Gail Dickson .. my blog from Down Under

On the remainder of the Easter weekend …… we decided not to go anywhere on the Sunday so walked down to Browns Bay, got a coffee and headed to the beach for our now standard Sunday walk along the beach. Due to the fact it was much busier than normal and the fact that it was such a lovely day, we stayed for much longer than normal and even ended up in the sea. Came back up to the house after some lunch and filled the paddling pool up as it had got really hot. Found out you can fit two adults and two children in it!! It was obviously such a tiring day due to activity and heat that Regan fell asleep at dinner table and wouldn‘t wake up. We put her to bed only to find that she was wide awake and hungry at midnight! Took us a bit to get her back to sleep so we were exhausted on Monday morning when they got up.

Decided to stay around the house/shopping mall on the Monday as we were too tired to do anything else. It was a really good weekend and no regrets at all about not going away for the weekend.

This week at work has been as bad as last week so yet again, I’m feeling totally exhausted come Friday night. I remember Anne at Convergys complaining in much the same way as I’m doing now about a certain SI and I now completely understand what she was going through. I have decided that they go through a certain type of training before they are allowed on client site …. (grrrr)

Our new NZ driving licences arrived the other day too … not sure why it makes such a difference but it does. It gives us a greater sense of belonging for some reason … being officially part of NZ.

Tomorrow Kyle is off to a birthday day out to the zoo all day so it’ll be just me, Bobby and Regan all day … not sure what we’re going to do all day without him!

After my worst week at work since we got to NZ, I was extremely glad to see the Easter weekend.   Four whole days of holiday … yeah!   Have decided not to go away but to go to different places each day.

On Friday, we went to Glenbrook Vintage Railway … bit like Bo‘ness with steam trains and they also do Thomas days (although Friday wasn‘t one of them .. Just a normal day).   The steam train theme is definitely becoming a bit of an Easter thing though as this is the third Easter in a row that we‘ve done this.   Have decided that I must take after my grandad as I like steam trains … they are great to photograph.

Today we went to the Royal Easter Show which is a mix between the Highland Show and the funfair at the SECC at New Year.   We were trying to go the same day as the alpacas were on show as Melissa that I work with was in the show but managed to get the wrong day and it was sheep!   Not the most exciting of animals to watch.   Kyle and Regan went into the petting farm and clapped the calf, pigs etc since they couldn‘t visit Melissa‘s alpacas.

Then took Kyle to the funfair bit and he went on lots of rides … been years and years since I’ve been on the likes of the ghost train, big wheel etc but he dragged me on lots of them.

Not sure what we’ll do on Sunday and Monday …

The weather has been gorgeous recently … think Lynne must have brought the dodgy weather with her and she’s obviously taken it back with her too!

Bobby and I have taken to going to the beach sometimes at lunchtime during the week …   We take some sandwiches and drive about 5 minutes out of the city and then sit on the beach for half an hour to chill out.   It’s lovely and reminds us why we are here!

What a night!   As I said in the earlier post the boys were a bit hyper last night so when it got to bedtime we had a few issues getting them to go to sleep.   They were both bathed and tucked up in bed by 8.30pm but it was probably nearer 10.30pm by the time they calmed down enough to fall asleep!!   Bobby said that they had also been up during the night (I was too tired to hear them) and then they were awake at 6ish the next morning.

To make matters worse Regan had a really bad night and kept us awake most of the night so we were all a bit exhausted this morning.   Decided to take the kids to the beach and luckily the tide was out today so managed to see Kyle’s rock pools.   Both Kyle and Caylen managed to fall and get their shorts wet so decided to just let them go in the sea with their clothes on and keep their swimmers to change into.   By the time we got back to the truck, Regan was sleeping and the boys were soaking from head to foot.

They seemed to enjoy their first sleepover and yeah! the next time, they’ll be at Caylen’s!!   I wonder who we can get to watch Regan …..

Been another tiring, frustrating week at work. The SI is causing me some “opportunities” in most of my projects which isn’t good but I’m sure we’ll get there in the end (I hope!).

Bobby and I sat our driving theory tests this morning and both got 100% so we’ve now got temporary NZ driving licences. It’ll actually help a bit when we get the full ones as everyone asks for your driving licence as ID … you can’t even pay for your road tax online without one as that’s how you login.

We should really have taken the test long before this as it became very obvious as I was reading the book that NZ has some very different road rules that I didn’t know about and haven’t been doing! Oops!! Some of their give way rules are actually the complete opposite to the UK rules.

Caylen is here now for the first sleepover and to say that he and Kyle are a bit hyper is a bit of a major understatement. I think Bobby and I may collapse in a heap when we finally get them to sleep.

Had a really busy but great day today.   First thing in the morning we headed down to Browns Bay to have coffee on the beach … got there and found that the sea was in so had to drink coffee/play on the tiny little bit of beach that was left.   As ever the kids got wet so we came back to the house to get changed.   Decided that we needed to go for a walk somewhere so found the Auckland Walks page on the web and headed off to Mokoroa Falls near Waitakere.

The walk wasn’t too far or hard but it was through native bush so it was lovely (I love NZ Tree Ferns so got some good photo opportunities).   Falls weren’t as impressive as they could have been since it’s been so dry here recently but it was still very picturesque.   Coming back up was obviously very hard going for little legs as Kyle got quite vocal about he couldn’t walk any further because his legs were all tired out.   The fresh air and exercise worked wonders too as they were both in bed fast asleep much earlier than normal tonight.

Talking of NZ Tree Ferns … logged into Flickr properly last night for the first time in ages only to discover an email from www.schmap.com who were asking if they could use one of my Wellington Botanic Gardens photos (on my Flickr page rather than the family one) for their online guide to Wellington!!!   It’ll teach me to check my mail more often as the deadline for accepting had passed …   Oh well, maybe next time.

Forgot to tell you because I was busy telling you about Lynne visiting … Regan is now fully mobile!!   She started walking about just before Lynne arrived but over the three weeks Lynne was here, she really got steady and now she doesn’t crawl at all anymore.   Unfortunately for Bobby and I she is really quick so she is very tiring (as I’m sure Lynne would testify).

Kyle has now been fully accepted to his new school/Before and After Care so it’s now a case of waiting until they contact us to do the visits.   He’s on a bit of a growth spurt as well just now so is looking really grown up.   It’s a bit scary really …

Talking of being all grown up, he announced the other day that Caylen was coming for a sleep over!   Caylen was obviously doing similar at the other end as Katie (his mum) mentioned it the last time we met.   Initial discussions suggest that this may be happening next weekend but we’ll wait and see how things go.   Wish me luck!

It’s been a week since Lynne left now and it’s a strange feeling.   Because we’ve been here for so long on our own, it kind of feels like a different world to Scotland and our life back there.   When Lynne was here it brought that life back a bit but now she’s gone it feels a bit weird …. Like a dream or something.   I can’t explain it … I know she was here just over a week ago but it feels like so long ago now that we’re on our own again.   Very strange.

We went down to Browns Bay today as they had a South African fair (I have explained the SA connection before).   It was a lovely day and there was music, shopping, food etc so it was a really nice day.   Kyle and Regan got a bit hot though so ended up in the town pond to cool down!

Other thing we did today was book our driving test!   You are allowed to drive on your UK driving licence for 12 months from arriving and it suddenly dawned on us the other week that it’s getting near.   Thankfully, you only have to sit the theory test and don’t have to do a practical (too many bad habits!) so we’re now all booked in.   I’ll let you know how I go.