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!

 

Jan 122012
 

 

in cricketing parlance, i have reached my half century, yesterday being 50 years since i drew my first breath. its been a good innings, a few false shots, a couple of streaky edges thru the slip cordon, some lovely shots of the front foot, lost a couple of my early partners to good catches and sharp run outs, but now with my current partner we are building a solid partnership and the runs are flowing…..a little too quickly!  With a bit of luck there are quite a few runs in us yet, not sure I will get a century on this wicket, not many do, but a good 70 or 80 will do me.

mind you this morning i am certainly feeling the effects of the bouncer I took on the helmet, my head is pounding and i seem to need lots of water.

my intention had actually been to let this one slip under the radar and make as little fuss over it as possible, but due to a technical oversight on my part, i failed slightly. what happened was that i got far too much seafood out of the freezer when i decided to cook a nice birthday dinner for sal and myself, so i was then forced to ask a few friends round to help us out with eating our way thru all the food!

i decided to cook tempura seafood and vegetables and darryl and nicole turned up with a couple of bowls of homemade sorbet for desert, john and tomo arrived with a yummy entree of fried pork meatballs and sal had made a lounge room picnic for the kids, we had beer, wine, sake and muscat to lubricate the evening.

it was fantastic to have tomoko show me the correct consistency and mix of the tempura batter, and her help in prepping and cooking the large amount of veges and seafood was invaluable, we had shiitake mushrooms, asparagus, eggplant and ‘cakes’ made with julienne carrots, zuccini and onion. the seafood was prawns, scallops and oysters.

so in the end i had a lovely birthday party, despite my intention to avoid one all together, doing what I love – cooking for friends that love cooking and eating themselves, lots of stories, laughs and that fantastic feeling that comes with sharing life with great friends.

for all the images from last night head over to our gallery, HERE