name - Paul - and they are always ready to help you with anything you want to know. And you know they have been up since 4am because that is when they have visited the fruit market to get the latest and freshest stuff.
If you don't know how is the best way to store a certain fruit or vegetable and want it to last, then just ask and advice is freely flowing.

We visited the shop last weekend prior to doing our weekly shop. I don't think we spent too much on the gorgeous items, but I did happen to have the receipt with us when we got to the supermarket.
I didn't feel that the items were too expensive in the Green Grocers, in fact it turned out that some of the stuff was way cheaper than the supermarket but others things were pretty much the same price.
So it was a little of swings and roundabouts, what you saved on one made up for the other.

As a friendly local shop then I will try my hardest to support it and hope that it stayes.
After all, it is nice to have the personal touch with shopping again like we had in the olden days.

Computer Problems

At some stage or other everyone puts up a post about this!

Our computer is fine, no problems there but our internet speed is in basic words 'crap'

Last year I adjusted our monthly amount so we never had to worry about using up all our usage. Went from 1MB to 5MB a month.

Never had any problems with it and it there ever was a problem with the internet connection then I just unplugged the modem, waited 5 minutes, plugged it back in, waited another 5 mins and hey presto everything would work again.

For the last week I have noticed that we are running ever so slow, I mean slower than dial up, if there is anything that slow anymore!

Once you had one page open you never stood a chance if you wanted to open another tab at the same time, it was like an internet death sentence!

So I finally called the company and asked if there was any problems in the area that we should know about?

His answer to me was 'Do you always run at that speed?' meaning we are running at 10x less than the minimum recommended basic speed.

So after having to unplug all the telephones in the house he did a quick line test, still running slow. Quick change of the filter on the modem and everything was fine but still slow. So now he has logged it with a technician.
So now we sit and wait for them to organise a tech to come and look at the exchange in the street, hopefully that will be before the end of the week and maybe by the weekend we will have fast internet yet again.

Sleeping

Whilst at the caravan Alex decided he didn't like sleeping!
When Grandma was with us we put a small tent up and the boys got to sleep in this.
Ben took to this very well and in fact ended up spending 7 or 8 nights in by himself.
Alex got fussy and decided that he didn't want to sleep in the caravan or the tent.
After getting annoyed and loosing my temper I told him to just go and sleep anywhere!

So he did, he took his pillow and blanket and snuggled on the grass outside the caravan.
It was a little cold this evening so he snuggled himself in a little cocoon on top of the pillow and promptly went to sleep.

This is him, all curled up and fast a sleep under his blanket.

We did finally move him into the caravan but not before we had checked that he was still breathing under the blanket because he had his whole face totally covered.

All our friends walking past kept stopping to find out what was going on and as they are all parents they soon laughed and knew exactly where we were coming from.

Christmas

Not the one in 11 months time but the one we have just had.
We were lucky enough to get to spend it at the caravan again.
Mum came over for several days to camp with us and we had some good friends who joined us on the day from their caravan.
Of course like any NZ Christmas day, it was spent outside in the sunshine with a BBQ for the main meal and leftovers for the evening meal.
So a mixture of chicken and steak for the big people and sausages etc for the little ones.
I have added some pictures for you to see us enjoying the sunshine.

Our little Chrismas Day camp

Of course we had crackers on the table at lunchtime

Steve cooking part of the lunch

And Gary in his sexy get up cooking the other half

He gained the apron for his birthday but decided he was feeling shy and so needed to cover the top with a little vest he acquired! We still had a lot of fun with him over it though.

So that was Christmas Day for us. I wonderful day of eating too much enough, and spending time with family and friends.

Life and Police

I feel like I haven't been here at all for the last few weeks!
I have been checking up on the blogs I follow, but with it being summer here at present I feel that there are always other things to do in the lovely temps we are having than sitting and blogging on the computer.
That doesn't mean I haven't been thinking about you all, I have, I have even got lots to blog about, I am just enjoying the summer at present.

I am also enjoying my new job. I have been there 2 weeks now and it is great. I now work in Cath Lab at the main hospital in Hamilton.
Cath Lab is the place you go for minimal invasive treatment of hearts, things like Angiograms and Angioplasty. 70% of the patients are older and have had some form of heart trouble, mainly Angina or even a heart attack.
It is very similar to Theatre (Operating Room) work although a little more relaxed and the patients are awake. I am thoroughly enjoying having to actually deal with patients rather than having nothing to do with them because they are asleep!
I am also learning a lot because my Cardiac knowledge was none exsistent to say the least.
This means I have been coming home knackered from working and learning so much. This will in time slowly ease off as I come to grips with things a little better.

