birthday!

 foodie stuff, gap year, tech, us  10 Responses »
Jan 082015
 
bday 002

lego!

happy birthday to our beautiful son, kai. he woke this morning fairly early as is to be expected for a birthday boy! we all climbed into bed together and had a cuddle before he opened his little haul of presents, he added some more money to his wallet care of opa and grammy & pop, and some more lego direct from grandma erica and grandpa bob. mum and dad gave him some new games for the 3DS and some lego figurines.

following a birthday breakfast we headed into auckland for a birthday adventure, sal had discovered a ‘play in the park’ day a couple of girls had organised with lots of games and toys in a park on the auckland city waterfront.

kai had a ball running around and playing with other kids and things, we all had fish and chips for lunch and a wander round the waterfront, it brought back memories for me from when i lived in auckland and worked down on the waterfront doing marine maintenance.

we came home in the afternoon to the inaugural bbq on the little charcaol bbq setup i bought this week for the batch, it comprises of a little kettle bbq, a charcoal chimney to light the charcoal and a small butane camping stove for the chimney.

the yacht is the Salperton, you can charter it for a mere 145,000 euro per week if you like! at 147″ or 45m its a lot of boat, http://www.superyachts.com/yacht-charter/salperton-1556/

in other news, kai has started his own blog, you can see a link to it in the right hand frame in links, it is going to form part of his year 6 work this year, you can subscribe for email notifications of updates if you wish.

also i have added a forum to the server, i am moderating another forum and i had to learn a bot more coding, particularly for forums so the easiet way to learn is to do, hence seekrit squirrel was born. Its actually going to be a useful resource i think, conversatios about ideas, passions, things, places, etc can be better carried on in the forum, it also has a chat function if you scroll down and that means live real time chat if we are online at the time! Again the link is in the sidebar, you can sign up and you will ba able to add topics within the categories yourself, as well as replying to existing ones and using the chat feature.

please have a look and feel free to become involved!

 

new year

 foodie stuff, gap year, piha, us  No Responses »
Jan 022015
 
nz 012

the view from the summit of mt eden across auckland city

Ok, i am sorry there have been no posts since last year, but nothing much has happened since last year!

today we headed into auckland to see sal’s cousin, luke, his wife,zekiah and their son lorenzo. they live in the shadow of mt eden hence the photo above. kai and lorenzo had a play and i suspect lorenzo was rather taken with his big cousin! i am sure we will spend some more time with them over the next few months.

we popped down to a little cafe in mt eden for lunch after our visit and went to a place called ‘the garden shed’, the food was nice, but the garden was amazing!

we went for a lovely walk to kitekite falls on new years day, its a walk through kauri forest and ferns that winds its way up from basically the center of piha to the falls at the top of the surrounding hills. there are lots of walking tracks up here and we are only just starting to explore them.

meanwhile i have been enjoying the fresh produce and cooking up a few storms, we got some lovely salmon fillets which i pan fried and served on a bed of fresh parsley and rocket from the garden and a caramelised fennel side, with local asparagus, roasted potato and garlic chips.

today we picked up enough mussels for sal and I and i cooked them in coconut cream with ginger, garlic, onion, chilli and coriander – $2.50 worth of mussels and it was sublime.