Today is ...

En******ht Day! Yes we arrived eleven years ago today and this is home!

On a different note, we were up in National Park this weekend and Ross and I went by train. It was quite fun even though the journey up took seven hours! The weather was glorious and I tried to get a number of photos of The Mountain from the train but the reflection in the window wasn't great.

Anyway, here's the three of us standing on the school field and the snow behind is is Mt Ruapehu but it was covered in cloud.

Colin only has four weeks left there, and he said he was a bit sad today but nowhere near like he was last weekend. The next four weeks will go very quickly and soon he will be home .... and missing The Park I'm sure

What a weekend

On Saturday Adrian and Ross went to football (the first match in eight weeks) and I stayed home to get ready for our visitors. I cooked a pumpkin soup (which wasn't great) and I also made two loaves of bread that I put in the oven when my Mom came. Thank goodness she was watching, as the silicon mat that my bread was on was touching an element and caught fire in the oven! I don't have a fire extinguisher (on the list now) so I switched off the oven at the wall and hoped that the fire would die because of a lack of oxygen. No such luck - it got bigger so I opened the oven door and smothered the flames with my towel. In the meantime, the smoke alarm went off. Anyway, I sorted all that out, and put my bread back into the oven and it came out fine albeit covered in a bit of ash.

The lunch was fine; the party guests arrived and had fun. The pizza dinner was great as was the chocolate mousse. Colin and I spent a fair amount of time chatting about National Park and how he was enjoying being there ... but missing us. All the boys went to sleep downstairs and were asleep by 11pm - not too bad.

I got up this morning and started preparing and cooking the pancakes and at 9.08am, a father phoned and said he was on his way to pick up his son then. I was a bit taken aback as it was news to me that the boy was going that early and said so. "Oh well", said the dad, "I'll be there in fifiteen minutes then"! I got them all breakfasted by then and sent said boy away with two pancakes in a serviette!

Then came time to take Colin back to Levin and he fell apart saying that he did not want to go. I knew it was emotions and tiredness speaking as he had had two late nights and two early mornings and he cannot cope without enough sleep (wonder who he takes after!) He cried all the way to Levin and at one point I told him that I would be failing in my duty as a mother if I allowed him to give up now. Well, he finally got out of the car and they left at 3.20pm. By the time they got to Taihape he had forgiven me and spent the rest of the journey texting me.

I would love to just tell him to stay home, but that is not the best thing for him right now. He must finish what he started - we have always insisted on that, but I know that if he was in any danger whatsoever, I would fetch him home immediately. But he isn't in danger, and he is enjoying himself very much - he just misses us. And I understand - he's only 12 after all.

He only had five weeks to go and he is learning so much and enjoying himself with all the nature surrounding him - he will come home a stronger person

Edited Monday morning: Colin phoned this morning - he slept well, is feeling fine apart from a cold, but "luckily I bought some Vitamin C at New World last night and I'll be mad if I can't ski this week"! So he's fine

Fourteen years ago

Ross at five days old

Party today - four extra boys arriving at 2pm to play PlayStation and watch movies. Then I'll give them home-made pizza and chocolate mousse. Three will sleep-over and they'll get pancakes for breakfast

Sixteen Years ago

And we were going to see Mama Mia and then dinner at Monsoon Poon but Adrian is sick so that's on hold for a while

My baby's coming home on Saturday!!

Just for the night. His lovely "in loco parentis" have decided it's the end of Week Five so they're going to bring him for a quick visit. They will tell him on Friday night - he will be soooo excited (not to mention me!)

They will arrive on around lunch time on Staurday and leave around 2pm on Sunday so it will be a very quick visit but so worth it.

Only three sleeps to go!

Week Four

I didn't realise how tired I would be this term: full-time work; going to a sewing class each week; teaching (and preparing for) a scrapping class each week; travelling up and down to National Park every fortnight; and the normal every day mom/wife stuff. I am tired tonight and Colin was in tears when we left which meant that I was crying as we drove away. He doesn't want to come home though as he is having a wonderful time.

