It's Been a While...

Sorry, readers. :(
Here's a bit of a review of what I've been doing during my absence.

Bushwalk in Hunua with the homeschooled teens
Back row: Suz, Ruth, Marieke, Toby, Andrew
Front row: Bee, Essie, Becks, Ben, Dad, Jarrod

Bee, Ruth, Es

Our Bible Study celebrated its third birthday this year. The six of us went with two of our mums to Mission Bay for lunch, then to Kiwi-Yo and Savemart Onehunga. It turned out to be one of our not-so-photographic days, so I only have a few photos like the one above.

: : Celebrated Essie's 16th : :

: : Dad turned 50 : :

: : Celebrated Danielle's 10th birthday : :

: : Tried some cake design : :
This is a Mocha Layer Cake

: : Trip to the Martha Mine in Waihi : :
Tyres in top left photo are worth $20,000 each!!
Bottom right photo: I found a helmet tree!!! :P :P

Dad, Mum, and Laura went to Wellington for a couple of days
 so my dad's family could celebrate his birthday with him

: : Played with Monique's donut maker : :

How cute is this? Maria's three by the way. . .

: : My bro turned 14 :O :O  : :

: : Made this scarf for a charity : :           

: : Stayed with my cousins in Stratford when Dad and I went down for his cousin's funeral : :

: : Maria had Laura on her lap, but she'd slipped off by the time I got the camera : :

Stratford - Day 6 - Wednesday December 28th

Written January 4th.

On Wednesday, December 28th, our second day at the campground in Stratford, I slept in (surprised? lol! =)) and Mum did some washing.

And it may come to me later, but right now I don't have the slightest clue about what we did all day!

Yay I remembered: Dad took Nana to the hospital (which was like an hour or something away so they were gone for ages), and Mum took the rest of us to check out the shops in Stratford. Most of them are little Asian shops and stuff, no major chains or anything. Diana and Bryce bought backpacks, I got a new lip gloss, and a wooden make-it-yourself Eiffel Tower...which is usually for little kids...so yeah anyway not sure where I'll put it yet! I think everyone else got a couple of little things.

However at one stage we must have done some shopping, and in the evening Uncle Mike, Aunty Sonia, Nana and Lucus came for a bbq. The campground gave us the key for the big, nice, new, silver bbq! well ok I guess the food doesn't taste any different just because the bbq looks nice, but anyway! lol =D

After dinner we pulled out our new chocolate fondue fountain (Thanks Uncle Bill and Aunty Melissa!) to try with the strawberries we'd been given. The fountain worked fine, but melting the chocolate buttons was interesting! We don't actually have a microwave, and consequently most of us aren't that great at using one. So I put the choc buttons in for 2 minutes, but didn't even think of pulling them out to mix them! Yeah...you get the idea! Uncle Mike, the baker, came to the rescue though... =)

And that was about it for that day! Wow this post is a bit shorter than most of my previous ones...lol!

Au revoir =)

Stratford - Day 5 - Tuesday December 27th

Written 29th December




Breakfast...mmm!! lol

Tuesday, December 27th saw the end of our family get-together. Everyone was up early, and busy cleaning, packing up, and cooking the last of the leftover food for breakfast. Yum, I love a cooked breakfast! We had to clean the entire campground, so that kept us all busy.

We had planned to stay at the campground until Friday, but another large group was scheduled to arrive at 2pm, and Uncle Mike had booked us in at Stratford Top Town Holiday Park until Friday. So we, along with everyone else, packed  our belongings and prepared to transfer. This time we hadn't packed so well, and the result was that we couldn't fit everything into the van. Oops! But Uncle Mike came to the rescue, and transported everything we couldn't fit, in his work van, to the new campsite.

 No one was in any hurry to leave, thereby putting an end to our great weekend. We all just hung around, talking and whatever, until about midday, when we were required to vacate the campground. Slowly we said our goodbyes, and one by one everyone left. Last of all, we piled into the Burton's van, and drove to Stratford, or specifically, the campground in Stratford. Torn between two accommodation options, Mum finally chose the larger backpacker room with 12 beds, and attached lounge, dining, and kitchen, (which we had stayed in the previous year), over the 4-person self-contained unit that we could have squeezed a few more beds into, thereby losing most of the lounge space.

One that difficult decision was made, we unpacked the vast majority of our belongings, and scavenged the bags/boxes of food for something for lunch.


Later that afternoon, Dad decided to drop in to Uncle Mike and Aunty Sonia's to see what they were up to that night, whether or not they wanted  to catch up that night. I tagged along with my laptop in the hope of an internet connection, and Jarrod and Monique for no particular reason.
Aunty Sonia kindly looked for the information I needed to connect to their wireless, but it wasn't to be. instead she found me a cable. Yay, finally I was online! I replied to a few emails and checked a blog (jesmithfamily.blogspot.com) before Dad announced, all to soon, that it was time to leave.

After a dinner of fish and chips, Uncle Mike and Nana came for a coffee, and we talked for a while. My siblings were watching Little House on the Prairie on my laptop, when it cut out after someone knocked a connection. Unable to get it to turn back on, I told them they'd have to do something else.

Once Uncle Mike and Nana had left, I was ready to do some blogging, so grabbed my laptop, plugged everything in, pressed the power button... and... nothing happened! We tried a few things with it but I ended up putting it away.

After everyone went to bed, I watched Soul Surfer on our new portable DVD player, and went to bed rather late!

December 24th

Well, the 24th wasn't anything exciting for us, we drove down to Stratford (near New Plymouth).
As we hadn't been that way before, Dad asked Jarrod to print a map from Google...well, thinking the route wasn't very straight, Jarrod changed it...and we ended up on the 'Forgotten World Highway,' driving through ghost towns and the like...one place we stopped in had the public toilets in a water tank...yes I'm serious..actually they were pretty good considering.. oh, and we had to go over a couple of saddles, which, by the way, are VERY windy, it was fine with me except that the van was a little longer than Dad is used to driving, and one of the back wheels hung over the edge of the road, so Mum was seating in the back saying "slow down, slow down."
We wen't around one corner, and two cars were coming towards us quite fast, Mum completely freeked out, but Dad said, "those cars wanted to play bumper cars with us!"
And we went through a fairly long, one way tunnel.
Some of the road was even shingle (or corrugated as they say in Oz).

We arrived in Stratford between 3:30 - 4pm. First we found our campground, and unloaded most of our stuff into our backpacker hostel with 12 beds, got changed, and ate some of the ham rolls left over from lunch.

Then Dad rung Aunty Sonia to get directions to their place, and we headed over for the evening. A bit later, Uncle Mike came home from work, and Uncle Bill and Aunty Melissa, Olivia and Harry, came over too, and we all had dinner together before most of the others went down to the park.

By the time we got back to where we were staying it was quite late, so we had something to eat and went to bed (where I read my book! =)).