Middle Income, Middle Aged, Middle Earth

 The Homestead

The ceiling above my head was painted by Hemi, Jude and Ben. Paul sacrificed his own lungs as he used heat and a chisel to scrape tar from the wood floor in the dining space while an argument raged about whether the planks were Tawa, Matai or a mixture of both. Carl bashed out the wall, ripped out the concrete hearth and put in new drywall for Hans to plaster. Gordon made sure the roof wasn't going to collapse during the operation. Martin showed up early to tear out carpet and staples and Ariadne wasn't far behind. Bridget ripped the wall paper in the kitchen. Bill and Steve painted the ceilings in the other half of the place. There were two Johns one who sanded and polished the floor, the other who lent us his sander so we could sand everything else. Jodi welcomed us with brownies.  Esmee took care of the kids and made lasagna. Jeff took care of the kids and the moving lorry, which really belonged to Stacey's church. Angus sawed out the kitchen cupboard to make room for a rubbish bin and patched our walls. Mary and Wendy unpacked everything and Jacob helped them to assemble the beds. Helen washed the windows! I haven't mentioned all the people or all the things that have been done but you get the idea.

We own land. A piece of paper says that this 1000 square metres and our names are linked.  We are excited for that link to last a while and hope that off the paper record other names feel invested in this place as well. They already have. We don't know how long, but we are "stuck in" as they say here.

We bought a property that promises to be quite a project. Its original owner put steel I beams under the floor, poured an ocean of concrete out back and built a huge workshop in his garage. Porirua used to have its own wallpaper factory and its castoffs are layered deep on the walls. Kiwi insulation. The place is solid, but both retro and tattered. Fixing it up will take up time and money over the next while but what we've done so far has had a great impact. Its a learning curve, and cause for a constant risk reward analysis. For the kids however its a giant playground and a place to discover and reshape at the same time.

From a big picture perspective it is an immense decision we've made by committing to staying longer in a place so far from our families, friends and familiarity. In the day to day though, things are making sense. We've invested in a place that intrigues and challenges us and in people that welcome our presence. Its constantly amazing to examine the social fabric of this land, and of our neighbourhood and to test its threads.

Here are a few images of what has been going on with us.

 Living room, while the walls were being ripped out and insulated.

Kitchen

  

Kitchen cabinet, we ended up painting over the 6+ previous paint layers!

5 solid days scraping tar, my lungs will never be the same.

 Ripping off the painting tape:

Living room. inhabitable.

Kitchen/dining

Lots of grass in the backyard for exercising with our antique mowers.

August Adventures

Hello everyone, apologies for the long delay in posting.  We are still alive here at the bottom of the world! We are now in the second half of winter, with temperatures around 8-10 degrees in the day and slowly climbing.  We usually get a couple days of wind and rain and then a gorgeous day of sun and calm.

Earlier in July, Amy's parents visited and we traveled North to where the weather is warmer.

Jonny surfing in the Tasman Sea:

Te Matua Ngahere - widest tree in New Zealand (diameter = 5.2m) - around 2000 years old:

The kids fly-fished for some rainbow trout with the help of the masters.

From the top of Mt Aubrey

We are now back at school, learning lots of tunes at school:

Camille has been busy with excessive rainbow loom creations - these rubber bands really took off here this year.  She has also been busy with some awesome Fimo:

Caleb is more into  large scale construction.  After cheering on the Spurs to the NBA Championship, he declared he wanted to be Tim Duncan and constructed this basketball net with a broken bucket.

Following in the footsteps of his Canadian forbearers I suppose:

Caleb's Mid Winter dream

"Mom and dad, you wont believe the dream I had. It was really funny and cool. Me and my brother, it wasn't Jon because this was a different family, were born at the same time but we weren't twins. When we were six in that city when you were six you were allowed to go on your own by your own self and find out things, and so one night when we were sleeping there were transformers on a different planet. Optimus Prime reached out to get us and we were not sleeping so we asked him what he was going to do to us and he said 'I am going to change your life!'. He gave us a medicine and put us into a deep sleep. He cut off our arms and legs and gave us a robotic gun and sword that could turn into arms to and two huge metal legs so we could run. When we woke up we were back in our beds and we were like 'Oh cool'. We went out of our house before our parents woke up. We had breakfast and we jumped onto the table and bounced on it, and there was a board game from last nigh on it and it got smashed all over the place. And we went down the road singing a song. We went to have some fun and the first thing that we did is we trapped on guy in jail and then we went to school. It was dress up day so we were very lucky but our class was not! A bad guy jumped in when we first got into the school. Our arms were very strong and we grabbed the bad guy's head and flopped him all around the school and we were like 'This guy is a piece of paper!' The other kids were wondering where we got the metal arms and legs from and me and my brother were worried that they wanted to reveal our big secret that we didn't want to tell them. "

Winter Wonderland

Welcome to Winter in New Zealand.  Today is the Winter Solstice, shortest day of the year in the Southern Hemisphere.  Temperatures here in Titahi Bay are 10-15 Celsius in the day and 3-10 at night.  A few weeks ago I may have spotted some frost:

But as you can see by the rolling green hills, winter here is pretty weak :) 

 This is our alternative to toboganning:

Winter is the time for planting seeds for the coming spring.  There have been a few community plantings in our local park of native grasses... 

