Last weekend we decided to go up to Wellington with Dean and Carly. Carly is Mike's cousin and Dean is her husband. Carly's brother, Pita, and his wife, Tasi, live up in Wellington and Tasi was in the midst of labour pains. Pita was in the Phillipines so we headed up to be with Tasi and it was also labour day weekend so we had 3 whole days....a-ha. Pita ended up coming home the day after we arrived and the day before his babe arrived. sSo it was a weekend of birth and well beauty...how's that for deep. 

leaving 

Mike and the sunset 

The sunset over the sounds was a beauty. 

Mike and Dean each taking their turn at the 'Titanic' thing. 

First we have 'The Beehive' which is the NZ parliment building...odd shape but maybe being in a Beehive shaped building creates a more energetic and industrous work flow. Who knows? We missed the tour but got this photo. We went up to this lookout where you can see all around Wellington which is a serious of harbors, bays, and inlets. Its lovely and very much like San Fran in the way the houses are all terraced and the roads are very hilly. I loved this city. We saw the boat that 'King Kong' was filmed on as Peter Jackson's playland is over one of the bays. It has a smaller population than Christchurch but feels bigger and has a more hip/ artsy kind of feel...the capital city. 

No we weren't all there for the delivery....but we showed up soon after. Pita and Carly and siblings and Mike is their cousin...just to make the connections for you. Tasi is American and I actually met her, briefly, when I was in England years back. Random but true. 

Pita holding his beautiful boy, Robert. Tasi did well and Pita made it back from the Phillipines just in time to be there. Pita's mum is Maori and Tasi's dad is Samoan so everyone's first question was about the colour of skin. He is white with light brown hair right now but you never know... 

Here is lil Robert, Mike and I hovering above lil Robert, lil Robert's excited but exhausted parents, and the sign telling us where lil Robert needed to go to be born. 

This sign (outide the hospital) makes me miss the signage in Taiwan. This is a goody. 

Trying out some of the photos features....it multi exposes your pictures for you! That's Wellington Harbour behind us.

Here you can see the South and North Islands. They are only 12 kms or something apart but the Ferry has to slow way down when it heads into the Sounds to dock in Picton. Its about a 3 or 4 hour trip depending on the Ferry. 

These pix sort of amalgamates our last bit of the trip. After we got off the ferry in Picton we hunted for Fish n' Chips. As Mike and I are headed into a summer of health and exercise, Mike chose this for his last "fat meal" as he termed it. As you can well see in the above picture it looks like he is in pain as he lifts the chip to his mouth....oh its bad but oh soooo good he thinks. On the other side we see Dean who looks like he is in a moment of shear bliss as he is about to partake of his fish burger. Yeah I know Fish burger...but a bit of fresh deep fried fish in a bun with lettuce, onion, and some garlic mayo and you got it...you got it. Top that off with a fried donut and altho your heart has legitmate reason to stop on you and you wonder why you were so excited to get it but it tastes good while you are eating it. Isn't that the tragedy. So you can also see one of the Ferries headed out to Wellington. This is the one we came back on. Then there is a group photo of us all and then a picture of the sun setting on the drive down the east coast. Its about a 4 hour drive back to Christchurch. On the way we stopped to look at the stars and saw the most amazing shooting star but we decided that that was too ethereal a name because this was a full on meteor burning through the atmosphere...our reaction in real time so you know how long it was: " WHOA. AHHHHHHHHHHHHHhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh oooooo o o o o oooo o o o oo o geez whoaaaaaaaaaa cooooool ooo oh oh ah yep. holy long.......whoa." Okay maybe we didn't say just this but it was long and kept going. It was a great trip.

cool. New poster for the Johnny Cash movie.

This is yet another amazing NZ scene. I tell you friends, they are never-ending. This is just outside of a little resortyish town called Hanmer that we drove up to yesterday.

Here we are. Outside Hanmer. Its a gorgeous valley...a little over exposed here but you can feel in a beautiful valley behind us.

Yesterday Mike, Ashley, and I went to Hanmer Springs which is about an hour outside the city. Its a pretty spot and it has some hot springs which is very pretty. They have a bunch of different pools and we all relaxed and dreamed of buying a boat, making lots of residual income, and playing around forever. After those sorts of afternoons its hard to come home to the dishes. Dreaming people we are.

This isn't a fantastic photo but on Monday this week Christchurch a real proper snow storm. It began early in the morning and by the time I got to school it looked like a real nice Vermont snow drift. It took me back to the days of wonderment of snow days and snow time. I loved it. It kept up consistently for an hour and do to the fact that Christchurch has no way of getting rid of it, most things shut down, which really made me feel like I was in high school. So Polytech shut down and Mike mucked through the slush and slow traffic to pick me up. We spent the rest of the day at the Cammocks watching movies and staying warm by the fire. The snow stopped by the afternoon but it was a nice day. I kept trying to tell people how much more snow we got in Vermont and how amazing it was....but its too hard to pass on and I don't know that it really matters so now I tell you webpeople...i tell you.

This week we prepared the chimney for the new arrival...a pellet stove. We knocked the chimney out weeks ago and finally it was time to get something in there. I asked a brickey guy from my painting course how we could clean up some of the bricks and he suggested Spirit of Salt which is like sulfuric acid and burns the mortar off the bricks. I wanted to be sufficiently covered for the job at hand so here I am dawning my painting overalls that I got at my couse. Of course, my tutor (well one of them) wouldn't be so happy with this arrangement as he says we need to keep our white overalls as clean as possible. Hmmm...I was under the impression that overalls were meant to get dirty with lots of paint. Like the dirtier they were, the better. Ummm, wrong Chris. First lesson so I felt a little embarrassed because the first project we did, I relished in wiping my hands all over the front of my overalls quite meaningfully...like "Ah yes, now I am a real painter with dirty overalls". Oh well, I am just a pre-trader and have also been told by one of the block boys (a working apprentice that come to school every so often to be tested) that I shouldn't get so much paint on my hands. I am the only girl around so I think they feel some sense of cumpulsion to guide me in the wise ways of painting. I mean when I see a row of 10 guys under the age of 25 with cigarettes hanging out the side of their mouths, nappy hair, and scody facial hair I think "Oh wise men, please do come impart the ways of the Painter to myself. I am but young and feminine. I know not how to paint the panels on these doors" So anywho...this our chimney and these are my overalls.

This is called "proning". Its like a press up that you keep pressed up for as long as you can. Mike is up for any sort of test so he and Liz got at it. Mike seems to be joyfully proning here but soon ducked out of the race while Liz rose to the occasion and got 2.5 minutes... the face helps out in the longevity of your prone I hear. This isn't the easiest task. I consider myself semi-active and I can prone for about 1 minute. I only prone, when I do prone, in private however.