The cables in question are fairly short cat5 (‘ethernet’/'network’) cables – one is blue and one is yellow, so hard to miss, which link parts of our ‘entertainment system’ (the AppleTV, the Wii, the PS2, MySKY).  I’m rather baffled as to where they might be.  In particular:

I moved all the ‘entertainment system’ on Saturday, the day before the truck moved the bulk of our things.  Why wouldn’t the cables have been moved then, along with the TV, the various boxes, the cabinet, and so forth?

If they were moved then, why wouldn’t I have plugged them in?  They wouldn’t have done much, since Telecom screwed up and hadn’t connected the phone line yet, but it seems like I would have plugged them in while I was doing everything else.  If they weren’t there then, why didn’t I notice that at the time?

Since all the boxes are unpacked, where can they possibly be?  This house isn’t large enough for things to get lost.  We’ve checked all over the place, including in the car.  Although the garage was a huge mess on moving day, we’ve since tidied it up, and there’s nowhere left for them to be there (no last box to unpack or anything like that).

It baffles me, and is also pretty annoying, since I don’t have enough spare cables (in fact, I don’t have any short spares any more) to replace them.

It took a couple of months – the pickings are slim when you have a cat, a dog, a 3-year-old, need decent Internet access, and want to be fairly rural – and we failed to get the first place we applied for, but after a couple of months we did find somewhere new to live, and have spent the last few weeks packing in earnest, then moving, then unpacking (nearly finished now).

Our time at 327 Point Wells was somewhat odd.  The last 18 months – essentially the entire time we were there – have been extremely bad for us, with few exceptions.  However, that’s mostly coincidental – it was generally quite a nice place to live.  We did have some nice times there (particularly in the early days), and there were certainly nice aspects of the property (the spa, the kitchen, the back yard, the large rooms).  However, it’s nice in some ways to have a fresh start as well.

Our new place is extremely different.  It’s ‘small town’ rather than rural.  There are only three bedrooms, and all the rooms are considerably smaller.  It’s modern (the kitchen and bathroom at 327 had been recently redone, but otherwise it was a very old house in fairly poor condition).  You can see the neighbour’s houses from most of the windows.  We’re renting via a real estate agent rather than an individual.  It’s fairly priced rather than cheap. And so on – these aren’t all negatives, but it’s certainly a huge change.  Some things will take a bit of getting used to (less privacy, the noise from the road, less space), but a year goes by pretty quickly, and I’m sure we’ll manage that easily enough.

In many ways the plan after this hasn’t really changed.  We have a bit under a year and a half before Samuel starts school.  Once that happens, we really want to stay in the same area (close enough that he doesn’t have to change school) for a long time.  That means that in about a year’s time, we may need to move again, but we’ll have to be very careful about the area that we choose (whether it’s renting or buying).  Olyvia’s quite keen on Ahuroa at the moment, although that might not be the case at that time.

Hopefully photos soon, but I do have a backlog of about 3k, so they might be a while.

Since posting is pretty infrequent at the moment, and since we’re trying to counter the plummeting exchange rate (and hence my income), I’ve moved the site from a self-hosted system to being hosted on WordPress.com itself.  It’s only a saving of about US$50/year, but every bit helps (and it means that WordPress.com will take care of the software updates as well, which helps).  The biggest catch is that there’s not a lot of flexibility in the design – basically there’s a set of slightly customisable templates, and that’s it.  If posting does increase again enough to make spending more worthwhile, then we’ll probably move to SquareSpace, but for now this is it.

For the non-technical, all that means is that the site will be a bit uglier, but there might be posts again.  If you had an account, it’ll be gone, but the accounts didn’t really do anything anyway – you should be able to do similar things here anyway.

Anyway. Hi.

Now that I can update from the iPhone, I hopefully will use this more regular-like.

Cute story time:

Sam and I went to the Matakana Country Park the other day (which is a fairly regular thing) to play on their extensive and muddy playground; a firm favourite with the almost three year old.

We were playing the climb in and out game when Sam suddenly became very excited and Mummy noticed the squawking was not just him but also a large black chicken, cornered inside one cubby house by said child. Mummy calmed the situation and released the frightened foul whilst trying to distract Sam from further terrorising the poor creature with a game of involuntary tiggy.

