Ann & Peter

in New Zealand

Haere Mai Everyone

Ann had a busy time in the kitchen whilst she was on holiday. She made plum jam, chutney, more scones, caramelised onions for her feta tarts and homemade lemonade with our own lemons.

The dogs have been getting more mail! These days they seem to get as much as us - except ours are usually bills.

Ann took Jaz and Maxie down a different road one morning whilst out for their walk. They came across a small paddock with some alpacas in it. Maxie, being the nosey girl she is, put her nose through the fence for a better sniff. Unfortunately she must have got too close to the electric fence and got a jolt. The next time we went down this road Maxie insisted on crossing to the other side of the road rather than go near the alpacas.

The last Monday in January is Auckland Anniversary day - a holiday here in the Waikato as well as in Auckland so we took the dogs to a lake 10 minutes up the road at Ngaroto. There is a path all the way round the lake, mostly through bush with only a few glimpses of the water. We managed to get about one third of the way round and will go the other way next time. The highlight was crossing a paddock filled with cows - fun trying to avoid treading in the cow poo, stop the dogs from eating the cow poo and being followed incredibly closely by a herd of very nosey cows!

Peter has started cutting up the last few logs at the bottom of the paddock. We've decided to cut down some of the 'Christmas trees' we planted as they are getting too big and we want to put in some more vege beds. Peter has taken the bottom branches off four of them ready for felling when he has time. It now looks like we have some tree 'sculptures' around the place.
We've spent some time renewing all the bark on the flower bed - 7 trailer loads in all - but it was worth it as the garden looks great.

The end of the month has been very hot and dry - with temperatures up near 30 degrees. We're walking the dogs early in the morning as it's too hot in the afternoon to do anything.

Ann had an eventful walk one morning. She dropped the Ute off at the local garage for its six monthly service and WoF (MOT) then took the girls down Kane Street which Jaz was very excited about as she’s never been there before (well she has but if she hasn’t been somewhere for a few days then she acts as if it’s somewhere brand new!). Maxie poo’d twice in as many minutes – and Jaz stepped in it - sigh. Then Jaz poo’d, yelped (very large hard poo), frightened herself and stepped in it – double sigh. Then Ann noticed Maxie had a long streak of blood down her cheek. So she sat on the bench outside the village café, Maxie climbed up on the bench next to (the ground obviously wasn’t good enough for her to sit on) and Ann cleaned Maxie’s face, then cleaned the wart on Jaz’s head which was the source of the blood – triple sigh. They finally got home and spent the rest of the day relaxing, with no more poos and no more blood – phew!

Peter had a day off from work to help Ann move into her new classroom. We filled both cars with boxes of stuff that Ann had brought home from her last classroom before Christmas.

News from Home

	Helen, Ann, Dave, Nick and Joshua at Jamie Olivers’ restaurant - to celebrate Nicks birthday.
Peter's niece Melanie was one of the finalists at the inaugural West Midlands Police Diamond Awards for her work in Northfield. She and Darren had a night out at Birmingham Botanical Gardens for the awards ceremony.