Hunt Catch Up

1 month down and already the pictures are coming in thick and fast over at Rinda's place for this years Summer Scavenger Hunt

I have started off really well, I have 6 out of 21 with another 2 to post about.

#2 Peforming Arts Theatre

#15 A Fire truck

#11 Animal in a Zoo

Further animal in the zoo

 

#4 Airplane

#17 Candles

My favorite picture so far has to be the Tower as I went to so much trouble to capture it.

#8 A Tower

I have pictures for #10 - outside bench and also #14 - Stained glass object, hopefully they will get posted sometime this week.
Like many others the weather is not playing nice to obtain #12 - cloud shape, but I know we have several more months to go so no worries there yet!
Luckily winter is not getting in the way of any of the pictures this year, last year I do remember having no chance of finding a bride as people just don't have outside weddings in winter here! Although I must say I can't remember seeing too many windmills here but I think a trip to the wind farm on the far away hills may be called for.

I am not on instagram or flicker, so all my pictures can only be found here on my blog, but I have given them all the same label 'treasure hunt 2013' so you should be able to find all the related posts to catch up on all my finds.

Hope the hunt is going well for you, thanks for stopping by.

Catch Up Time

Even though there has been the odd post I really haven't got totally back into blogging since the holiday time. Hopefully I can get this sorted as the pictures are mounting up in my file waiting to be loaded into a post.

Grow Your Blog Party

Firstly, welcome to all my new followers. It is so great to have you here and thank you for stopping by. You are most welcome whenever you feel like it, please don't think you need an invitation to drop on by, the door is always open.
It is lovely to meet new people and see how the other half are doing things, with this in mind I still have a lot of blogs to go and visit (something like 400 in total) so I may be busy for a little while jumping around the place saying Hi to people.
If any of you are interested in meeting some new people, then pop on over to Vicki's Place and go on a little blog hop to meet some new friends.

Work

My first week is going well and the people are making me feel right at home.
They are trusting me from the word go and so each new day I go in I am being allowed to do a little bit more. This is helpful as it is making me feel like I am there rather than spending a whole week just standing around observing and getting very bored and frustrated because I am not allowed to touch anything or anyone (patient that is)

Garden

Our garden, as I am sure you will see throughout this year is a work in progress. At some stage I will do a rather long post about our back garden and where it was when we got the house 5 years ago and where it is now.
It is easy to just say that at one point the far end was 1m lower than the top end and there were no steps to get you there, just a nice slope down.
So over the last year we have been shipping in soil on a slow basis and leveling it off. As this is a work in progress then we have also been making sure other areas of the garden are kept looking nice.
This past weekend we tackled an area that I had always wanted to get tidy but just never did anything about,
The succulents sat outside the garage.
The next 2 pictures show you the area in the distance and the mess it looked. Please note these pictures were not taken with the succulents in mind, I forgot to take a before picture at the weekend, so I went back through my files to find something that showed you the area, sort of.

There were several of them, all sat around in pots. We had had lots of succulents when we lived in Auckland 5 years ago. When we left we took little pieces of the ones we liked and potted them when we got here in Hamilton, however that is all we have done with them so they have become right at home in their pots and nothing else has happened to them, well apart from living outside the garage door that we don't use. Many of them had out grown their pot and 1 or 2 had even become root bound in the pot!

I wanted to build a wooden flower box to house the succulents in just where they were but when we started looking at it the price was slowly creeping upwards and I only wanted to keep it simple.
So I discussed with hubby what I wanted and he made a few suggestions and suddenly away we went.

As we took the chimney down a few years ago then we still have several hundred bricks in a pile around the place, so he suggested we use them. Glad we did in the end as it is now in keeping with the other flower areas around the garden.

We culled a lot of the plants as some of them had become just too big for what we required. Even though we separated them to smaller pieces we just didn't need so many of the same thing around the garden.

I got given the Pukekos as a leaving present when we moved from Auckland. I was telling the boys how I would like some garden ornaments (maybe a frog) to place round the succulent area and hubby remembered we had these. So he found them in the garage and I think they look great in their new home.

Really happy to have finally cleaned up an area that we see and pass every single day. Lets just hope the succulents are as happy in their new bed as they were in their pots.

Catch Up

A quick catch up on things that have been happening.

You may remember me mentioning that we had found a camera at the bottom of our garden. Well we haven't heard anything! Not sure if that means the young man was unsuccessful at getting in touch with his mates or just that he thinks some stupid lady came in asked him to help her and he can't be bothered! I will give them a call sometime this week to maybe give him a gentle reminder and see what happens.

I am still off sick. The numbness and tingling in my arm is getting better though, although still getting lots of aching down the arm. However yesterday I suddenly got pain on the right side of my neck. Bad enough to render me useless! I was in PAIN. Steve had to help me undress as I was unable to raise me right arm to get sorted for bed.

I went to the Doctor's today and she has started to try and hurry up the Specialist appointment, or at least to get a referral for the MRI Scan so we can see if anything is going on.

She gave me some strong pain killers, that apparently will knock me out make me feel good, but I am yet to take any because I am at home today with Alex and I really can't get sleepy and zonk out for 2 hours with him here, although my usual pain relief has given me a few hours relief whilst snuggled on the settee watching movies with Alex.

The doctor also gave me a soft collar to wear. Was uncomfortable at first but made life a little easier as I was walking home.

If this all comes back eventually as just a strained muscle I will be very '#%@* off' to say the least, well I will be grateful it is nothing sinister, but frustrated that it is something so simple yet something able to render me useless for several weeks!

My sign off button that was playing up is still managing to work correctly now, so husbands do have their uses!

The Advent Swap is going really well, I have had some lovely cute things in my gifts and am thoroughly enjoying opening a small gift each day and trying to decide what I can make with my new item. I have even found some new blogs to follow from the other people involved in the swap.

So life goes on, but at least you know whats up,

Life

So I have started my new job, well I have had lots of education towards my new job. We actaully start the vaccinations in 2 weeks time. But so far so good.

Steve is busy as at work, he also suddenly has lots of education that has come his way, so nights of study and long days at work.

Ben is at school and loving it all, well apart from swimming! Yea I know, the boy that loves swimming is not enjoying it at school, turns out, after some investigating, that he is finding school swimming cold and boring. He is so much more advanced than they are doing.

He has new words to learn each week and we are progressing nicely with them.

Things like "I, we, and, went, mum, dad, got, a, it, at"

He will be reading before we know it!

Alex is still loving Daycare, although he does get a little clingy when we go to leave, but we are not worried as we know he has a ball 5 minutes after we have gone.

Today is not a daycare day, so after 2 weeks of fulltime, I think he is looking forward to a quiet day at home with mum.

The cat is progressing well and you would have thought she had always lived here! She is a very big suk and has made herself right at home. We have no worries with her and have even started to let her explore the garden. She loves watching the boys play with their toys and even tries to join in. Will tell you more about that in another post. Oh and Alex has choosen a name for her, well he gave the cat the name and it seems to have stuck.....the cat is called "Barnie"

Or in Alex's world it is called 'Barnie the Cat' because he also has 'Barney the Dinosaur!'

Ben has accepted this because he knows he is allowed to name the next cat we get hopefully this weekend

Blogging just seems to get a backseat at present, but it doesn't help that we lost internet connection for 36 hours due to all the rain we had at the weekend! But now I am not at work fulltime maybe I will be back online a little more.

So that is our family this week. Look forward to catching up with all of you during the week.

Have a good one.