Friday, February 26, 2010

I'm back

Its been a busy couple of weeks. Been on a week long holiday with family and had a lovely time, but it took almost a week planning to get everything packed and organised to go on holiday. How does that happen? We had a lovely time and I'll do a seperate post on it when I get time to upload photo's.

Here's a quick update of what's been going on lately.

Organising - new filing trays for paperwork and a cork/white board combo for my to-do lists. I always keep them in my head and therefore ALWAYS feel overloaded with stuff to do. This way its out of my head and I feel less stressed. Phew.

Broken camera - we've had ours for a few years now and it's finally given up on us. I'm working on Music Man to invest in a new digital SLR when we travel home to Scotland. Nikon D70 is a preference.

Booked flights to Scotland - between packing and organising for holiday, this was the other thing that took up most of my time before we went away. Music Man's a procrastinator when it comes to spending cold hard $$, and I'm not as persistent as I need to be. I was that week though and we're (finally) booked to go home to see everyon on 7th Sept. I'll do another post on this too.

Bronchitis - After my trip to Queenstown and Wanaka I felt a little off colour. Trip to the doctor confirmed bronchitis. Eew! A week of amoxycillin, still no better and my lovely family and extended family had to put up with my hacking cough all week. Back to doc on Monday and stronger antibiotics this time. Its working, I can feel it.

Doctors - on the aforementioned trip to the docs, we had Master L's 15 month check up which included his vaccination catch ups, so my poor wee baby had to get 3 injections that day. Its my commitment as a parent to protect him and the wider community from the diseases that these vaccines are created for, but boy, it still hurts to watch your baby being assaulted by a nurse with needles. Poor boy.

Weather - Summer arrived this past fortnight, oh, just about 10 weeks late. Its been great, in the high 20's, but the Slip Slop Slap routine is not that romantic and protecting my babies skin (and mine) from the harsh New Zealand sun is a huge chore in itself. I've decided that 25 degrees celcius is my ideal temperature, when it hovers pre 30 degrees I get sloth like.

The usual routine this week. Pre-school run. Nightly wakings from both Master and Miss. Catch up with friends. Pop in on the in-laws. Emails and phone calls. On top of all the other obligatory chores like laundry, cooking, baking, folding, hoovering, wiping, cleaning, cuddling and the same all over again and again. I feel like I'm caught in the Bermuda Triangle some days and can't escape. Oh, wait, that's just being a stay at home parent.

So, after my post on my holiday, I'm afraid that there will be no more pictures for a while. Unless with brute force I can convince my camera to start working again.
Will my blog be boring without photo's?? Your comments please! I love colourful blogs with great writing and lots of pictures, but I don't want to look at mine in a few months and get disheartened and stop writing because I won't have a camera until September. I need to know that someone other than me will read all this rubbish I write, sans photograps. Mum, you're bound by family law to read this regardless, so, sorry you don't count. Call it unconditional love.

Monday, February 8, 2010

It's smokin', baby

I'll start by showing you this. Click play to watch.




Whilst I was busy for 2 minutes having fun with the kids, this happened.


A word of advice. Do not try to "fast forward" the rise on bread dough by placing it on a hot ceramic hob. If you do, stay close to it and switch it off after a moment! Never leave it switched on with the loaf tin on top and get distracted for just a second as you will see smoke billowing from your cooker and have to salvage it like this.

To make something like this.

My beautiful bread was rising with a tasty mix of seeds and oats as a topping. As I ripped the dough off the smoking mess, some of my new bread rolls were sprinkled with the aforementioned topping. Interesting! Note how ununiform the shapes are. It kills me to show you this.

I'm grateful to this extractor fan on high.

And these kitchen bi-folds fully open.


I am not impressed that there's no bread in the house. I am impressed that the fug of smoke lifted and there is no residual smell. Thanks fan and doors :o)

Pah! Who needs homemade bread anyway.

One saving grace? I made perfect melt in the mouth meatballs tonight. I'll share that with you another day.

Oh, and I've got bronchitis. So does Ella. I knew there was something not quite right.

Sunday, February 7, 2010

Planes, Facials and Sailing


I've had a very indulgent couple of days.

The next three things are something that I don't get very much of these days.


Hot coffee, and I mean hot coffee. I'm used to drinking lukewarm stuff. Reading my book in daylight hours and pamper time.



Me time. I don't get a lot of that these days. Looking at this photo I can almost see why two people have asked me if I'm expecting recently. NO! I'm not pregnant, I just like eating and forget to hold my tummy in when having my photo taken. I'm human.



Music Man works for a company that takes partners on Regional Meetings once a year. Lucky me! Whilst he was having his very important meeting, I got to relax, go for a walk into Wanaka in the South Island of New Zealand and get back for a small pamper session in the day spa. A facial. Honestly, It was so indulgent I almost felt guilty. Almost.



I didn't get any photographs of Wanaka. But did get some photo's that capture the effervesence of Queenstown, probably the jewel of New Zealand. This doesn't even honour the beauty of the place, but maybe some of its serenity. It's a busy bustling tourist area, but its still so wonderfully awe inspiring and serene. A contradiction in terms.

We were lucky enough to have an Americas Cup yacht racing experience.




This is one of the tour guides giving us the lowdown on where not to put our fingers. Yes I wanted to keep mine, so I listened very carefully. The ropes can have up to 4 tonnes of weight on them at any time, so I wasn't taking any chances. Yachts of this size normally have a crew of 17 when racing, we had a crew of 4, plus the tourists (us) on hand to help. We got to grind and help with the tacking back up the lake. I'm not one to indulge in deep water. 10+ knots on no wind, I think I may have just wet myself if there had been more than a whiff of a breeze that day.

After that it was off to the Gondola for lunch and a couple of runs down the Luge before heading to the airport. Man, the Luge was so much fun! I could have gone another few runs and taken the men on. The competitive nature in me wants to beat the boys. I've been like this all my life.





Fortunately for me, Music Man is so much more competitive. I left the racing to him. Next time boys, next time!

What a view.

It was a wonderful couple of days.

However. There's always got to be some lowlights.

Arranging three lots of people and day-care to look after my two kids for just over 36 hours - a mission I'm not willing to do again that readily. I almost cancelled going. Twice.

Packing for yourself is a small task. Open case. Chuck in the basics. Curse yourself when you haven't packed some essentials.

Falling into the pool very ungracefully in front of Music Mans colleagues - priceless! Gutted that I then had to blow dry and straighten my unruly hair when I'd done it the day before. Plan was no to do this. Hmm.

Going to bed with indigestion. Over indulging in food is so much fun. Until then.

Kids survived. I survived. I enjoyed myself actually. Don't want to do it again for a while. But I had fun.

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