A walk to the other end of the park became the chicken’s salvation. Stopping to chat with the friendly cafe ladies, as per usual, Mummy relayed the chicken story. The staff remarked that perhaps this was where the chickens had taken to laying eggs, since no one had been able to find any eggs lately. Mummy agreed it was possible and left the small talk with a juice she hadn’t intended for Sam to have.

Back at the playground…

Mummy was fiddling with her phone and Sam was climbing about and chasing the bunnies. Next minute “Egg! Mummy yook a egg!” startled, Mummy looked up from Facebook and sure enough Sam was holding a perfect, brown, very fresh egg. It was still warm. He was inside the same cubby where we had earlier experienced chicken conflict. Mummy claimed the egg and thanked Sam for being so careful and decided to see if this was a one off lay.

Long story short (kind of) ten eggs, a bemused Mummy and delighted Country Park staff later, a very proud little Sam left the park, thanking the chickens for the egg hidey seek.

So, for a little bit of an update (no doubt one of the Meyer’s will be shamed into updating soon…) – Sam is growing taller and smarter every day. Last time I saw him he was spouting off words, letters and numbers faster than you could put them in front of him. Yes, I mean actually reading them, not just rambling or anything. For those of you that would like to see, a video of him reading can be downloaded here.

Dancing to Gwen Stefani and Pink also seems to be a favourite – and of course you get pulled in to dancing too (or in my case, you get the guilts when he looks at you and says “come on guys, dance!”) 

Playcentre is one more thing thats new in Sams life – he’s all properly enrolled at one of the local Matakana playcentres and loving it (btw, if anyone wants to buy a raffle ticket for a Mother’s Day hamper , let Olyvia or Tony know! Fundraising for playcentre is all good)

Anyway, that’s about it for now – sorry I don’t have much for you but hey, hopefully Olyvia or Tony will notice that I’ve updated their site soon and maybe they’ll give you some proper news

Have fun wherever you are!

- Debbie

We had a very nice day – I did a little bit of shopping in the morning (two bookstores and a video store – Whangarei is basically closed on Sunday!), then we went to Wellington’s Bay / Whangaumu for a picnic lunch. Many other people (I’m sure they weren’t all turning 30) had the same idea (the weather was fantastic and it was a long weekend) had the same idea, so the beach was very full, but we found a spot up the opposite end of the beach from normal and had a nice swim and then a picnic by the car.

Samuel was getting a bit tired at that point (he didn’t sleep on the way there, unfortunately), so we headed back home for a bit of a rest and then a nice evening meal.

I had my ‘official’ birthday celebration today – I decided that what I’d most like to do was spend 12 hours at the beach with Samuel and anyone else that wanted to come along. We would be there from 8 a.m. to 8 p.m. (including lunch and dinner) and people could come along whenever they liked, for however long they liked, super-casual style.

I didn’t quite manage this – it ended up being 11 hours over three beaches, but it was a nice day anyway. Although Samuel woke up at 6:30 a.m. we didn’t manage to leave on time, so got there a little late, but the beach (Campbell’s Beach) was great. The weather was again really nice, and the tide was quite far in, which meant that it looked great, but there was still enough room to play on the beach (when the tide is all the way in, there’s only about 1m of beach).

Samuel had a great time playing on the playground and on the beach (building castles, and reading “box”, “truck”, “car”, and “ball”, as well as individual letters). As usual, he got a bit grumpy around 9:30, so we had a nice walk along the beach from the boat ramp to the point and back again while he cheered up (the 9:30 grump doesn’t really need a sleep, just a rest). We then had a snack and Sam read me some stories (Charlie Cook’s Favourite Book and My Cat Likes to Hide in Boxes, which are his favourites at the moment). Olyvia then headed back home to check on Sebastian, and Samuel and I had a swim, then I walked him around until he fell asleep. Sam tripped over while walking after the swim and got a few new cuts and abrasions, but he didn’t seem to bothered by it.

After Olyvia got back, we read for a while (Sam was still sleeping), and then Simon, Jolene, Adam, and Reagan turned up. Unfortunately, it had got quite windy by this stage, so much so that it was starting to get a little uncomfortable. To keep the peace, Simon and I checked out Baddeley’s Beach (not attractive at all, although sheltered), and Point Wells, and then we moved everyone there (including Olyvia’s parents, brother and brother’s girlfriend, who turned up as we were doing this).

