I don't knooooooooow......

.......what is love.......do this to me!!!

Oh yeah!!! Went to see The Exponents last night!! They ROCK live!!!

I saw them in 1999 at Waikato Uni's O Week (my one and only year I studied there). They still rock!

Jo, Cam, Rach and I went along to Altitude last night. Said it started at 8pm so we rocked along at 9.30pm and STILL nothing had started!

D4 opened for them. I didn't like their music on the radio, but now I've heard them live.......I REALLY don't like their music!! There wasn't much of a gap between their act and The Exponents coming on, which was good.

Last night was soooooo hot that it was really gross in there. It was sold out and they'd moved all the tables away, so that many more people could squish in. But that also meant that there was no where to put empty bottles and glasses.....so where do people put them......on the floor. I was a little weary cause I only had sandals on, but I should've been looking up. Poor Jo got smashed in the head by a flying bottle, causing a little vision loss for a short while. Never fear, she's a tough nut and she survived!!

Photos to come on this event as I'm waiting for Rach to download them to the computer (she was the only one who remembered to take a camera)

Nana visiting from the South Island

It was lovely to see Nana again yesterday. I haven't seen her since we were at her 80th birthday (Dec 2004 - so just over a year). Don't get to see her too often cause she lives in Geraldine, which is a couple of hours south of Christchurch.

Mum drove her and Nana over to Hamilton to visit me and Jo, so she could see where we live, etc, plus Jo was working again, so was generally just easier.

Nothing too exciting happened really......they came over for lunch, so we sat around and chatted for a couple of hours. Then Jo had to dash off to work at 1pm. Mum, Nana and I decided to go for a walk around the Hamilton Gardens. The weather was great, which was lucky as we saw 3 wedding parties getting photos taken. Here are my own portrait attempts....

Chinese Garden

Japanese Garden

Indian Garden

From the gardens we took a little drive to see where Jo lives and works (don't worry Jo, we didn't go around your house, just saw from the outside!)

That night I went to Kim and Q's house to watch some movies (I was home alone and feeling lonely!!). We watched War of the Worlds - quite good but not completely what I expected. The Q put on Sin City. SOOO not my thing. Once I realised I'd slept through half of it, I excused myself and headed home. I just felt like company as I'd had quite a depressing week.

a sad day :-(

Today wasn’t that great a day. I went to a funeral this afternoon for Ashton. He was Nicola’s (maiden name Torr) baby of 1 month exactly. Born 11th Dec and died 11th Jan. It’s not that great going to a funeral, let alone a child of such a young age. Lots of love and blessings to Nic and her family.

Happy Birthday Rach!

Last night we helped Rach celebrate her 23rd birthday. Her actual birthday was the 12th, but Jo and I were on camp and Cam was away on a course. Rach ended up going to Tauranga to see her family anyway, so luckily she wasn’t alone.

We all met at Breakers for dinner at 7pm. There was Kim and Quentin, Cam and Rach, Craig and Laurine, Jo, Tobi and myself. After a yummy feed there, we moved on to Ten Pin at Sky City. Spent an hour playing a game of ten pin, with many laughs all round. Jo won with 113 points (I think it was that many) but she was in the other lane….. I was winning in our lane for ages until Laurine finally decided she did know how to play and started getting lots of spares and strikes in a row! NICE!!

After that we had some time to kill before we had our game of laserzone. Timeout (arcade type games) was right beside Ten Pin so we had a go on some of those. Kim and I had a car race, which I tragically lost! Jo and Rach were playing a racing horse game, which was a total crack up to watch. Both walked away with sore thighs!!!

From there we went and played Laserzone. We decided to play girls against boys (who’s dumb idea was that?!). We had 5 girls and 4 boys. They lady in charge decided to help us girls out by giving us some tactics and being our sniper! She stood up on the viewing platform and shot us some guys!!! They guys didn’t know about this except Tobi saw her late in the game and took her out! That was the longest 15 minutes ever! It was so much fun though. I was top of the girls with Rach coming in second. Both of us got the base which gave us 2000 points each, where the other girls didn’t, and you can only get a max of 200 points per hit on a person. I demand a rematch now we are more aware of what to do in there!!

It was about 11pm by the time we got out of there so we decided to head down to the cafes and get a coffee. A near impossible task at that time of night, as lots of the cafes turn into bars at about that time, so stop serving coffee, etc.

Today we all stumbled out of bed late in the morning. After mucking around for a few hours we decided to go play mini-putt, so Cam, Rach, Tobi and I headed off to Mini Golf World in Flagstaff, where we met Jo and her friend Louise. There are 36 holes of mini golf and we decided we’d tackle all of them! The first 18 were novelty holes with stuffed toys and other objects lying along the course. I even got a hole in 1!! Woo hoo! Louise was the only other person to get one! Yay us! Didn’t make up for my 5’s and 6’s along most of the other holes though…. The second 18 holes were a lot more difficult as they didn’t have solid sides along the holes, just slopes which the ball happily continued rolling over and into the garden. Yet somehow, I managed to win that round!

Another Camp Quality has been…

Well I’m exhausted after another long week of camp. Don’t get me wrong, I loved every minute of it! Well, maybe not the part where we had to put up 20 tents, but the rest was great!!

I had an 8 year old girl, Courtney, who’s brother had cancer a couple of years ago. She was going full force the whole camp. Could hardly keep up!! She had an attention span of a goldfish.

All staff and companions arrived at camp (in Awakeri, near Whakatane) on Saturday (7th) to have a last minute training and briefing before we got the kids on Sunday. That night, we went to a restaurant in Whakatane for dinner where we got to socialise and just be normal adults for one more night.

We picked the kids up on Sunday afternoon after unloading stuff of buses and putting up about 20 tents! That night, we had a barn dance!! We had country singers in and some line dancers. Always a good way to start camp! Normally we have a disco, but the theme of camp was Wild West, so a barn dance was appropriate!

Monday morning was spent at the lake. I don’t know which lake…..Roto-something. We had the jet boat come with a few boats to give the kids rides (ok, and adults too!), kayaks and general swimming. It was a nice, relaxing morning. Electives were in the afternoon, which are a huge bunch of activities the kids can choose from, and they can do 2 a day. Monday we did Wax Art and Bead Making. The handy thing about having a camper that can do their own thing without help, means you can make your own stuff! I made 3 cool wax pictures (one I gave to Mum who was stuck in the kitchen all week) and made some cool bead earrings. Monday night the older kids (9+) went offsite so us younger ones played games and did some chocolate making.

This is how you make the wax pictures - with an iron!

These are a couple of pictures I made
(also gave one to Mum but similar to the purple one)

Tuesday we did more electives and went to the aquatic centre in Whakatane. Those electives we did pokerwork and pistol shooting. Tuesday night we a cool guy come in and tell stories and legends. He finished early so the kids thought it would be great to sing…..

Wednesday we had more electives, but by this stage, Courtney didn’t want to do much so we flitted between everything and eventually sat at the crafts table for a while. Our morning activity was what the older kids got to do a couple of nights ago……paintball shooting! No, not to each other. We just had targets to shoot at. They company had huge versions of lots of games that we could play with while waiting for our turn, like Jinga that was nearly as tall as Courtney, Connect 4 that was about as tall!! Heaps of fun for the kids……and us! Wednesday night we had a quiet movie night. The younger kids watched Madagascar while the older ones watched Mr Deeds (after the young ones went to bed. I love having the younger ones!!!)

Thursday morning was our Wild West day! We had Action NZ come in and set up some activities - mechanical bull, knife throwing, pistol shooting, laser clay bird shooting and whip cracking! We also had some of the local Lions group come down with their 4-wheel drive bikes and give rides and magic carpet rides. I had a go a knife throwing, and got about 4 in out of 15 throws! Clay bird shooting was a whole other story! I couldn’t get my gun working – sadly it was a user error! In the afternoon we had our concert and dressed up in our Wild West costumes. Normally the concert is in the evening, after dinner, but they decided to try it in the afternoon as we often run out of time for everyone to do their skits. We did a skit as a tent (3 girls and 3 companions) which one of the girls came up with. After dinner we all hopped on the bus and went out to a farm where they had a huge bonfire! We sang some silly songs (most of which came out of an old girl guide song book!). The fire was too big to cook marshmallows so we headed back to camp for supper (plus it started to drizzle – the first all week!)

