Thursday, December 26, 2013

What do you mean - it's nearly 2014?!

Well how embarrassing - no blogging since early October. And here we are post-Christmas Day and rapidly approaching 2014. 

Since then I've had a '0' birthday, Tyler has finished Year 4 with a very good school report and we've just had a lovely Christmas. 

So here's a few photos to help recap the last few months:

Pedro went from this - 


To this - 


Tyler dressed as Count Dracula for Halloween


I had my '0' birthday


Chris got us a new toy


And Santa visited


So a good ending to the year - although apparently we are doing a repeat of the Nevis trip tomorrow with some friends, one of whom is a rally driver. At least we have a 4-wheel drive this time. I think that helps...!

Wednesday, October 09, 2013

♫♪ ...when I'm 64 ♪♫

Me, giving Tyler a big hug after coming from work: Do you still love me?

Tyler: Of course, why wouldn't I?

Me, teasingly: Oh I thought you might have forgotten me.

Tyler: Of course not, I'm still young.

Me: What difference does that make?

Tyler: Well when I'm older and you're old and crinkly, I might love you just a wee, wee bit less.

Me: !!!!

In other news, I won some bling at the annual Vocal Competitions recently (I'll blog about it soon over at (A)musings of a Lyric Soprano)


Last weekend I took Tyler and Anton to Riverton for a bit of crab-hunting and ice-cream-devouring.


Sunday, September 22, 2013

Happy Holiday

A regular reader (Hi Rosina!) has gently pointed out that I have been very remiss in not posting photos here for some time. So without further ado, here is a traverse through our Gold Coast holiday.

At Dunedin airport



Kookaburra alarm clock


Sea World - we could pat these stingrays.




Pirate ship fun


Dinosaur Island


Pingus!


Currumbin Wildlife Sanctuary which we loved. Tyler got to tick two items off his bucket list - hold a koala and hold a snake.











At Movie World, the Harry Potter shop. Tyler now has his own wand.



Wet N Wild - the Green Lantern rollercoaster. That's Chris and Tyler nearly at the top.


Tyler turned 9 while we were away. Cupcakes sufficed for a birthday cake.


One of the four pools at our resort





We had a fabulous time and would like to go back again. Still paying this one off though!

Wednesday, August 07, 2013

♫♪ We're all going on a ...spring holiday.. ♪♫

A short post - yes I know, I owe all two of you Gentle Readers a long one! But I promise the next one will be long and photo-filled as the Campbell-McLeod family is off for our very first proper family holiday - hooray! We're heading to the Gold Coast for 9 days of theme parks and wildlife encounters and while we are there, Tyler has his 9th birthday. So an extra memory card has been purchased for the camera in anticipation of frenetic photo-taking.

We will be staying at Turtle Beach Resort in Mermaid Beach. We have the Super Pass for Wet 'n' Wild, Movie World and SeaWorld Theme parks and we will be visiting Currumbin Wildlife Sanctuary where Tyler is very keen to cuddle a koala. 

See you soon!

Sunday, July 07, 2013

What a mother loves to hear

Yes, we love to hear "I love you Mummy". Can never get enough of that one. especially if accompanied by snuggly hugs and kisses. 

But this one of Tyler's has quickly become a favourite of mine: "I'm just going to use my imagination". Accompanied by the turning off of the laptop/tablet/Nintendo and followed by sounds of swishing imaginary swords and cries of "I will defeat you" coming from the bedroom/hallway/back yard.

Sunday, June 09, 2013

Why I bake

Time for a photographic update.

Tyler and his best friend Caleb who came for a sleepover. They decided to sleep in the lounge and gathered pretty much every single cushion and pillow in the house and arranged them in a large square which they then covered with blankets. The little rat bags were still chattering away at 2am!




Big bro Anton visited recently before heading off to Christchurch for a new job.



Rosina came and stayed with us for a week. While she was here I managed to scrape the side of her car (which was about to sell) with a loaned car (a Subaru WRX STi). Amazingly enough she got offered the same for her scraped car down here as she did unscraped in Christchurch. Chris reckons the salesman will get a telling-off!  Anyway she's still talking to me :)


Today Tyler asked if we could do some baking and decided on Gingerbread men and chocolate chip muffins. I got the ingredients together for the Gingerbread Men and asked him if he wanted to sift the flour. "No thanks" "But that's what we need to do for baking" With a cheeky grin he said "Oh I just want to EAT the baking!"

Saturday, April 13, 2013

He's Crumpy, I'm Barry

Easter Monday we hopped in the truck for an Adventure Day. We headed up to Garston and then turned off to take the Nevis Road. This involved a steep ascent on a windy, dusty road frequently with 6 inches between us and a swift decent to the bottom of the valley. As Chris' truck is not 4WD he took this road at a fair clip to ensure that we kept moving in a forwards-and-upwards direction rather than a sideways-and-downwards one. There was a lot of bouncing and skidding. But the bouncing, skidding, sheer drops and general scariness of the ascent left Chris unfazed and for some reason unfathomable to me, he felt it was perfectly acceptable driving behaviour to remove one hand from the wheel for the purposes of pointing out various bits of scenery. 

