Crossing the Bridge!

I drove across the harbor bridge for the first time today!  It's really not that big of a deal, just like any other highway really, but people on this side of the water make a big deal about driving across, just cause there's the ferry and all. I drove across to go to yoga, since I had a fairly busy day, I didn't want to wait around til the 1:10 ferry afterward because I was meeting another new person, Rachel, for lunch in Devonport!  Finally, someone who lives nearby!  She arrived this week from England.  After lunch I went for a sort of interview at the Steve Lindsay Swim School, and will be getting in the water next week so she can see my instructing skills and then if all goes well she'll put an add in the paper to get Friday lessons started and that will be my day!  I arrived home just in time for Ellen!  Then after that I was off to play a bit of tennis!  So far the social schedule is filling out rather nicely.  Have a busy weekend planned ahead, so may have to fill you all in Monday morning!  I'm headed out tonight for another night in Auckland, also meeting another new friend to be! 

The sky looked a lot nicer in person

1 Month Mark

Well I've officially been here 4 weeks today!  That has gone by really quickly when I think about it!  But I am also pretty settled in as well.  Starting to have full days planned on my days off!  Today I did some shopping in Albany, which was nice.  Although it was a quick trip because another new friend, Katrin, had to get back to pick up her kids from school.  However, she's already discovered the majority of the great shopping places around so she'll be my shopping tour guide in the future!  I did make a couple of purchases and one excuse was that I needed something to wear to the Adam Lambert concert Sunday!! :)  Super excited about that one, although as of now, none of my new friends are joining me...

I came home and caught the second half of Ellen and then because it was such a nice day out, left early for yoga and took my time wandering down to the ferry and waited in the sunshine for a few extra minutes.  The last thing I did in yoga tonight, instead of a bridge, was get on this tower thing to do the bridge stretching on...it's set up close to the wall bars so you can lock your feet in so you don't fall off.  Then you arch back over 2 blankets folded for extra padding, 5 shoulder stand blocks stacked up on a chair and hold a bar with your elbows locked so that your shoulders get a stretch.  It wasn't so bad until they put a sand bag on the bar to make it heavier, then in combination with gravity, I could tell how tight my shoulders were!  Interesting stretch though, just a bit hard to breath upside down like that as well. 

Happy Birthday Tessa!

Tessa turned 2 today!!  She got to open one present this morning, which was a wetsuit for her! And the rest were opened just before dinner tonight.  We tried out a morning play thing called bells and whistles.  We were expecting it to be a bit like a music session with toys and singing, but it wasn't anything organized at all, just a mass chaotic playgroup that Tessa took awhile to be comfortable and get involved with.  For a good 15 minutes she was content to sit on my lap and observe all that was going on.  Then she found the kitchen area which some little boy was dominating and wasn't willing to play fairly.  She just kept giving him confused/dirty looks like why won't you let me play here as well?? 

While Tessa was napping I made her birthday cake and did some of the pre-cooking for dinner.  On the way home from school we stopped at the dairy so Reuben, Libby and Tessa could pick out a treat.  Reuben also wanted to get some gummy treats for Tessa for her birthday and wrap them up for her.  All three kids went crazy when I was making the chocolate frosting for the cake, they couldn't keep their fingers away!  It's just all too exciting when there's chocolate in the house!  It kind of reminded of Everybody's Birthday at camp where everyone would rather just eat all the toppings than decorate the cake, except this was more they'd rather eat the ingredients than make the frosting....even butter...Libby will just take a bite of the stick if she's given the chance! 

Marriage and Slides

The two big topics of the day!  On the way to school this morning Libby as me if I knew who I would marry yet, so I told her no and asked if she had any idea or suggestions for me.  She just seemed a little confused that I didn't know and Reuben suggested maybe James Bond?  Guess he didn't realize there's more than one option there... then Libby says, "well maybe you could marry Reuben?" But then Reuben explained that he's a bit too young and also "you can't marry people who come and live with your family for a year, you just can't marry your family or people who live with you!"  So unfortunately that discussion didn't help me figure much out.

Tessa and I went straight to the park after coming home from dropping off Libby and Reuben.  We brought "morning tea" which is basically a meal between breakfast and lunch, and then there's afternoon tea as well between lunch and dinner.  When I asked Tessa if she'd like to go to the park she just kept repeating "slide!"  She loves to swing as well, but I guess because there's one of those in the yard, the slide at the park is more exciting!  And when we went to pick Libby and Reuben up from school we stayed at the playground there for just over an hour playing first at the playground outside Reuben's classroom and then at the one (with a slide) outside Libby's classroom.

Turns out the whole family loves to slide!  Libby and Reuben were more interested in the static electricity build up and seeing who could give the other a bigger shock!

