School Teacher Arrested!

A secondary school teacher was arrested today at Auckland International
airport as he attempted to board a flight while in possession of a ruler, a
protractor, a compass, a slide-rule and a calculator. At a morning press
conference, Attorney General Chris Finlayson said he believes the man is a
member of the notorious Al-Gebra movement.

He did not go on to identify the man, who has been charged by the CAA with carrying weapons of math instruction.

'Al-Gebra is a problem for us', said Attorney General Chris Finlayson. 'They derive solutions by means and extremes, and sometimes go off on tangents in search of absolute values. They use secret code names like "X" and "Y" and refer to themselves as "unknowns" but we have determined that they belong to a
common denominator of the axis of medieval with coordinates in every
country. As the Greek philosopher Isosceles used to say, "There are 3 sides
to every triangle."'

When asked to comment on the arrest, Prime Minister John Key was quoted as having said, "If God had wanted us to have better weapons of math instruction, He would have given us more fingers and toes."

A parliamentary press secretary reportedly informed the parliamentary press gallery that he, 'could not recall a more intelligent or profound statement by a NZ Prime Minister.' It is thought that a Nobel Prize nomination could well follow; especially if President Obama is anything to go by.

Sean goes fishing!

What a whopper!
Better luck next time Dad!!

Down on the farm with the Bergs and Sacha's toys!!

Something we did a few weeks before Christmas was visit our friends the Bergs of Fairfield. The kids had a lot of fun driving a dune buggy for the very first time and we all enjoyed a wonderful meal with Dave, Wendy, Tom and Maya. Thank you all so much and thanks to to Sacha and Emily for letting us have a play!!

Our Christmas News letter for 2012

A number of you have commented on the relative inactivity on the blog. It has been such a busy year that we have not managed to keep it up. I'd like to think that 2013 might be a little different. But, if you haven't already seen it here is a snap shot of our year. God bless from us all here in Dudders!

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Christmas

The following was posted on a blog I read and really is worth a look - it captures what Christmas is all about.

I'm leaving on an air plane!

Just had a anxious moment at airport seeing Blair off. Paige and I were waving to blair in the plane. Suddenly it dawned on me that Blair had my car keys with him on the plane and the propellers were just starting. I quickly checked my bag and no – I didn’t have any keys!!!!! I started franticly waving a key I had to indicate to Blair that he had my keys and he just calmly waves back, doing thumbs up as well. I was trying to work out what to do and dashed down to service desk to ask them to stop plane and get my keys when at the same time my name was called out over intercom. Got to desk to be given keys!!! Blair had realised before me and got them delivered. I guess he thought when I was madly waving a key at him through lounge window that I was acknowledging I had them. Finally get out of airport and realise I hadn’t taken any notice of where Blair had parked the car. Do you know how popular silver cars are? Am finally home!

Wellington Holiday July 2012

Catching up with my family.
Rock climbing.
High ropes courses at adrenaline forest Porirua - awesome.
Pizza with Ann's brother David and his family on Oriental Parade
Visit to Wellington Zoo which has and is being developed further every time we visit.

Go Kiwi Rail

Remember the jingle from the past: "Roll'n, roll'n, roll'n keep them wheels a roll'n rain freight!" Well have a look at this for keep'n the wheels a roll'n on the rail line.

Scooting

Paige goes scooting today. She loved it. Here is the video link. When not blogging on mobile I'll edit this to a hyper link or embed the file but until then cut and paste in to your browser address bar.

Young Adults (YA) Lunch

Many months ago now I volunteered us to host a lunch for our YA from church.

Some of the reasons for these is to encourage YA to build relationship with each other, for those in the church to serve the YA group by ministering in this way and get to know the YA better. Also, it is to provide a positive environment in which to encourage YA to keep the sabbath rather than just going home to study.

While 3 soups, 2 curries, 4 lots of rice, oodles of bread, rolls, fruit and baking was a massive effort it was worth it. As a family we enjoyed having 40 YA over. They ate everything like hungry locusts. Our kids got right into it and Sam even baked a cake to help.

The touch rugby game over in the back park was awesome and a highlight for Sam, Alana & Oscar too!!

At one point I said to Ann, "now that we know what's involved we could do another one next year." Thwack, I didn't see it coming as Ann swatted me; "what do you mean next year, you signed us up for two this year!" Whoops!!