Those of you of a certain vintage will remember a series of Toyota ads involving Barry Crump and his passenger Scotty. This example pretty much sums up both our ascent and the subsequent descent:


The descent was a lot less hairy in terms of steepness but in place of that were the obstacles of stream crossings and large rocks to negotiate. Chris did a great job of picking the right places and only once did he confess that he was unsure if we were going to get through a particularly deep crossing.



See the shadowed side of the hill behind me and Tyler? Chris and his mates rode their dirt bikes up that recently!


We stopped at the Bannockburn pub for lunch in the sun and then went on to Queenstown where we took Tyler up in the gondolas and then did the luge. We followed that up with a round of indoor mini golf. We headed home well satisfied with day's activities.

We had Tyler's parent-teacher interview last Monday. The teacher goes through each subject and Tyler has to say what his current goal is for that subject and the teacher explains what he is working on. We started with reading comprehension and in terms of where he's at, he's way ahead of the standard and she said his results in the PAT test (yes, they still do those!) puts him in the top 10-15% of NZ. He gets that from me. She said everything else he is fine in, no concerns at all. Although he can get distracted sometimes. He get's that from his father. :)

Only a week till the end of school term so Tyler's touch, t-ball and summer soccer have finished. My netball has started and we are yet again going to spend the entire season outside - rain, hail or shine - due to the continued delays with the reconstruction of the Stadium.

We are still dealing with the uncertainties of a potential closure of Tiwai, but life goes on in the meantime and we have a holiday to the Gold Coast to look forward to later this year.

Sunday, March 31, 2013

Happy Easter


Happy Easter everyone! We started the Easter break by decorating hard-boiled eggs.


Early this morning was the Easter Egg Hunt, and Tyler was very happy with his haul. After he found the last egg he held up his torch and declared "This case is closed!" and dramatically clicked the torch off.


Yesterday we had an Easter lunch at the Howards and obviously some people ate enough to make them sleepy :)


Aunty Helen made a gorgeous chocolate birds nest cake

Photo: Omg worst mum ever only 11 eggs on the top of the cake. Last year we had 13 #hatelife

And yes, it tasted as good as it looked!

As usual I have been singing since Friday and have one last lot this afternoon. My voice is feeling pretty tired so it will be good to finish. 

We are hoping to get away for a day or day/night trip tomorrow, probably up Central or Te Anau way.

Saturday, March 02, 2013

Whoosh! That's 2 months of the year gone.

Goodness me where has the year gone? Let's pick up where we left off shall we?

Alright then, vegetables it is! Doing the grocery shopping recently, I stopped at the drink section (not alcohol, we're in a Licencing Trust area, but if there was an alcohol section I would definitely have been perusing it) and had one of Oprah's Aha! moments. OK yes I know that Oprah's Aha! moments are generally about significant things like 'I finally figured out how to cure cancer/make World Peace/be a nicer person' but I'm a simple girl. It was the V8 juice. This is not just your standard apple or orange or mango juice, this is juice which includes vegetables. Juice that doesn't taste as if it has vegetables in it. I hatched a plan that could indeed be called a weasel.

That evening when Tyler asked for a drink I gave him a glass of juice. "What's in it?" he asked with a touch of suspicion. "Oh mostly orange juice, with a bit of apple" I responded airily. He took a cautious sip. "Mmm this is the nicest juice I've ever had!" he said and proceeded to skull the contents of the glass accompanied by much inner celebrating by me.

Later that evening I chanced my arm and said to him "Do you know what else was in that juice? Carrot juice!!"  "What? Really? Wow, now I know how I can eat my vegetables!!" Now I just have to test out the other varieties of juice-with-veges to see what he'll drink.

In other news, we have acquired a pub-size pool table which is ensconced in the man-garage. Chris has bought a slab of some kind of hard board which converts it into a table tennis table. So here's the wee dude taking on the big dude. Big dude is looking intensely competitive.

Wednesday, January 16, 2013

Those darn vegetables

Tyler, like many children, thinks most vegetables are made of rat poison and elephant dung and have been grown purely for the purposes of torturing himHe will eat:

Potato - but only mashed
Corn - but only in chicken and corn soup.

Yep, that's the sum total. Bribes, threats and guilt trips leave him unmoved and making gagging sounds every time we mention the word carrot. Last night's conversation ended on the following note:

"Mummy! I know it won't happen for a long time, but when you die I'm never eating vegetables again!"

A few photos from the holidays: