Sorry for the delay folks, we've had a few momentous events in the last few weeks which means I've been a bit distracted from the blog. I'll start at the beginning with the post that I was halfway through and finish sadly with the death of my grandmother last week:

Post from 9th January:

Back home again and it looks like a building site but we can "see the potential" now which is brilliant. For those of you who have been to our place you can now stand at the window in the front room and see all the way to the back garden.

This is the end of phase 1 so once we have our permits and some more money we'll be taking out the chimney and the back wall before we build the extension so we'll live with the building site for a while!

We hadn't let the boys see the house until we moved back on Friday and they came running in all excited, Jack's draw dropped and he said "the walls are gone Daddy" and Tom looked up into the exposed ceiling where all the big silver air conditioning pipes were exposed and said "Wow Daddy built a space ship!!"

Jack has since been obsessed with vacuuming all the balls of insulation fluff that continuously emerge and spent a whole afternoon chasing bits with the hover and having a great time.....rather him than me!

The following week we had a visit from Adrian's Uncle Richard and Aunty Pat who came from Ireland and London. We had a brilliant time with them - they were so much fun! After a bit of a tour over the first few days we had a great night out in Wellington which ended with us leaving them dancing in an Irish Bar Molly Malones when we just couldn't keep up anymore! Adrian also took them up to Taupo for a good look around, a swim and canoe on the lake before heading back to Wellington where he went with them for a ride in a helicopter - huge treat for Adrian!! He also took them to Hell - see pic.....

Once they returned to Wellington I headed off to Melbourne for a little holiday with my Aunt Liz to visit my brother Michael. We had a brilliant time shopping and eating and drinking too much wine. We had a great time and I felt very spoilt having my dinners made and being able to laze around and go shopping unencumbered! Thanks so much to Mike and Katrina, you are brilliant hosts and we had a blast. Meanwhile Adrian and the boys had a great lads week including a visit to the annual teddy bears picnic...aaaahhhh

Sadly I had to redirect my flight on the way home to meet Adrian in Invercargill as my grandmother (Nanny Nora to the boys) had died while I was away. She was 93 and ready to go but it was sad to see the end of an era for the family. She had a great send off and I'm sure she would loved to have seen all the cousins having a great time chasing each other around and playing around together during the few days we were there.

All back home now and it's good to get back to normal - well as normal as it gets for us!!

Cute story for the week: Tom had something stuck between his teeth and Adrian opened his mouth to show Tom how to get it out, Tom looked into Adrian's mouth and his silver filings and said "Daddy why do you have robot teeth?"