Libby is already really into learning new things like how to read and spell and loves learning new information, but it's funny how some new information seems much more worth sharing than other things.  Tonight after she had her bath she came out and announced, "hey, guess what, that line in between my legs is called a vagina!  And, Jerilyn, you have one too right? And Mom, and Tessa!" And then she proceeded to explain the differences between boys and girls and when Reuben piped up claiming he knew different words for those things, mom and dad decided it was about time to change the conversation.  No why is it that I can't imagine her coming out of the bath saying, "hey guess what, I just learned how to spell bubbles!" or something to that effect?  Some things are just more exciting to learn about I guess!

Monday=Productivity!

List of daily activities:
1) Breakfast and help get kids out door for school
2) Register for tennis club! :)
3) Pick up some things at supermarket
4) Come home and tidy house and kitchen
5) Eat lunch
6) Sweep and mop floors
7) Prepare mince for dinner
8) Pick up kids from school
9) Feed Reuben and Libby before touch rugby games
10) Attend touch rugby (Libby then Reuben) in FREEZING cold rain and wind! Colder than most winter weather here...brrrr not fun!
11) Help Reuben with homework
12) Have dinner
13) Attend first ever zumba class with two new friends (German this time) Katrin and Anne!

I now officially have two contacts in the tennis club who can be regular hitting partners for me! Yay!  Hopefully this yucky rainy windy weather is done so we can have some nice weather to play in.  May even try squash at some point since the weather doesn't really affect that and it's included in the membership! 

I'm sure watching 5-6 yr-olds play touch against 7-8 yr-olds would have been a lot more entertaining had it not be absolutely freezing out!  During that 1 hour was probably the worst weather we'd had all day!  And for some reason there aren't enough teams of all the same age level so somtimes the pairings are off.  Well Libby's team all looked tiny compared to the team they played (all boys a goo half a foot taller than anyone on her team) and some kids were even 3 years older, which is a huge difference at that age!  And Reuben played against an older team as well, though you could tell his team had actually played and practiced before, whereas Libby's team is in their first year of play.  I didn't catch all of Reuben's game though because after Libby's game I took her to sit in the car with some heat to warm up and get out of the rain.  Apparently Hamilton (about 2 hours south of here) got snow today!!!  That's just what I've heard but I wouldn't doubt it!!  I heard the radio say we were in single digits today, now even in Celsius the warmest that could be is 48!  Currently it's 46...I thought summer was coming soon??  I sure hope so!

While helping Reuben look up and define words and then create sentences with them for his homework he asked to make sure I wasn't using any "American slang" in spelling words and writing the sentences!  He was worried I was going to steer him astray in his assignment.  And sometimes Libby finds it hard understanding certain words when I help her sound out words she's reading or trying to spell...my vowels may sound like different vowels than the ones she's saying...

As for ZUMBA class, it was a lot of fun!  The dance moves weren't too difficult and I definitely worked up quite a sweat by the end!  The instructor was hilarious and extremely full of energy and random noise outcries.  Often after a segment was completed and there was a short pause between songs she would shout out, "How does everyone feel?!?" and the correct response was "Sexy!"  A lot of focus was on moving the hips and keeping your feet going all the time!  It was definitely a fun cardio workout and the hour passed very quickly!

The Best of the Best

The internet randomly went out last night, and the recording at the company said due to recent problems you'll have to restart your modem, doing this about 3 times still yielded no results...the last time they called the company we were on hold for about an hour...so we decided just to wait til morning.  This morning it still was down, but a quick modem restart got us up and running again...strange how it works over here, they're always complaining about the telecommunications and now I can see why. 

Anyway!  Yesterday Reuben had his first race sailing!  His grandfather took him out and in the first one they got 3rd place without a spinnaker, which is pretty impressive apparently...seeing as my sailing terminology is not so extensive, I had to ask what that was.  After watching the races Libby is now pretty excited about taking swim lessons.  The deal is that she can go out and really get sailing once she's learned to swim and previously she's been less than enthusiastic about swimming, sailing seemed to motivate her to want to learn. 

I also checked out Belmont Racquets Club yesterday for some club doubles action.  Everyone was extremely welcoming and friends and I was made a little name tag right away so that I could be put on the board and paired up for each round.  Some were mixed doubles some were all men and some were all women.  It's not too competitive on Sundays, just getting some games in, everyone serves once before swapping sides to save time and you play for 20 minutes.  I won my three doubles matches (each with a different partner and against different people) and then played some singles in the last round because people had dropped out.  It was nice to get back into singles but realized (playing against an extremely consistent player) how inconsistent I'd become.  Luckily, this tennis club won Best in New Zealand this year and had Mark Nielsen, who was New Zealand's number 1 player for 10 years, doing some of the coaching and clinics.  I've decided to join this club and it's conveniently right down the street about a 3 minute bike ride away!  And because they'd won club of the year, as well as having a few coaches of the year, they gave out champagne after we were finished playing, and also because the date was 10/10/10, written the same no matter what country you're in (day/month/year or month/day/year in case you weren't following me).  Who knows, maybe I'll come back a tennis pro!