There's a rat in me kitchen....

Last year we survived a mouse plague in Alice Springs, not to mention the hundreds of Redback Spiders who lived in our backyard (and occasionally inside the house) and the daily risk of coming across a deadly snake or two. We got used to it, and it was just all part of living in the desert.

When we moved back to New Zealand, we thought we’d left all the creepy creatures behind. However we chose to live right in the bush, and living in the bush has its own hazards. Recently, a family of roof rats have chosen to make their burrow under our deck and are now invading our kitchen every night – it’s the yuckiest wildlife experience we’ve been through yet!  Not only are they eating all our food and contributing to a rising grocery bill, but they are also leaving poo and wee everywhere and contributing to extra long hours of cleaning and disinfecting things. 

Big thanks to the guys from Pest Proof who are now on their 4^th call out to our house yet still remain calm and positive and totally happy to deal with my slight hysteria.

Other than that, September has been the weirdest month. One day we’ve been in an almighty hail storm, the next day we’re in the garden wearing T-shirts.

Thinking back to our Auckland days, September’s always been an unpredictable month in NZ. The great thing about the month of September is the promise of summer....it’s not too far away now.

Life at the moment is full of school and work and ballet and tennis and gymnastics and viruses and rugby and wedding planning. We’re happy (apart from the rats).

Goodbye Grandy Andy & Nana Hazel!

Andy and Hazel left us last night and flew back to Auckland, so it’s an empty(ish) house again.

I don’t think they ever expected to be in Wellington so long, nor did they expect to see so little of the city and so much of the hospital. But Hazel is on the mend, and we have our fingers crossed for her that the rest of her trip runs smoothly without any more incidents!

Thanks for coming A&H, we had a lovely time with you and I know that Molly and Alfie enjoyed some very special moments with you both. 

Kidney Stones, Rubbish, and More Rugby

Andy & Hazel have been staying with us this week, and were all set to fly off to Dunedin today.

However, yesterday poor Hazel managed to vomit her way around the Botanic Gardens and eventually ended up in hospital with a kidney stone. She now remains in hospital for a second night while Andy has flown off to watch the rugby in Dunedin (you’ve got to get your priorities right hey!)

So it’s been a funny old day today. We visited Hazel in her sick bed, wandered around the Wellington waterfront, meandering in and out of the rugby fans, we had a great game of netsocby (a cross between netball, soccer and rugby) in the park, and we ended up helping out at a Beach Clean Up in Island Bay.

Molly and I worked hard to fill a bin liner with rubbish, while Jake supervised from a wall. Meanwhile Alfie accumulated his own very large collection of rubbish in a pile at the edge of the beach. When we attempted to transfer his pile into our bin liner an almighty tantrum began because he wanted to keep all his treasured items of broken glass, bottle tops and paper. It took a lot of cajoling to persuade him otherwise, but the promise of staying up late for tonight’s game did the trick.

But our little boy was so tired that he passed out not long after 7pm. So it’s adults only watching the telly tonight. Happy Rugby World Cup everyone! 

The Rugby World Cup 2011

I think it’s fair to say that New Zealand is completely consumed with rugby mania at the moment.

Every time I leave the house I see All Blacks flags on cars and on garden gates. Every time I open the newspaper or switch on the radio or TV they are talking about rugby.

Even Molly’s school is obsessed – she’s been in constant rehearsals for a “Big Event” performance in a couple of weeks time, and this week she had to prepare a short talk for the class on her choice of any team in the Rugby World Cup (she went in dressed in her old school uniform yesterday, carrying a plastic wallaby and a toy snake - no prizes for guessing which team she chose to talk about).

Also yesterday, Alfie’s pre-school decided to paint each child’s face with the flag of a country who’s playing in the RWC. Not really fully understanding his background, the teachers randomly chose Argentina for Alfie. This was clearly an incredibly unfortunate choice for our little Falklands-born boy, although he is still too young to appreciate what it means and is unwilling to let it be washed off. Bath time soon though....!

Anyway, I have no idea on how to avoid the RWC phenomenon, and so to hell with it – if you can’t beat them...

With Jake up in Auckland for the opening game last night, the kids and I ordered pizza, got our flags out and settled down to watch the match.

Molly quickly got into the spirit of things, picking up on the rules and the scoring system faster than I ever did (I still struggle with the difference between kicks), shouting and cheering “come on boys” every time the ABs had the ball, and developing a complete beyond-her-years infatuation with Dan Carter.

Meanwhile the little rugby fanatic of the house who has recently started playing rugby every day at pre-school and chanting the haka at every possible opportunity actually fell asleep before the national anthems even began...

Jake's adventures with trees and the Welsh rugby team

Well what a great weekend! 

I (Jake) did a massive run on Saturday morning and most of it was up hill, we then spent the rest of the morning around some friends house, sitting in the sun and drinking coffee while Andrew (my running partner) and I recovered. 

In the afternoon we were doing some jobs in the Northern Suburbs and decided to get some fish and chips and sit on the cliffs watching the fishing boats come in – a little bit nippy but great end to the day.

On Sunday I decided to walk the talk and took the kids tree planting as part of the Living Legends event. The kids loved it and were really helpful, they planted (only the nice looking plants – per Molly's instructions), collected the rubbish, ate the sweets handed out to them and Alfie under Dad’s instructions very very nearly ate a worm.

We then stayed after the trees (2,500 of them) were planted to have a sausage sizzle with my work colleagues.

I then managed to squeeze in the first bit of the RWC 2011 events by taking the kids to the Welsh training sessions – Molly couldn’t work out why Wales were playing against Wales – I did say that was probably the only game Wales would win ;-)

Spring has sprung!

We’ve had a tough week, in and out of the doctors with viruses and eczema flare ups so we were delighted this afternoon when spring began quite suddenly!

We’ve got sunshine, we've got flowers everywhere in our garden, beer in the fridge and happy kids who are really enjoying the fact that they can potter around in the garden after school.

It’s especially great that they can do art outside without running the risk of their crayons melting and Alfie is particularly pleased that he is allowed to hunt for “cute” (?) spiders now we are no longer living in Australia.

I indulged myself a bit when we got home from school today and spent the afternoon sitting in a deck chair in the sun with a beer & a magazine while I watched the artwork, spider hunting and various other antics. These moments are surely what life is all about....