And trees...

Rugby is a winter sport, which means there can be quite a bit of dew and mist sometimes.  Since it gets dark so early the kids practice under the park lights.  Here is Dave's collection of future legends.  

Instead of the super furnaces we have in Canada, here we use a large variety of methods to stay warm inside, including:

- fireplaces

- electric heaters

- oil heaters

- fan heaters

- electric blankets

- wool blankets

- flannel sheets

- duvets

- bed socks

- hot water bottles

- wheat bags (heat in microwave, put in your pockets or bed)

- many layers of clothing, especially wool jumpers

- air circulation systems in the ceiling

- one piece pyjamas for adults and children (onesies)

- lined curtains

Pages and pages of store flyers are dedicated to things you can buy to stay warm.  The more money you spend, the warmer you will be! We all think winter is pretty awesome right now, but it might get colder so I better not brag too much.

In other news, I found out through this book that Bamiyan, Afghanistan is the "Friendly City" (sort of like twin city) to Porirua

If only we could get a Bamiyan Kabob Restaurant here, right Thorncliffites?

May Musings

We've done a lot of travelling this past month, I think we might have seen about one-quarter of the country on our wanders. Dave's family visited us from Canada and we had some wonderful adventures in the South Island during our 2 week Easter holiday. Here are a few highlights from our travels around the country:

Recognize this mountain from any movies?

Blue skies around the beautiful Lake Hawea:

30 second kayak trip ends in capsizing and 30 minute walk through town with wet pants. Kayaking has been one of Caleb's lifelong dreams - better luck next time.

 Tonnes of windfarms around Windy Welly:

An awesome driftwood hut on Waikane beach:

 Massive seaweed haul by Camille:

Everything at this market stall in Taupo is made of recycled tires:

This if from the town called Bulls.  Most buildings have a sign with a Bulls pun: Police (Const-a-bull), Perfume Store (Scents-a-bull), Garbage Bin (Response-a-bull).  Any guesses what this building could be?

Really missing our red-headed and bald-headed relatives.  Here at Mt Vic overlooking Wellington city:

I love this sign:

For only our most devoted fans - 2 videos by the kids: uncut and unrehearsed:
Driftwood House Tour
Maori Song by Camille - The kids has been learning these at school - not sure if the words are correct or what they mean!

My Life - by Caleb

My friends are Preston, Harry, Javarhn and Isaack. My friend Isaack has two buggies, one has two seats one has one seat.  His dad built them and a monster truck.  We got to ride them at our school fair:

I went to Preston's house, he has a lot of guns and two walkie talkies that me and him can talk through. Javarhn and me like to play scooters sometimes. We have races, that's how you play. Harry likes to play monster trucks with me and Preston. We go into the sand pit and play there. If it is too wet we play at the top field. This all happens at school, except when I go to Preston's house. At Preston's house we played on the iPad and Preston played with the X-Box.

Last week I went on a trip down to the bakery in town. Me and dad's cousins and my mom and my brother went to Te Papa (a museum) but not my dad and my sister, because my sister was sick and dad needed to take care of her.  We saw some different kinds of dresses and a motor cycle and a long long Maori boat. We also saw an old plane. One of the dresses was made out of wood. It was very thorny.

I learned how to use a saw in the basement of our house. And I chop up wood for the fireplace in our house. Its very warm.  We can see a lot from our house. Here we are at the beach near our house last month when it was warmer.  My dad doesn't like the sun.

It is raining a lot here and we had a rugby game in the rain and I really wanted to score a try. 

We had a big tournament with all the teams from our club.  My dad is my coach and he said that this day was one of the best days of his life!

My brother Jonny plays in the nursery group:

After that, we went to a fair. There were lots of stuff that were free at the fair. We ate candies (lollies) and I saw one of my friends at the fair. There was a jumping castle that was free (no money) and there was nobody to say how many people were allowed at once. I jumped into the walls on the jumping castle and my sister did too. After that we had lunch and then me and Jon had a nap. When we woke up we went to a park very near our house on a street called Tuna Terrace. I rode my bike there, my brother went with his bare feet, my sister just brought her shoes. 

