Wadestown from the inside

A house is so much more than a bunch of pictures. However if you happen to live a continent or two away pictures will have to do. As we all know the hearth is the heart of the home so we will start with the kitchen. You our house is quite well layed out as the kitchen sits between the dining room and a sun room.

Now we will move onto the lounge which is to the left of the dining room (first picture above)

And for the bedrooms. First is Dennis' bedroom. Mom yes you can revel in the justice that my son has the tendencies towards messiness which I exhibited as a child. However you will have to have pity on my wife who takes the brunt of it, as a guy I really don't give a ...

Here is the guess bedroom. We have added a guest bed (futon actually) so please don't let the price of hotels stand in the way of you coming to visit Wellington!

And here is the master bedroom. Notice how nicely I made the bed.

Ouch Chris that hurt!

I will spare you the pictures of the bathroom, laundry room and the two hallways. Suffice it to say that they are both functional and small.

Wadestown from the outside

This is the outside of our Wadestown house.

South side of the house walking towards the front door. Which is right before the green recycling container.


Here is the back yard of the house. The picture is taken from the deck which is right by the back doors.

This is the side yard (north side.) That would be lounge with the chimney and the sun room is on our guest bedroom.

Here is the back yard. It is terraced and quite overgrown.

Soccer in the rain

Soccer in new Zealand is hard to explain. Not the soccer mind you, but the attitude towards the weather. Kiwi's don't seem to mind the atmospheric conditions as long as the condition of the field supports the event. In the case of this particular day there was nothing wrong with the field the rain is what was quite interesting.

That is Dennis with a few of his team mates and his coach in the foreground.

As it was a particularly bad day I choose to wear my foul weather gear. I did get a few strange looks, however the majority of the guys were quite envious at the fact I was dry.

Thorndon House - May to July

Okay I am quite remiss at not giving you a view of our homes here in New Zealand. First we will start with our first house on Patanga Crescent. And as most things New Zealand it is a function of the views. Patanga Crescent had great views!



This is the master bedroom. Not too much to write home about but it was home for a while.

And here is Dennis with Lacey. Now that we have been gone for three months he does not talk about Lacey nearly as much as he use to do so. However the dog was an amazingly good member of the family for the three months we were there.

And this is the lounge. Many an evening were spent here reading to Dennis or to ourselves. The fireplace was a delight. We miss it greatly.

Our thanks to Pete and Tasha for letting us use their home while they were away.

Two Mice are Nice

Dennis saved a mouse from a cat attack a few days ago. We were planning on making it a pet. It went crazy in the nice Habitrail cage we bought. We found it dead this morning. Tom put it in a box. Dennis dug a grave for it with a garden trowel, then he put lots of garden daisies on top of it. So we gave Mousie a nice few days.

Dennis was sad to say goodbye but not traumatized. He had seen the white mice at the pet store when we bought the cage. We went and bought two mice today. Dennis has named them Missy and Sashie. Hopefully we won't traumatize them!

I had a gerbil when I was a kid but it didn't like to be held. In researching mouse care on the web, daily supervised time outside of the cage is recommended.

So Dennis has some pets he can hold and let crawl all over him.

Wilton and beyond!

Today I dragged my family up the hill just beyond Wilton. It is the walk that I did a couple of months ago but this time I turned right instead of left at the top.


The walk up went pretty quick, well that was for the first 10 minutes at which point in time Dennis became quite concerned that we had been walking up the hill for at least 20 minutes. His concern turned into wailing of biblical proportions. As we were half way up the hill at that time and there was no one within gun shot, much less ear shot, Chris and I just started walking faster. Dennis' voice faded in the distance until we heard a faint 'mommmm' at which point we waited for him to catch up.


By the time he had caught up we were within site of our first break, and 20 minutes into the climb. The break was nothing of importance just the milestone I told Dennis to keep him focused on something other than the fact that he wanted to go play with his friends. And this was the turning point of the trip for we gave Dennis the opportunity to go 'off track' as Chris and I walked the ridge line Dennis would take the 'direct' path towards our destination. He actually got winded walking up and down those steep slopes. Neither Chris or I could ever remember a time in his life where he ran out of breath. That boy is in great shape.

We did not make it to the very top. To continue was another good hour and neither Chris or I could handle that with our new hiking boots. So we found a good intermediate top along the way and declared victory. Here are some pictures from the 'top.'

Above is the view looking more or less North. It is just a big valley of farms amazing.

Above you can see the inlet where Makara is located; and in the distance the South Island.

Above is Dennis overlooking Petone and Seaview along the North End of the harbor.

Above you can just see downtown Wellington. It is just above the little bit of water in the picture with Chris.

I have some other pictures of our trip on my cell phone I just can't seem to get them to the computer right now. I hope to get that figured out so I can show you the other wonders from up high.

The holy evening

Yes Kiwi's celebrate Halloween. As a general rule not quite as full-on (notice the Kiwi expression!) as the North American's celebration; however it is becoming more popular these past few years. I saw a few folks dressed up in the cafe's in and around Wellington and was even served a flat white by someone wearing a witches hat early in the morning.

We were invited to a kid friendly Halloween party that required we dress up. Personally I was dreading the fact that I needed to put on some costume or another. But Chris dragged me to the nearest costume store (quite a few of them in Wellington.) After looking at being an over sized Kiwi or bunch of Grapes on the way to the clown (just about as exciting) I saw pirate costumes. I stopped told the sales lady if she can find something my size she has a sale otherwise I am leaving. So without further ado I present the Dread Pirate Thomas and his first mate Chris.

The high point of the party were the coffins. Yes Coffins! Our host Andrew built three of them, one for each of his children. As Andrew and I work together he was keeping me informed of the progress and I was looking forward to seeing them!

The coffins were much more spectacular than I imagined. Andrew lined them with bright red felt; installed rope lights; and hooked up to a smoke machine. (The smoke machine had a remote control so no one knew what was coming.)

For the first half hour or so the coffins just stood there in the room with no mention from our hosts. Andrews children stepped into the coffin then Andrew collected everyone and whilst (in American we would say 'while') he made some speech or another Andrew started up the smoke machine and the kids opened the coffins together. The affect was amazing!

(Above is Andrew's middle daughter Rachael. )

The smoke had the added benefit of presenting a nice backdrop for the laser light show that was going on. Keeping with the theme Andrew's three daughters were dressed as vampires. Actually Andrews whole family was a bunch of vampires costumes made by Cheryl his wife.

It did not take long for all the other kids to clamer to get and and out of the coffins. It took Dennis a while to get the nerve to go inside, you could say that he had a love hate relationship with the coffins for most of the night. I gave up after three of four attempts at coaxing him into the things. It took Andrew to get Dennis. But once it was done there was no stopping him! Poor Andrew was constantly pestered by the kids to turn on the smoke machine. Once or twice children came out coughing as they would not leave when the smoke came to their necks as instructed. Yes Dennis did the same I had to send him outside more than once to get fresh air and recover.

Unfortunately the camera ran out of juice before Dennis got into the coffin so I don't have a picture of him. There were plenty of games which kept the kids busy while the adults chatted. Dennis' favorite was jumping around the trampoline as per the directions he pulled from a hat. Here he is in his Batman suit.

We finally left at 10:22pm, that was quite late for everyone. Dennis layed down in the back of the car and just fell asleep as we pulled up to our house 20 minutes later. A great night was had by all.

Our host Andrew!