Ann & Peter

in New Zealand

Nga mihi o te tau hou - Happy New Year

December was a busy month with both of us catching up with paperwork etc. before Christmas arrived. Ann is also moving classroom (again) so she had to bring all her school stuff home until the beginning of next year – and the classroom she’s moving to – back to Blue Room – her old classroom!

The first weekend in December saw our annual hosting of a bonsai workshop with Nobu.
	There was a wide variety trees at the workshop - the garage was full and we had 10-12 people here both days.
We think the girls have been watching too many police and docu dramas on TV. Jaz kept a lookout from her hiding place......
	....whilst Maxie checked out the visitor's cars for contraband.
Whilst collecting the tables for the workshop Peter took Jaz and Maxie with him in the Ute. Unfortunately Jaz had a little accident. This is how Ann decided to shame Jaz in front of the whole world.

Peter did one long weekend at work in the middle of the month and only took 5 days off over the Christmas and New Year period so he could save his holidays.

Ann has been busy making plum and strawberry jam. We started picking our early spuds - 2.5kg from the first plant. Since last Christmas we've only had to buy one 5kg bag of spuds - all the rest have been home grown.
We needed to put in another vege bed (for our main crop of spuds) and the place we picked had one of the 'Christmas' trees we planted a few years ago. We'd already topped this tree a few years ago so down it came.
	It's now been cut up ready for the woodburner next winter and Peter has built a new vege bed in its place with our next crop of spuds planted.
No traffic jams caused by Chelsea tractors here - we have the real thing.
Santa visited us and left books, CDs and a beer voucher for the humans, and new collars and toys for the girls.
	Mind you we don’t think Jaz is much impressed with her pink rabbit gift.
She liked her new snazzy collar though.

Over the Christmas break we managed to devote a few days purely to weeding and pruning the bonsai trees, and we celebrated the new year ..... not. We're getting old and went to bed early. Not even the fireworks in the village woke Peter up at midnight.

News from Home

Peter's friend Roy, from his diving days, has a new dog - wonder if it's got special needs like ours?