Friday we all packed up, dropped the kids off to waiting parents, had a quick debrief and headed home. Ahhh Home Sweet Home! To keep with the standards of every year, us companions and staff met up in town on Friday evening for a drink and to socialise again. We were in Hamilton and there was a group in Tauranga. Got home about 1am and just CRASHED!!! Didn’t get up till 11am this morning!!

143 Days til we leave!!!

OK, this has officially been the longest week of my year! haha!! OK LIFE!! Painfully slow actually.

As I've only been at my job for less than a year, I had to return to work on the 4th. There are about 100 people in this building normally. This week........30! In 3 days, I've had 5 calls. I've updated my blog, done heaps of stuff for Camp Quality (which starts tomorrow, yay!!) and taking 1.5 hour lunches (shhhh don't tell the boss!). I figure it's ok really cause I don't take my 15 min morning and afternoon tea breaks. It's just me for the IT team this week.

Cam and I decided on Wednesday what we want to do in Thailand on our way home from Europe in July. Cause we are flying with Thai airways, we can have a stopover in Bangkok. We've decided to fly up to Chiang Mai (North Thailand) for a couple of nights. There is this cool tour that goes to an elephant camp for half a day and we get to ride one!!!!!!!! Then have lunch in an orchid farm. The afternoon is spent at the zoo - visiting the Pandas!!!! I'm so excited!!

I also plan to do some pampering. Thailand is known for their massages and beauty treatments, so I plan to indulge!

Well I've killed some time adding this entry, while also chatting to Rach, Cam and Shaun online! Having MSN at work rocks!

Happy New Year......eller Godt Nyt År!

For New Years this year, a bunch of us went to a friend's bach at Cooks Beach (up the Coromandel Peninsula). Kim's parents were very kind to lend us the bach as they actually have it up for sale, but held of any sales til after New Year!

Jo and I drove up on the 30th after she finished work. We left about 3.30pm and got there about 6pm. We decided to put our tent up straight away as we knew once we sat down and started chatting, we wouldn't be bothered later on! It's an old tent of Mum's and it has shrunk over the years, plus Mum thought she'd mixed the poles up so sent us with both sets. Once we sorted which poles went where and finally got the tent up, we lazed about on the porch with Kim, Quentin, Rach and Cam - who had been there since the 27th. Hayley, Nicky and their friend Dane arrived not long after us, but they'd booked one of the rooms inside, so didn't have to fuss with a tent!

We had a lazy evening, just chatting and enjoying the nice weather.

The next day, after we eventually dragged our sorry asses out of bed, we had brunch then went for a wander down the beach. It's so lovely up there cause it's not hugely populated, so there was heaps of room, plus the beach was clean and the water calm.

Hayley, Nicky, Dane and I started playing Rummi-O (aka Rummikub) while the others went for a drive. Great way to spend an afternoon. Lazing in the sun, playing board games with friends. Well, we lasted in the direct sun for about 5 mins before backing into the shade! Still as hot though!

Through the later part of the afternoon and early evening, everyone else started to turn up. Hayley and Nicky's flatmate Kat with 3 of her friends, Pam and 5 of her friends, plus Kim's brother! Talk about a full house!

The evening was spent making dinner (everyone having to take turns on the BBQ), socialising with all the newcomers and having a few drinks. It was a very social occasion.

Midnight crept up on us, so we had 5 mins to get our drinks poured and clump together for the big countdown. We decided to go with the official time of Telecom, which apparently is 1 minute faster than our neighbours, who were letting off fireworks as we started counting down.

Because there was a complete liqour ban in town, people finished off their drinks and decided to go on a mission down to the beach. Of course there was a queue for the bathroom, which I got in last. As I got out of the bathroom, I thought things were a bit quiet. Yes......I was left behind!! Oh they are all too kind. Are you feeling the love? Thank goodness the phonelines weren't too tied up, so I managed to get hold of Cam and Rach, who hiked back to get me. They weren't even with everyone. Some people turned left and others turned right, making several different groups and everyone wondering where everyone else was. Ahhhhh... drunken communication. Being the only sober one there, I wasn't overlly impressed. ANYWAY, we eventually got to the beach, which Cam and I walked the length of. It was lovely at 1am! Idiots had dropped bottles, etc over the main entrance to the beach, but once we got past that we had a clear run. It was a beautiful walk