Point Wells is ok – it has a small playground, and it’s probably nice to swim at (for adults), and it looks like a good place to launch a boat, but there isn’t really much in the way of beach. When the tide is out (as it was by now), it’s also not particularly attractive, although with the tide out there is a lot of mudflat that can be run around on. Simon, Adam, Reagan, Samuel and did some of this for a while, and everyone had a bit more to eat. The kids played on the playground for a while, and although it’s smaller, seemed to have just as much fun.

Unfortunately, I was distracted by Reagan (the kid can climb!) and Sam assumed that I was ready to catch him (which I wasn’t) and jumped off the top of the playground, right to the ground (probably 1.5m high). This won’t come as much of a surprise to those that have seen Samuel play – it was bound to happen sooner or later (and may well happen again) since he has no fear jumping and does not always announce that he is going to do it. Happily, he just got a fright (hopefully encouraging him to make sure someone is ready next time) and wasn’t hurt in any way (the earlier stumble did more damage). After a cuddle he was quite ready to play again.

Olyvia and Jolene headed back to our place at that point, and the rest of us did more walking, splashing, eating, and playground’ing. Eventually Tim (+1), Liv’s parents, and then Si/Adam/Reagan headed off, leaving just me and Samuel again. We had a bit more of a walk around Point Wells – I discovered that the spot where the kids swim when the tide is low is not safe to walk – I got sucked down to my thigh (which would be Samuel’s neck – I swung him back to steady ground before he sunk) in the rather smelly muck. That rather put me off any more exploration of Point Wells, so we headed off to Omaha Beach (Google Maps doesn’t really show much of the beach!) for a final swim (which I needed to get clean at that point!).

We had a reasonably nice swim, although the waves were pretty strong, so we didn’t go out far and mostly I stayed on my feet. Samuel started to get tired (it was around 7:15 p.m. by this stage), so we headed back to the car, stopping off at the playground for a few more slides before arriving home around 7:30 p.m.

Now, I suppose, I ought to get to work!

I believe this was our house in Kaitaia (before the Jamieson Road one, which doesn’t seem to have street view – even Google has limits! – it’s back from the road anyway, so you wouldn’t be able to see much).

View Larger Map

Assuming that most of NZ was street-mapped at the roughly the same time, we must have been living in Henderson at the time (our car, which we only bought just before moving there, is in the shot, although oddly parked on the grass). The side of the driveway at Whitehills has been cut away, which was a while after we moved, I think. The letterbox we put up at Point Wells isn’t there, so it seems unlikely we had already moved.

(For the record, I also lived in Tikipunga, on campus (street view doesn’t extend all the way down the road), in a garage (briefly), in a lounge (more briefly), Massey (not sure if this is the right view or not – I don’t really remember), Glenfield Rd (not 100% sure this link is right either), and Jenanne Place (not much to see, since it’s back from the road)).

There’s a small version (33 MB) and a larger one (57 MB).

This is a little flashback to when Samuel first started walking. The video quality isn’t great, since it was taken with the still camera rather than the video camera (and whoever was shooting it – I don’t remember if it was me or Olyvia) wasn’t aiming that well). It shows a lot of change over the last year, though!

We bought her a digital photo frame (which we also did for Poppa, and had previously for Grandma) – the difference in quality between the frames each year is quite dramatic. The one we bought her is one I would almost use myself. (I really feel that the frame needs to auto-pull photos, and needs to be able to change photo slowly (once an hour, once a day, once a week) rather than quickly – if I want a slideshow, I’ll use the TV or a computer). They still seem a bit chunky, though, considering the size of other devices (e.g. an iPod Touch), and include pointless features (e.g. displaying video and playing music).

The other gift didn’t quite get organised quickly enough to arrive in time to get to her on her birthday (and in fact has still yet to arrive, probably held up by the holiday no-mail days). As an alternative, we made a DVD including an Animoto video of some ‘this is your life’ photos (download/view the higher quality (35 MB) version), as well as a collection of the Samuel photos & video we’ve made so far.