NEW YEARS EVE 2006/7!
BEGINNING OF A MIGHTY NEW YEAR!

Ok, I know there are a crap load of photos in this post, but bear with me.

Brian and I and a bunch of my friends went up to Raglan over New Years. It's a beach town with an excellent left-hand surf break. Or that's what the surfers say, anyway. We stayed in Heather's mum's beach house. Here we go...
Walking down the street towards the township. Brian is clapping. For about 5 minutes he was inexplicably clapping in every photo.

Again with the clapping. Heather and Brian in this "funky" cafe in the town. Lesley is looking on wistfully, wishing she were clapping too.

Hanging out on some grass, Kirsten is sun-smart, Lesley holding herself lovingly, and Sam just chillin'.

Sam, Jeremy, and Brian who is potentially overdressed. Although the wind was kind of cold.

On the balcony at the house, looking out onto the estuary. It was pretty sunny that day, but seriously, New Zealand has been having the worst weather of all time. Like, actually. It was the crappest spring in 20 years. It's picked up a little in the last two weeks, but it is pretty unbelievably dire in general.
Boating on the estuary. There was a pretty sweet dinghy and we went for numerous voyages. There are some smashing photos of the boating, which I'll post when I get hold of.

Brian kicked a rock when he was swimming at the beach (there were no rocks on the beach! He found the only one) and his toe went all gross and purple. Here it is, recorded for posterity.


Kumbaya...
Kirsten on balcony, looking dreamy.


We all went to the park and played frisbee and bat-down, which is like cricket for lazy or drunk people. Not that you americans even know what cricket is. After all the sport I guess we lazed about.

Drinkin' beers on the balcony, new year's eve. The whole trip was kind of like being on school camp, in that we did so many group activities and made dinners for 12 people. Occasionally this sucked, in that if you're making a G&T, you politely ask if anyone else wants one and suddenly you're making 10.

Hmm, let me see. Well the festivities were given something of a loose theme, which was "cluedo" (maybe it's "clue" in the States). I fucking hate cluedo, but fortunately the thematics only stretched as far as costume. There was a huge family of Mustards, and a family of Plums. And no one else, strangely enough. Except for this one couple who turned up for about two hours on new years eve and made strawberry daquiris. The woman was Miss Scarlet I guess, and the guy was... beige? I know for a fact that there's no Mr Beige, so it's hard to say what he was aiming for. Maybe he was the rope. Anyway the above photo shows one of the members of the Mustard clan along with Prof Plum.
The Mustard family photo.
A more relaxed, funloving Mustard family.
The Plums. I don't know who took that hideously out of focus photo, but it was probably me.

Finally! The New Year! Sparklers! After this it devolved into some sloppy drunken dancing, and that was that.

The end.
Stay tuned for another, very special, wedding themed post...
xo!

CAMPING

I went camping with Brian up around the North Island, a couple of days after New Years. Here are a couple of photos...


Um, this is a sign we saw on a church wall. The subject of the week is "GOD". Fabulous. And see how you can slot in different topics for different weeks. uh huh.


I look dainty even when I'm banging in tent pegs with a hatchet.


Brian is swanning around in a river valley. He probably doesn't like this photo because he is wearing his glasses and swimming trunks...


The great 3 burner camp stove we were using crapped out and gas was leaking all into the stove and making it do explosions, so we had to eat cold dinners for most of the time. This is a chickpea salad we cobbled together in the dark. It was ok. Actually it was a bit shit, but better than a slap in the face with a wet fish.


And here's me swanning around in a little grotto half way up this hiking track. We had to cross the river seriously 15 times on the track, which seemed a bit excessive.

OK!

NEW CITY, NWO!

Hey everyone, I'm in Wellington. And I'm about to embark on some massive blog-catchups. I have a whole gamboodle of photos to post, so maybe I'll do one theme/story/colourway a day, until I catch up.

First up:
CHRISTMAS.

So, these photos are pretty boring, I'm sorry to say. Brian was around for Xmas, and we went with my parents down to my uncle's house, about an hour away. We played the obligatory family game of petanque (kind of like lawn bowling but you chuck the balls in the air. And it's more French and had a period of wild popularity in New Zealand about 10 years ago. My family are still playing it).

In the above photos we are measuring to see whose balls were closer to the little target ball. So tense!
Brian is chucking a ball in this photo. That is my uncle wearing shorts in the background. Brian played for my uncle and cousin's team, because they were short on team members. Unfortunately, he totally kicked ass, and won it for their team, so me and my parents were sore losers.
This is the TOTALLY AUTHENTIC steamed christmas pudding we made. So fucking english. We steamed it for like 6 hours. It got a bit screwed because we kept forgetting about it and letting it boil dry, so the top was burnt and fell off. Then we tried pouring brandy on and lighting it on fire, but that was a bit of an anticlimax. I am carrying it to the table here as it flames away, but the flash was on so you can't see the flames. duh.

We biked to this park in my home town and looked at the aviary. There were plenty of native birds.
Brian climbed a tree. He is a right little monkey boy!

...ok, watch out for more updates SOON.
xoxo!