More Fruit

Heard of tamarillos? Well they were new to me until recently. I bought a bag of them and then surfed the web to figure out how to prepare them. They are a lovely dark red color. The skins are a bit tough and are removed by putting the fruits into boiling water. Flavor-wise they are a bit sour. I made them into a salsa and into some muffins. I have heard that they're good sugared and served on top of ice cream.

Crab apples are well known. A neighbor gave me some small apples she called crab apples. My research clarified that crab apples are marble sized and what I had were probably wild apples. Anyways you cook them both the same way, add sugar, and they become a beautiful jelly.

All Blacks!

We went to the All Blacks game at a friend's house yesterday.  Andrew (of halloween and Stanley Cup fame) has a standing invite for us to see major video events.  

We arrived around 7:00pm and managed to get the food and drinks out in time for the 7:35 kick off.  The only thing good about the game was the All Blacks winning 27-6.  They played very poorly (all the stats were for the Italians) and after the game I found that the Italians are a tier two team which should have been soundly beat by at least 50 points!

That led to an interesting education about the All Blacks and Rugby in general.  There are only about a half dozen teams which are reasonable contenders for the Rugby world cup.  With three that are at the top - All Blacks, Australia, and South Africa.  The rest of them well they are like Italy and best described as practice fodder.

Macintosh

So I did it and got myself a MacBook Pro.  (I was cheap and bought the last model with an Intel 2x2.4Ghz processor.)  So far so good.  The computer works well, I really like the web browser Safari (using it now.)  

I was having so much trouble with the computer that I ended up calling a friend in Sydney on Saturday, and then a friend here in Wellington on Sunday to get me through some frustrating events.

I am liking the mouse.  Hats off to Apple with their creative interface. The two finger scrolling, three finger page up and down, and the four finger desktop display are quite fun to use!

Breaks from Routine

Next week begins the school holidays when we will take a break from the usual routine. Dennis will be going to a soccer holiday programme for four mornings. He will have some time to play with neighbor friends too.

In August we are planning a holiday to Australia. We'll be visiting Sydney, Ayers Rock (Uluru), Cairns and Brisbane. I'm still ironing out the details. Tom wants to see Ayers Rock, I want to see the Great Barrier Reef, and Dennis wants to go to a water theme park. The bonus will be visiting some friends in Sydney.

I am looking forward to a vacation and to a break from Welly's winter.

Last day at MoH

Well the saga has come to an end at Ministry of Health.  My last day is going to be June 30th 2009.  I have enjoyed my tenure there however I look forward to going on to life in all of Wellington.

Westpac Stadium for

To see France and the All Blacks play! It was an awesome game in beautiful football weather. Cold southerly was in rare form. The field was wet, the football was rough, the half time was entertaining, and the All Blacks won!

I have never seen so many Wellintonians in one place!

The best part of the evening was that I went with a good friend Jeremy. He texted me in the morning asking me if I was interested. For the sake of the friendship I said yes!

Jeremy is typical of my experience of kiwi's. Open fun and generous.

Thanks for a great evening Jeremy!

Week of 17 June at a glance

Sunday:
Church in the morning
Going to friends house in the afternoon

Monday:
Soccer practice late afternoon
Tae-Kwon-Do in Karori (Dennis, Chris and Tom)
Arty Party for Chris

Tuesday:
Gymnastics afternoon
Cards at the neighbors in the evening

Wednesday:
Tae-Kwon-Do at Karori in the evening (Dennis, Chris and Tom)

Thursday:
Swimming in the early afternoon
Soccer Practice late afternoon
Quilting group (for Chris)
Bottling beer (Tom helping a friend for a few bottles)

Friday:
Fill up water bottles in Petone (Chris and Dennis)
Tae-Kwon-Do at Lower Hutt in the evening

Saturday:
Soccer game in the morning

With the exception of Tom helping a friend bottle some beer this would be a typical week.

Add to this the home schooling, washing, shopping, cooking, cleaning, and Tom generally out one or two nights a week at some professional networking event, we are quite busy

The Weekend

We had a great three day weekend. (Thanks to that old lady living in Windsor castle whose birthday NZ celebrates the first Monday in June.)

The weekend started Saturday with a Birthday party for Dennis. Dennis had five boys from the neighborhood come over for the standard kids party. Lots of running around, games. Kid food consisting of some sausage rolls (kiwi equivalent of bagel dogs,) chips. And of course a cake, well in our case a dozen cup-cakes. (No worries Grand parents we will get pictures up soon.)

There was a pretty big lead up to the party so we had a down day on Sunday where everyone recuperated. I used that day to update the blog. You can see the new layout and a few new gadgets on the left.

Monday we had friends, Jeremy and Faye, over for afternoon Tea. Things did not go as well as we had hopped as the oven choose Monday to quit working. So instead of baked brie and an apple tart to go with our bottle of wine we had some cheese and crackers. You can learn more about our friends from their blog: Wellington Daily Photo (Link below.)

Then we took Dennis to Soccer practice where Chris and I went out for a cup of coffee. While we were out my buddy Andrew called and invited us over to watch the second game of the Stanley cup. We couldn't resist. So after practice we high tailed it over to Lower Hutt where Andrew lives and watched the Red Wings tromp the Penguins. What fun! We made it home by 10:00pm which worked out well as Dennis did get the sleep he needed.