We are doing our best to get along with other chores as we wait for the services to be connected. A fair amount of prodding all week gets us a result on Thursday with the council giving us a cost for the contributions and Southroads connection cost. We haven’t locked in yet as we are discussing with Skevingtons which part of Southroads is for us to pay and what part is for them. Hopefully it will be sorted on Monday.

We did a day in Palmerston with Alistair coming to help. When getting ready I couldn’t find the circular saw. Rowan and I hunted high and low with no luck. We must of left it in the house. Turns out we left it in the grass next to fence for the past month. Rowan shows me it covered in frost and it still works! Now that’s a power tool haha. I can’t believe no one took it.

The boys focused on the fence, Rowan sucked all the water mud out of the holes and Alistair filled them up with gravel and rammed them into place. I focused on painting the exterior window surrounds and then a bit of interior trim.

I practiced on my motorbike all week to prepare myself for a lesson and my full test on Friday. I did really well in the lesson I was relaxed and Trevor said he thinks I am ready for my test but of course if I make a major mistake he can’t pass me, so it’s not a guarantee but he thinks I should go ahead. I am nervous and like a complete different rider, they must take this into consideration as I did not perform great and I was sure I had failed. The test was in Timaru and in the industrial Washdyke area and he asked me to turn right. The traffic was crazy busy I went to go and hesitated but didn’t cross the white line. We were there for a while when I realised I can use the flush median doh! I was sure that was going to fail me. He also told me turn instructions a little too late for my liking which made me either slow too fast or too late haha. I also did 80 through a 100 zone for a long time because of one of these turns and I wasn’t sure what the speed limit was because I was so focused on making the turn correctly that I didn’t see a sign. However I managed to stay under the limit which means I won’t fail on that. He even took me down a 60 country road that should have been at least 80. Well I somehow passed which made me very surprised and happy haha. We didn’t book Rowan in as wanted to make sure if I needed to resit the test I can in a few weeks. Trevor had no one else booked after us so off they went and Rowan also passed. He thought he hadn’t too, because of a few things he did wrong that he wasn’t sure if it would make him fail. Here we are, both full licensed riders and drivers! Wahoo.

With no time to celebrate we jumped on our bikes and headed to Rolleston, Christchurch. Rowan kindly did his test on the Himalayan so we could drop it off afterwards. We had talked about me riding the Himalayan up to drop it off and we come back on Rowan’s yellow bike which is a lot more comfortable. But not being confident I would pass my test on the bigger bike Rowan said we should take my TU as I will be more confident and comfortable. We got that all done around 6pm and went on an uncomfortable two up all the way back to Ōamaru. We got a big stretch done without stopping and stopped in Timaru for dinner before getting back around 10pm. Exhausted and cold we both needed to warm up and chill out before bed.

In the weekend we attacked the lean to storage area off the container. Didn’t quite empty it but would like to have it all done soon so we are ready when it’s time to move the containers.

We did a trip up to Jim’s farm and came back with a load of wood for his sister in law Velta. We like efficiency. We got majority of jobs off our to do list this week. So it is time to make this week’s list and go achieve it!