Here are some photos:

Colin with Ngauruhoe in the background (photo taken by his friend Cleveland)

Colin at the Kiwi chick release - he was very lucky to be invited to go and his words were: "Mom, it was AWESOME!"

Playing in the snow at National Park yesterday (Saturday)

Do you like my new jacket? I made it!

At National Park station waiting for the Parliamentary train to celebrate the Centennary of Rail in NZ (wearing ski uniform)

The steam engine

Saturday

My curry as wonderful as was the glass of wine and piece of carrot cake!

Football was cancelled this morning but none of us were too upset. We stayed in bed to watch the recorded Olympic opening ..... except my two boys didn't record half of the athletes coming in and not New Zealand!

I have to go to the shops to buy some bulk foods and the butcher and clean the kitchen floor and then hopefully finish last week's l/o that I started. I also got some ribbon for a challenge at SBO but work and other stuff got in the way and I didn't manage it - maybe this weekend.

At the moment I seem to be living from fortnight to fortnight though!

Colin is going on a kiwi release some time this month and he is really excited about that. He is having so many wonderful experiences and fortunately the homesickness has worn off.

Okay so the highlights of the opening are on TVone now so I'm off to watch it

A small vent

We live in a fairly small suburb so I have always told my boys to be careful what they do as they don't know who is watching them.

Well, the same applies to most of New Zealand .... some one always knows what you are doing and more imprtantly can get hurt by these actions.

So that's where I am - hurt. People who I thought were friends not telling me about an event so I perceive this as a lie of omission.

People who make plans and try to pass it off as something that happened a long time ago.... meantime a discussion has happened and none of that was mentioned

People who break my confidence and "tell tales"

So some of this is work related, but much of it has happened in what should be a fun area of my life and I honestly did not like being treated like a mushroom .... keep me in the dark and feed me sh*t!! I am sick of DRAMAH.

I'm feeling hurt, left out and let down and want to just disappear into the sunset until all these people (and they're all women) realise they're not the only ones with feelings and that I have them too. I know I try very hard to accommodate people and yes, I get it wrong but hopefully I'm able to apologise ... something which is lacking from some of these "friends".

Okay enough - I'm off to buy curry for dinner which I'll share with my husband and have a glass or three of wine and I should feel better then

Skiing!

So this is what he went to do!

On the chairlift going down

First set of instructions

On the tow bar

Learning to stop

Eating lunch

Edited to add that I was scrapping this weekend at National Park using last year's May SBO kits (!) and I looked through the Heidi Grace pack that I won in January from ANZ Fiskars (not opened until now) and it was snow themed paper! Just perfect for these photos

Surprise!!

And yes he was surprised to see us so early! We had a really good trip north despite the over turned trees and broken branches through Levin. hat a time they had on Thursday through that storm, but there was lots of clearing happening when e came through.

We got to National Park just on 2pm, wwent down to the cafe to say hello and then headed to the house. We crept next dood to school and sat chatting with the Principal for a while before going into the hall to see our boy. The kids around him asked if we were his parents - the school is so small all the kids know all the parents and clearly we were unknown therefore we had to be Colin's parents. We followed them back to class, where they were dismissed for the day and then had a chance to see Colin's artwork and other school work and chat to his teacher.

And then Colin asked if he could go to a friend for a while! I was so pleased about that so he went off to his friend, we unpacked and had a cup of tea. When he came home, he was all over us - even after dinner he just had to sit next to us and touch us.

He talked about his being homesick and how he cried every night but by the Thursday he was feeling better. He knows that he will be sad on Sunday but also has expressed how lucky he is and pleased that he has this chance.

Colin is also working hard at school - he has to - he's the only Yr 8 boy so is unable to diasappear into the crowd! Because it is such a small class, there are very few behavioural problems so the kids can just get on and learn - Colin acknowledges this too and that he's enjoying it.

We are doing nothing today - it is wet and miserable out so I made pain au chocolat for breakfast and now we're just relaxing in front of the fire.

We may head up to Piper's Lodge tonight to watch the rugby (don't laugh) and tomorrow, Colin wants us to go to the cafe "Out of the Fog" for breakfast