It's November already.....

Where did the last couple of months go? We haven't had a fire lit for a few days now and the temps are climbing back into the 20's (was 27 degs on Saturday). Spring has definitely arrived. And with the arrival of Spring comes the imminent arrival of my brother Mike and his family. Three weeks to go!!

Today is Sunday November 6th. The winter has ended and we've all crawled out of hibernation into a glorious Spring. We have been in New Zealand for over a year, surprisingly it feels like a matter of months. We still love it here, although we are more grounded about New Zealand in general. More on that in another post.

On Saturday 5th November, New Brighton pier hosted the annual Christchurch fireworks display, but this year we didn't venture out as we stayed indoors to look after a scared Summer. Fireworks night here is so different from those back in the UK. Not only does the display have to start later (9.30pm)to ensure it's dark, but it's also not cold and/or wet and it just doesn't "feel" right not hugging a hot chocolate or watching sparkler dust land on your knitted mittens and wondering if they're going to burn through.... Instead we had our friends Tanya and Richard around for a bbq before packing them off with their 1metre sparklers down to the seafront... we watched the display from a first floor bedroom with the dog under the bed!

So what's been happening in our lives. Initially I thought I'd be struggling to come up with anything remotely interesting to enter into this blog. But on reflection we've been very busy!

I started a new job in September. I am now a Network Library Assistant across the 16 libraries dotted around Christchurch! Yep - me a librarian! But no twinset and pearls here - no hair scraped back into a bun and half moon glasses.. ohhh no. Libraries here are far removed from the musty, dusty memories of UK museums, sorry, libraries. Here the libraries humm to the sound of the inhouse cafe's cappucino machine, of headphone-wearing children playing Xbox and Playstation games whilst sunk into comfy beanbags and of after school children running up and down the aisles of the homework zone. I love the job. I was in training for 4 weeks and they let me loose on the network around 4 weeks ago.

Ok, time for some "not so good" news. We had a car accident in September and wrote off the Rav4! Thankfully we were both relatively unharmed - the usual neck / back soreness and cuts but we're fully recovered. We had the accident on a Saturday, the car was assessed and written off on the Tuesday and by Friday we had the $$ in the bank - how's that for good service from our insurers (State Insurance - had to plug them!). By Saturday afternoon we had purchased our Subaru Grand Wagon - and we love it - even though it is automatic (I'm a convert!!).

On the home front we've been REALLY busy! We have had the back room (Mike's bedroom) totally renovated. We ripped out all the walls and Greg, our builder neighbour, insulated and replaced all the walls and re-aligned the ceiling! We then turned our attention to the bathroom and study/sun room and these too have been totally redecorated! And as if that wasn't enough on our plates, we have ripped out the bottom of the garden and put in another lawn!! Phew - even typing all that makes me tired! I had better insert some photo's as proof of our toil....

The back room is almost finished...


No more horrid dark blue rooms in THIS house! The bathroom is transformed in green...


And finally, a new lawn. This area was originally a vegetable patch, we kept the feijoa tree and the black boy peach tree but removed a small nut tree, a small feijoa, one of the avocados (re-homed at Pete and Veronica's!) and a few currant bushes... we still have more than enough fruit-bearing plants in the garden.