When we came back from the park, we played a little rugby game just to teach us what we are allowed to do. Then it was time for dinner. After dinner Camille and Jonny were shouting through a little cardboard tube.

We are very excited to see our family that is in Canada in seven days. They are going to come to New Zealand. We hope you stay safe in Canada when the cold weather comes.

The Orongorongo Track and the Colonial Knob by Camille

Yesterday my family and me went tramping on the Orongorongo track.  Here we are showing off our backpacks in front of the map.

We walked for 3 hours and finally got to our hut called the Haurangi Hut.  Even though it was 3 hours walk my little brother Jonny and I never got tired.  It was aaaamazing! In our hut, you could walk outside on a path and there was a nice smelling toilet that you could use.

In the hut, there was a humongous bed that could fit 10-15 people, there was five card games and Monopoly. My brother Caleb and me played it and our other brother played one of the card games. At night we roasted marshmallows on the fire and made s'mores and ate dried mangoes.  Then we slept in the super bed.  My parents had a hard time sleeping, but in the morning they found leftover instant coffee in the hut and that cheered them up!  I didn't have a good sleep either because I woke up every twenty minutes sweating from the wood stove. For breakfast we made pancakes on the gas stove.  We had a really fun time at the hut and I wish we could go back one day again and finish my monopoly game.

After breakfast, Cyclone Lusi was coming so we had to hurry home. Here we are at the end of our 3 hour hike back, you can see the Rimutaka Mountains in the back:

And eating Tuna and Honey Sandwiches:

Finally when we got to our car we remembered that the cyclone wasn't coming till later so me and my two brothers went to this really tiny river that was only ankle deep we went to the side and got big rocks and made dams. For my little brother, we made a rock circle that he could stand inside and that was his pool.

Finally my parents said that the cyclone was coming so we went home. I miss the hut and my dams, I hope that we can make it bigger when we come back.

The end.

Last weekend we climbed a mountain called the Colonial Knob. By mistake I went on cow path but it ended in a gorse bush beside a cliff.  Here is the view from the top of the mountain looking out to the ocean

 and our city Porirua:

Going to school with a uniform by Camille

Ok. I'll start with the shorts. My shorts are black and you can't see them because they are hidden underneath my tunic. My tunic is a box-pleat with blue and red squares. It has folds in it and has HUGE places for your arms (that's why its a tunic) and huge places for your head to come in and black buttons on the side to adjust it and on the straps you put your arms in. My school hat is sort of light maroon and it says my name inside it and it has three holes in each side but I don't know what that is for. My socks have to be white ankle socks in the summer, and really really dark blue knee socks in the winter. My jersey is maroon with a v-neck that is sown. My shoes have to be black and my shoes are slippers with black velcro around them. That's my uniform. And oops, I forgot to tell you I need to have my smile as part of my uniform too.

I like my uniform, and it is much different than just wearing anything you want in Canada. They are both the same, but a little bit more I like uniform because its nice and pretty and everyone gets to look alike and I sort of like that.

Modern times

We had far too short a time to enjoy the old power poles. Have a look at the new one beside his crooked grandfather!

First hobbit door

Well Hidden!

Our Canadian guest Craig found this one!

Camille: Try Given

Today I played for the my school's rugby team the Saints. It was my second game and I improved a lot! I sped through the other team and touched down and got a try! When I did that the guy that was trying to get me, I tripped him by mistake and he called me an old lady. Then I told my friend that he called me that and she said, "Don't worry I called him an old man". It was so funny.  That was the best rugby game I ever had. This is a picture of me in my Saints Rugby team uniform from the back holding a rugby ball! I pulled heaps of red flags and ran my fastest.

After dinner I also signed up for a new rugby club called the Northern United. I had to buy a mouth guard and uniform and stuff like that etc. yayayyaya. First I got new cleats or boots. I tried on like four or five pairs of cleat boots and finally I got some nice ones that were silver with white laces and a red line along the top and on the tongue of the shoe there was a red line and a white checkmark. And it was also black on the bottom with a red check mark on each side and a red checkmark on the bottom. I love my cleats/boots yeah! Then I got my shorts, uniform shorts. They were dark blue with a Canterbury of New Zealand white symbol on the bottom left hand corner. They are size 10 and they have a stretch outside so you can make them bigger and smaller. They are nice to wear. Next I got my mouth guard. It was pretty easy choosing it, my dad said the small would be too small and the big would be too big but the medium would be perfecto. My mouth guard has a little black case and it looks like a mini purse. And my mouth guard is white. After I bought some of my stuff I got a free poster that had the Wellington Hurricanes players on it and a few fans. I'm gonna love the Northern United rugby team!