second weekend - more house hunting.......

Chris writes….

 

Sunday night, tired after another weekend of driving round the area looking at houses and, more scarily, land.  Richard has one of his "Mad Dog" plans afoot to buy a plot of land and build a dream house on it.  Hmm, I'm not convinced it will be as simple as that!  There do seem to be heaps of plots available, most with roads and services already in.  Maybe I cold have an Aga after all!

 

Saturday morning started with our usual pancake fest.  Lana made an obscene amount of very yummy pancakes with crispy bacon and aside from setting off the smoke alarm and waking Kirsty up, she did a good job.  Not so with the chocolate brownies.  There was nearly enough sugar in the packet, so she topped it up with some from the bowl – the salt bowl.  Yum yum L  And to think how much we were all looking forwards to them.

 

Spent the rest of the morning teaching the children how to tie their school ties.  Shocking that they've reached their age and never had to tie one.  They are both still unimpressed with the uniform, but just need to get used to it.  To make life more complicated, there are 'formal' and 'informal' days at school.  'Formal' means with blazer and flesh coloured tights (called stockings over here), while 'informal' means no blazer and blue tights.  Formal happens on high days and holidays and also as a punishment for not wearing the informal correctly.  I've met a girl who had to wear formal for a week as punishment for not having her shirt tucked in!  So, we need to keep our wits about us. 

 

I've got fed up with driving Richard to work and picking him up every day, so today he bought a second hand bike from Trade Me (NZ version of eBay).  He's been in the garage for a couple of hours muttering about bend axles but as the garage has come with a fully equipped mechanics shed (lathe included) I think he is in his element.  It looks as though it might only just last him until his trusty bike arrives in the container in November, but beggars can't be choosers.  It's only about 6 miles in to work and without his Wednesday nights, he'll be needing the exercise.