New ladder unusable

A few weeks ago we bought a new ladder, Ann ran over the old one! One of those new fang dangled jobs that contorts into a gazillion different ladders, "all for the low, low price of ..." ok so you get the idea. Well it took so long for me to get round to opening the box that Ann decided to assemble it without me as she had given up waiting. All good as Ann was always better at flat pack furniture than me. The snag was little two year old hands stealing the bolts and "misplacing" them. We looked everywhere and in the end, despite them being a custom bolt, I went to M10 to replace them. On my way home, delighted at my prowess at finding the bolts, washers and lock nuts that, while not exactly the same, would do the job just nicely The thought did occur to me, "what's the bet we find them in the next day or two." Anyway, once home I got the folding contraptable assembled with a minimum of fuss and proudly left it up for Ann to duly admire. Instead all heard was a call to "come here." As I was in the middle of wiring in a bank of four new replacement kitchen light switches I couldn't. Instead I received the following showing what we had searched for, for days, safely stowed by Paige in the very item we were trying to assemble!!

Kiwi Traditions

There's something to be said for those long held traditions passed down the generations. For e.g. back yard cricket; especially the variant played with two tennis balls, where the most exuberant "fielder" is a Maltese Yorkshire Terrier cross!

Sam, Danielle, Oscar and me visited the Dickie family of Waverley today. While Danielle and Rebecca played the boys played that most respectable of back yard games.

It was hilarious as Oscar tore round grabbing the ball, occasionally giving it back. Most of the time his efforts necessitated a ball change. The balls grew increasingly soggier as the game went on, at one stage prompting Daniel to say that he thought he could feel rain drops on catching the ball. We concluded it was Oscar's spit! We all had a ball (pun intended).

A great afternoon of fun on a still and very warm autumnal day in April.

Geocaching

We're still enjoying this activity.

Recently we found four out towards Blackhead, Waldronville (a very clever one that Alana solved) and two around the speedway. Two closer to home have evaded us: one down the bottom of the Glen near Avoca Road and the other along the green belt, which we've been to twice,and it quite literally has us stumped!

The kids all love to choose a cache, read the description, the clues & hints, then navigate for us to the site and be the first to find. This earns them the privilege of signing the log book and being able to log the find on the website.

We do it all using the GPS on the iPhone 3GS and it seems to work very well. The Geocaching site we belong to is superb.

Chainhills Road Visit

After today's ride we all, well most if us, headed out to the Park's park. Great food, excellent company, happy noisy kids, awesome chocolate cake, camp fire in the complete shelter of the gulley complete with bench seats and toasted marshmallows and a spectacular view of the southern night sky (thanks Greg) rounded off a fantastic afternoon.

Technology frustration

This week Outlook Express on the lap top decided to retire! This is not the only software to do this. Firefox and Thunderbird have previously ceased to function. Then Windows Wireless Manager on the PC decided now would be a good time to trash the connection. No reason given. In the case of the lap top a highly unintelligible reason is given - a complete non answer. Telecom weren't much more help making suggestions that clearly showed that the person answering had either not read and understood my message or randomly chose an irrelevant stock answer. Of course when I replied seeking further assistance, no response! Typical. How computer phobes or those with little interest ever get on is beyond me. I've now got about 10 pages of Microsoft tech support help, found on Internet to work through to try and sort it out for myself.

Danielle returns home

Danielle has had the last week at Roxburgh Health Camp, she absolutely loved her time there. The swimming - 4 hours in the pool, the fashion show where she got to dress up as a Cheer Leader were favourites. Apparently the food was better this time too.

One very excited, very tired and glad to be home wee girl!

Redwood Ride

A stunning day for us to head off into the hills behind Dunedin. Alan D, Greg P, Dave B, Simon G, Andre C (past Dunedinite now Perth Western Australia) and myself all took to our bikes (borrowed in to cases). Thanks to Paul C and Wendy B for extra bikes - Greg the blue suited you! Awesome riding and thanks to Simon for showing us the Second Weir track that really makes the whole area much more interesting and challenging to ride. The 'post mortem' coffee was good too.Thanks guys!! So, Perth is it next time?

A fun day trip in June of last year - playing catch up!

Kids enjoyed Pounawea Trip April 2011!!

Alana wins 2011 Speech Competition

Waianakarua Summer 2012

This scrapbook customized with Smilebox Think of this as a digital scrapbook. Each page has photos that you can select to enlarge and view more closely. If some photos on a page appear not to load, select them anyway as we have found this causes the photo to appear. Ann and the kids did this, they spent all evening on it, and have done a superb job - far better than anything blogger let's one create. We hope you enjoy it. abasd, p + o