Settling In

'Seasons table' incorporating our new doll house
 won at the Raphael House TFC fair

We’ve come a long way over the last couple of days: paydirt!  Finally.  Steve has munted both his thumbs and we’ve all got bags under our eyes (Kasper in particular!).  But it feels like we’ve broken the back of it.  From here on in it’s just refining our systems.  Like making a soakpit for the shower, hooking up the roofs to the water tank, levelling the shed which has sunk 50 mm on one side, putting up a mirror, shelves, extra storage, putting the battens on to water proof the ply, fashioning a sink with running water, creating a compost heap and making a shower box (we're being a bit TOO hippy and nudist at the moment)…  Poor neighbours.



You need to do it yourself around here,
parents are far and few between



Moving on in, bedtime!



Look at my new home!



It feels fantastic to have all our normal food and habits again, our normal music, our normal bedding, our normal tea, having a place to potter….  Funny the things that make it feel like home.  It’s all about not having to think or make decisions, lovely, those little habits. We’re in Christchurch, and we have a home!  Suddenly we are sleeping properly again.  And it really doesn’t feel like roughing it. The shower is as good as we had at home and nothing wrong with the toilet, have even put out the bathrooms scales to encourage us to eat better again, or really, drink less wine and beer and exercise (although Steve reckons he’s had plenty of the latter)! 

On the cooking front, the BBQ side burner boils water as fast as a jug would, I'm a huge fan of one pot meals anyway, and the fact that we haven’t got electricity hasn’t even featured with a lovely array of solar lights creating ambience at night.  However, we've got to take into account the weather has been fabulous.  Mother Nature has been very kind to the extent of allowing us to create container explosions with stuff everywhere with not a fear of getting it damp or dirty.  But we’ve already had a good sense of the extremes of climate here.  The days are baking hot, you can’t walk barefoot on pavements and the black BBQ needs oven mitts to open the cover so you can start it up! Yet last night we froze our butts off and tonight I’ve put our winter bedding on in preparation. I’m pretty nervous of the temperatures we’ll experience post March.



Kasper's beautiful Balinese kite going up







Balinese flags: beautiful to watch and symbols
of hope, peace and love (apparently!)



We are really focussed on getting the place ready for cats, dogs and horses now. The kids and I can’t wait to all be back together again, we all have our favourite pet.   Kasper misses George, Hanna misses Koko, and I miss Frankie. On that note, Frankie has really bonded with Lady Gee Gee (our new young mare), and absolutely loses his rag whenever they are separated. That’s a new problem. I’ve never seen Frankie as angry as I saw him the other day when I took Gee Gee out of the paddock. Tomorrow the plan is to drive our quad bikes down to the recently reopened Blue Duck Café which is featuring life music. Can’t do that in Wellington! Kids are really really excited and I’m sure it will ‘be a moment’ as Steve likes to call it.  Looking forward to Christmas day now that we are feeling suitably relaxed.  The kids are very excited, I think we'd better find ourselves a Christmas Tree today courtesy of a shelter belt, and give Santa some clear instructions on how to get there.



Why go on holiday if this is your home I reckon