Kia ora whanau, sorry I have been MIA for over a month. I am uninspired to write to you about the mundanity of life. No one cares about us mowing lawns haha.

Let’s fill in the gaps a little… First of all my Nan is doing really well, they are even letting her drive again. The Mrs Independent woman that she is. We are all glad to see her bounce back like nothing happened. Rowan and I had fun traveling home, visiting serval people along the way. We did get to do fishing with my cousin and her boys. Had a week with my mum in Papamoa. A night with my little sister and her family. Another stop in Picton to see the Oliver’s. A longer stop in Nelson to see Kelvin and Co. Before ending up in Christchurch catching up with friends.

Firstly we stayed with the wonderful Rick & Liz, we had a charity quiz event. It was rather good, maybe I am bias as we came second! I got a petrol voucher out of the raffle and Liz ended up with some prizes too. On our walk with Nellie we went to a part of Bottle Lake Forest I haven’t been before. It is an old dump that has been turned into park. Well the views up there are spectacular. You can see the city, Port Hills and all along the ocean.

While in Christchurch we caught up with cousin Leeana and her husband Mayank. We haven’t seen them since new years at the marae in Tikitiki. I think we need to repeat this at some point, Rowan still talks about it. We also got to catch up with Paul & Jo, we stayed with them two nights. Rowan and Jo had some fun debating politics. For me it was like watching a tennis match. Paul showed us how his fantastic hidden gem of a shop is. Shout out to Flipside in Christchurch, if you want a record, or you just want to look at cool stuff check it out! A little background, we met Jo & Paul back in 2017 at a garage sale we put on. I had it up on Facebook and I got a random message from this guy Paul telling me he is coming to take a look and what kind of coffee I like. So I cheekily gave our coffee order and didn’t give it another thought. A few days later Jo & Paul turn up with coffee and donuts to our garage sale. We became friends and the rest is history. It was great to have a good catch up with them.

We found a gap in the crazy windy weather and made it down to Herbert in Camele. Camele was not terrible in the wind but I was very glad to not be in it as the day before and the day after were really bad. We did get snow here which was pretty amazing even though it was slushy more than fluffy. The last week has been pretty busy with getting ducks in rows. The garden needs attention, but I promised not to talk about mowing. The house has yet to sell, from everything we are hearing it has just gotten really quiet out there.

We did take a few nights away and came back on Saturday, we just went to Dunedin then inland through Waipori Falls and central and back. Didn’t take any photos sorry!