Saturday, November 29, 2008

Hope everyone in the US of A had a lovely Thanksgiving and gave lots of thanks for the Prez-elect!!!

We didn't have the forethought to get a Turkey early enough for it to thaw in time to eat on Tday so had a roast chicken instead :-)

Today I am manning a stand at a mall for our Engineering programme. I've never done such a thing before so it will be interesting to see how it goes. Not a big fan of malls, but so it goes.

We tried to add another dog to our family but it did not work out. He terrorised Samson and Liam was not so fond of him either. It didn't help the situation that he was marking the entire house as his territory in the only way dogs know how. BLECH! So he went to another home that would have more time to provide the guidance he needs. He was a very cute and sweet little guy though.

Sunday, November 23, 2008

Oooops, another unexpected hiatus.

I must admit, plenty has happened since I last wrote.

We have now been living in our very own house for over a month. Unfortunately, our old place did not get rented until...officially today I think. So we paid about 6 weeks of extra rent, not fun, but worth it to have our house!

The house is great. Of course it has issues, but nothing horrible. The funniest part of it is that we have a white picket fence! How cheesy is that? It is also one story sorta ranch style. Those of you that know me would know that I would never have expected to buy a ranch style house in the 'burbs. I love it though, it's a cool little suburb that has a great café called Aunt Daisy's. They even have life music regularly (which we've yet to attend).

We have a massive back yard! We just bought ourselves an EnviroMower. It has a rechargeable battery and is quiet (for a lawnmower). It seems to work quite well in it's first use yesterday.

Work has been quite busy, we have our national liaison seminar for a few days last week. Luckily it was here in Wellington so I didn't have to travel to attend. I always enjoy the times when we are all together for a few days. We have a couple of events coming up that I've been busily planning as well.

Liam is now 9 months+. He's a master crawler now and is just an awesome little boy. He's becoming so much more aware of everything around him. Unfortunately that also means he is hitting the stage where he gets upset when one of his parents leaves the room. That has just happened in the last week or so. He just does a little bit of a grump right when we walk out but we'll usually just pop our heads back in and make him laugh then he is okay with it (so far). I really worry that he will become one of those children that cries their head off when left at childcare. I'm hoping because he has already been there for so long that it will not happen (fingers crossed).

More about the house? 3 bedroom, bath with separate toilet, some storage space under house (not sealed like basement though). We get all day sun, have a little view of Porirua Harbour from the back yard. We have a few trees. I've done a little DIY work so far. Replaced the separate hot/cold taps in kitchen and bathroom sinks with single mixer faucets.

Also, as we are going to be in the Philippines for a month we were looking for housesitters (yes plural as we feel the house is big enough and it gives more attention to the house and Samson. Well, one of the housesitters we found had just moved to NZ from the states and was staying in a motel in Porirua. So, we offered to let him stay with us until we leave for PH and he just moved in yesterday. He's a really nice guy with a husband and twin (almost) 5 year old boys. The fam is still in the states figuring out their move. It's a bit funny having a housemate but I think it will work out fine, plus we are just so relieved to have people to take care of Samson while we are away.