Unfortunately, whilst I am on orientation to the department I am working full time, something I haven't done for several years!, so this is taking its toll on the rest of the family as well.
The boys are very tired by the end of the week and so weekends are very quiet as everyone recovers from a busy week.

Although if we keep having nights like last night, it will take us much longer to recover!
So what happened you ask.....?

We live in a nice area within Hamilton, unfortunately it is quite close to the University and so therefore many people have brought the houses in the area and then rent them out. This means you sometimes get people in the street who don't care or they are quite young.
The latter is the case in this story.
We have a house 2 doors down from us with young people in it and they are a pain.
They have noisy cars with big exhausts and love to drive them up and down the street several times in 5 minutes.
They have never had a party though and last night was obviously their night.
Now the music from the party was ok, it went on about 7pm and was never too loud that you wanted them to turn it down, it is also summer after all and so you expect a little music in the evenings whilst people are in their gardens.
The guests started to arrive and things were fine, a typical early 20yr olds party.
At 7.30 when I put the boys in bed, I noticed at least 30 people arrive in under 2 mins and when I went back to check on the boys I noticed at least another 20 arrive.
Over the course of the evening, the street started to resemble a carpark and you would have thought there was an important game on somewhere with the amount of groups that kept walking down the street towards the house.
As I mentioned before, the house was ok, the music was reasonable and yes there was a lot of people at the party but it was enough to make you realise that if something went wrong there would be ciaos!
I was starting to get a little restless about 10pm as I realised there were too many people there and they were all very young and that the Police were going to end up here sooner or later.
Unfortunately when a group ended up on the street outside our house at 10.30pm and smashed bottles I called '111'

Turns out I was caller #26 of the evening about the party but as I explained, the party itself was fine, it was the groups and crowds on the street that was letting it down.
Well within 15 minutes we had 12 Police here and the party was shut down. The Police went into regiment mode and suddenly there was a line of Police escorting the whole crowd up the street dispersing them away from the party.
It was an impressive sight to see.

So that was the excitment in the street for the year, may they behave themselves for a while otherwise I can see more people in the street complaining to the local council about them.

Home Again

The holidays have ended!
We got home on Friday evening and have happily spent the weekend tidying, washing and sorting.
We have been active in the garden, cutting the grass and planting more vegetable beds.
Also sorted out the summer flower bed and soon that will be ablaze with colour through the long summer days, although we are already half way through summer saving time, so on the downward spiral to winter already, man where does the time go.

Everyone is now set ready to go back to work, Daycare and Holiday Programme tomorrow morning.
Some long weeks ahead of us before Ben starts back at school, but hopefully we will all just slip into them nicely and without to much agro!

Have managed to grab 5 minutes to change the background on the page to a more summery feel to it, although due to having guests here today I still haven't managed to get the Christmas Tree down yet! Definitely an inside evening job than a during the hot sunny day job, so hopefully tomorrow night I will be able to dedicate it to getting all that sorted.
I am usually a stickler for getting the decorations down on the 12th night (Jan 6) but seeing as we were still away then, I decided that there was no bad luck in them staying up as we were pardoned because we were not here. If you know what I mean?

So tomorrow is the start of life being back to normal....!
Have a great week.

Where Are We?

We are on holiday at our caravan at the beach.

It is a dream, the weather has been up in the 24-30 degrees every day and we are all nicely coloured and healthy.

Santa was good to us this year too and all in all we are having a lovely holiday away.

Steve's hand is healing very nicely and we are very happy with it, so is the Physio come to think about it.

My neck is finally on the mend and am feeling much better.

So hopefully I will catch you all at the end of the week when we are home and I have better computer service.

Till then Happy New Year

New Year

Should auld acquaintance be forgot,

And never brought to mind?

Should auld acquaintance be forgot,

And auld lang syne?

For auld lang syne, my dear,

For auld lang syne,
We'll tak a cup o' kindness yet,
For auld lang syne.

Happy New Year to you all.
May all your dreams and wishes come closer in 2010
You deserve them all