Life is good. In fact life is very good. Not perfect, but not far off, and long may it last. To make it perfect? Well the weather would be a little better, not much, the income, that is on the up would already be up, and the children would do what they ask, when I ask at least SOME of the time!!!! Actually I really only mean the last one. Endless sunshine would be boring (little man on shoulder “Yes Michelle. Really, it would Michelle.”), and it’s quite nice knowing that our years of money worries (mainly because I’ve never been good at spending money like I didn’t have much), should be coming to an end. Like sometimes the anticipation of Christmas is better than the event itself.
Add to that today is a holiday, the sun IS shining, I am writing this sitting on the house deck watching Ian move his highland cattle (OK I’m watching the screen but I only have to peek over the top!), large mug of tea in hand. We have lovely people staying with us who are destined to become firm friends I feel, Rust is giving us endless pleasure playing with our visitors 6 month old choc lab Hettie (no, no quarantine rules if you meet certain criteria here), our hay is finally in (and dry!), Juliet’s baby has finally arrived, is beautiful and has not caused me to lapse into bouts of unbearable broodiness, the 5 girls are getting on famously, the magpies are singing, I’ve done my walk and am feeling good that I got up on a holiday at 7.15am to do it, we have a trip to the UK approaching rapidly, last night was spent by candlelight on the deck in T-shirts listening to cicadas, work is OK, Eric is happy in his job and doing sooo well and… well you get the picture. Eric was gone when I woke up. He is sussing out the trout fishing south of Tirau at a point recommended to him recently.
We are so enjoying having Rosie, Bryan and clan here. Their girls are gorgeous, such a credit to them. Ellie is sooo sweet. Very Sophie-like as in Sophie Hits Six etc (this will be going over your head if you don’t have children - sorry). She is so loving trundling about the place in Alice’s old red gummies feeding chooks, moving stock and bossing the dogs around like you wouldn’t believe. She has acquired 2 more big sisters and either H or A are constantly carrying her around or playing with her. No, I know, 7 years don’t need carrying but they are all happy so who cares. Lucia (pronounced Lisia) is quiet, no was quiet! I have now decided she is definitely not. She and Alice made a huge din in the car driving back from Hamilton yesterday they were laughing so much. Abi is a year older than H, so mature and confident in a nice quiet way. I find her company a real pleasure. And Rosie and Bryan are just so grateful for having Cedar Lodge at their disposal to chill out in, in between the stress of tenders for house buying, all their supposedly transferred money going astray, over a weekend (they found it on Monday evening!) etc etc. I am guessing they will base themselves here for a few weeks until they do buy a house but they plan to do a wee bit of travelling when our 2 go back to school and there is a house in NP they can call theirs. This is a really weird phase in the life of an immigrant. More money in the bank (well if it gets here!) than ever in ones life but of course you are technically homeless, of NFA!!
Last week Rosie, Bryan and the girls went down to New Plymouth house hunting. They came back with a list of 3. Obviously it is top of their list of priorities to get a home sorted out. Unfortunately they missed getting the hay in. After a few very stressful huge downpours of rain after the hay was cut on Sunday night, we finally got 2 paddocks baled on the Wednesday and the 3rd on the Thursday. The timing was not good from our point of view, Eric and I were very tired last week and I was teaching in Hamilton on a VTC on Thursday and Friday (a VTC always means a 6.30am start and not home much before 6.30pm). R+R, as always, kindly bought the ute over and helped get the hay in on both evenings. They had the girls all day Thursday and by the time I got home that evening there was not much left to do. The plan had been that Robyn and the girls would stay for a fish n’ chip supper but they had to get back home. In hindsight it was a good thing because Eric and I were able to just blob out and have a, much needed, early night. Instead they came for a BBQ on Friday night. Camilla (Zimbabwean family) came over also on the Thursday night as she was doing a few days with the Scotts (she and Sarah are great pals) and had her first driving lesson pulling a trailer of hay. She was really good! I think she may have driven an automatic before but never a manual drive vehicle. Hope Her parents didn’t mind!!
Thursday was a good day. I had a text from Eric to say his pay review had been bought forward 4 weeks and he had a good rise. He had been summoned into the office to see the partners and walked in trying to work out what he could have done so wrong that demanded a grilling from both partners! He soon realised he was not their for that as they said it had not gone un-noticed that he had had a good billing month in January and that they were bringing his pay review forward and giving him a bigger increase than last time which means he has had a 33% pay-rise in 5 months! Sounds good but 33% of nothing is nothing. Don’t get me wrong, I am not expecting any more and he is on the absolute top wack for a new grad, and that would be if he was working in a city firm, so he doing really well. I can see the growth in him and his confidence growing by the week. As I keep saying he could not have landed with a better job.
Friday day was nightmare, well coming home was. I hate doing a VTC on Fridays. Everybody, especially me, is in wind-down mode from lunchtime onwards. I potentially had 18 to feed that night as I had told Camilla to tell her parents we were braai-ing if they wanted to join us. Knowing I wouldn’t be home until later and the Moyes were due back from NP at lunchtime, I left a list of jobs with H+A, tidy up and do a coleslaw, fruitcake, cauliflower cheese, potatoes etc for supper. I got back to find Eric stressed out and trying to rescue a cheese sauce. Alice had done NONE of her jobs except bake (a perfect I have to say) fruitcake and start the cheese sauce with not enough cornflour as we had run out. She had dug, and cleaned potatoes for 6 (I had told her we may be feeding 18) and generally was seriously in the dog box. I was soooo cross with her I cannot tell you. It wasn’t the sheer laziness of sitting around reading, swimming, using the computer all day that got to me. It was knowing that Eric and I were shattered, that we had people coming for supper and we were out the house all day. It was the lack of consideration that got to me. Anyway, the Moyes were horrendously delayed and didn’t get back until 6.30pm-ish, the cauliflower cheese was rescued and we all ended up having a very pleasant evening. And the weekend? Well Eric and I did nothing. That must be close on a record! We sat chatting for much of the time with R+B, a bit of swimming, a bit of sunbathing (it was sunny and cloudy if that makes sense) and lots of reading. Boy we needed it though. Alice did announce that she had arranged for her and Abi to go over the road to horse ride on Saturday. I went up with them as Ellie also wanted to go and I wanted to be sure Lyn was happy with another 7 year old there (her daughter is about that age so I guessed she’d be OK with it). Whilst there I took a good few photos and came back telling Rosie that I left Ellie riding a quad bike! Rosies face was a picture of horror!! In fact Ellie had sat on Jarrods, stationary quad while I took her photo! (Jarrod is 6!) She did have a ride on Hazels pony and Abi and Alice rode this huge horse. I will try and post photo’s but photobuckets upgrade has put me off as I now can’t use the bloomin’ website properly. I will try though.
Back to work for one day on Monday and now Tuesday is a holiday. Time to drag myself out the sunlounger to post this and find some breakfast.
