Saturday, 27 August 2011
Preparations
I am embracing oncoming motherhood by learning to knit... I have now successfully knitted several pairs of bootees...!!!! These ones are a particular colour that may give the gender game away so, for now, you can only see them in black and white(!!)
Saturday evening...
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Tonight's twight was beautiful after a glorious day.... Nathan gets down to some serious photo mounting for our walls...
Sunday, 21 August 2011
Weekend stuff
The weekend was glorious sunshine (and Monday today is bright and sunny too...).
Saturday was garage sale day for me (Nathan was at work - due to snow and catch up time) and so I poured over the newspaper classified section before heading to a few sales. Garage sales are the new thing in Christchurch because a) everyone is leaving and b) there is no town centre to browse in... The first sale was in a pretty bad earthquake area - the roads were destroyed. The sellers there had been bombarded with the early bargain hunters and had practically nothing left but I did manage to secure a double blow up bed for $5 (£2.50) which was on the list of "must gets" for extra guests!
Those people were moving to Sydney...
The next sale I was a day too early - I read the paper wrong (as did the other 4 people who arrived the same time as me...) but the guy let me into his unorganised garage and I managed to get my first piece of coloured glass from this guy for £1/$2 - a light blue tall vase.... happy with that and am now on the look out for more for a collection. He was off to the Gold Coast - His kids couldn't surf on the beach any more so Christchurch was a bit of a drag these days.... ummmm. At least you have a beach and the surfing will come back (the surf is out of bounds at the moment because of the sewage due to the earthquake but it is due to be cleaned up by Xmas).... I do find it interesting to hear the tales of the people who are leaving. Some of them say they wouldn't have had the courage to do it if it wasn't for the quakes... others can't see the good that remains in the city. I think it is people who mainly can't cope with change.
Anyway... Sunday was a trip around the harbour day picnicking and finding some random lamas to feed! Here are some pictures...
We tried to head home over a different mountain....errrr mistake. The snow got deeper and deeper and then a 4WD was reversing down the mountain as it had failed to get over the top.... Poor little 660cc car had to reverse in snow down a steep mountain. Oh an adventure - and it is always nice to appreciate being alive and not falling off the side of the mountain!!
Saturday was garage sale day for me (Nathan was at work - due to snow and catch up time) and so I poured over the newspaper classified section before heading to a few sales. Garage sales are the new thing in Christchurch because a) everyone is leaving and b) there is no town centre to browse in... The first sale was in a pretty bad earthquake area - the roads were destroyed. The sellers there had been bombarded with the early bargain hunters and had practically nothing left but I did manage to secure a double blow up bed for $5 (£2.50) which was on the list of "must gets" for extra guests!
Those people were moving to Sydney...
The next sale I was a day too early - I read the paper wrong (as did the other 4 people who arrived the same time as me...) but the guy let me into his unorganised garage and I managed to get my first piece of coloured glass from this guy for £1/$2 - a light blue tall vase.... happy with that and am now on the look out for more for a collection. He was off to the Gold Coast - His kids couldn't surf on the beach any more so Christchurch was a bit of a drag these days.... ummmm. At least you have a beach and the surfing will come back (the surf is out of bounds at the moment because of the sewage due to the earthquake but it is due to be cleaned up by Xmas).... I do find it interesting to hear the tales of the people who are leaving. Some of them say they wouldn't have had the courage to do it if it wasn't for the quakes... others can't see the good that remains in the city. I think it is people who mainly can't cope with change.
Anyway... Sunday was a trip around the harbour day picnicking and finding some random lamas to feed! Here are some pictures...
More snow (yawn)
We had a bit more snow here last week.... The once every 20 years snowfall turned into the worst snow NZ had seen for 40 years or so... some people on the news had never seen snow (really!) - Auckland got a few flakes which never happens so they felt really special and we had at least 4 hours of headline news on the subject. Nathan got a day off work so that was the good part... the bad part was being house bound for about 3 days... Cabin fever alert. Lyttelton I think got a bit more snow than last time but it wasn't as exciting so I only took about 3 photos.....! There is however some arty graffitti popping up in Lyttelton which I am collecting pictures of.... here are the first couple in the collection and the obligatory snow shot.
Wednesday, 17 August 2011
Trip to the mountains
This weekend we had a bit of a road trip up the mountains to Arthur's Pass.... It is about 2 hours away from Christchurch and we were lucky enough to be staying with friends in a little hut which is usually used by a girl's school for field trips.
Arthur's Pass National Park is in the Southern Alps- high mountains with large slopes, steep gorges and wide braided rivers... in other words perfect location to spend the night in before New Zealand has its largest snow storm in 40 years....
We mainly took our time getting to our hut taking in the scenery and urging the little red car up the hills (4WDs? Ha! who needs one we have 660cc of pure red power!) and then had a roadside picnic just outside the hut to sit in the last of the sun of the day. The evening was just spent relaxing before sleeping in our dormitory!
Phew home in time to do some baking (!!!!!!!!!!!!)..............
And just before the snow arrived on Monday morning.....
Arthur's Pass National Park is in the Southern Alps- high mountains with large slopes, steep gorges and wide braided rivers... in other words perfect location to spend the night in before New Zealand has its largest snow storm in 40 years....
We mainly took our time getting to our hut taking in the scenery and urging the little red car up the hills (4WDs? Ha! who needs one we have 660cc of pure red power!) and then had a roadside picnic just outside the hut to sit in the last of the sun of the day. The evening was just spent relaxing before sleeping in our dormitory!
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| Sheffield - mid way stop - has no public loo but does have PIES! |
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| Alberta looks at the challenge of the mountain!!! The next day, paranoid about the snow that was reportedly coming (and already in the mountains) we headed back to ChCh. The plan to stop for a walk was soon put to an end when a massive hail storm hit the windscreen and the snow started sticking on the roads.... If we stopped the car might be stranded... push on...... and finally over the ice and the steep roads we went until flat roads and blue cloudless sky were on the horizon. Odd odd weather... |
The road just outside the hut
Sunday morning... the snow was on its way.....
You can just about make out the hut here
Glacier floor - eerie in the morning with snow and mist
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| ahhh snow on Sunday morning in the mountains |
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| Wrong footwear |
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| Blue sky on the way back to ChCh |
And just before the snow arrived on Monday morning.....
NZ Alpine Handbook 1961 advert!
Monday, 15 August 2011
Snow
Errr ....it was only supposed to happen every other decade or something but we are snowed in again... worse than last time.
Nice to see the weather man being so very precise about the amount of snow...apparently its just "a lot". Very informative given that everything outside the window is white.
Nice to see the weather man being so very precise about the amount of snow...apparently its just "a lot". Very informative given that everything outside the window is white.
Another NZ story I have just come across is this:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/7522952.stm
As you will see from the link, apparently we cannot, in NZ, call our baby: Sex Fruit, Keenan Got Lucy and Yeah Detroit or O.crnia. However, Number 16 Bus Shelter, Violence and Midnight Chardonnay are just fine!!! The story comes from a child who was called "Talula Does The Hula From Hawaii". Nice work from the parents there....The story worryingly comes from Nathan's home town of New Plymouth.
Pictures of our mountain break this weekend to come!
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