Life Part 1

So glad you stopped by, there has been much happening around our place since I last blogged. 

Well, we have decided to move to the country next year.  We like the area north of Christchurch in and around north Canterbury and the Waimak. River.  With this decided, we now face the task of tidying up our section and last minute painting jobs inside.  We imagine putting the house on the market end of January/ beginning of February.  So do stop by and read how we undertake this move.  We are all very excited about the chance to move to the country.  I think the day I got chickens was the moment when I really wanted to live on a small farm.  Georgia is very very excited because she will finally get her own horse and be able to ride and look after it in a safe environment, on our property.  We are not in favour of Georgia having grazing in a paddock out of the city, where she would be on her own all day and with no adults around should anything happen.  We worry about stranger danger and her being vunerable on her own.  She said all she wants to do is be able to wake up, look out the window and see her horse.

Winter has well and truly disappeared along with spring.  Our weather has warmed up and we are enjoying lovely warm weather everyday now.  Very hot days are also with us.  In the last week we had a 28.5 degree day and a 28.2 yesterday.  Hot going when you are trying to landscape your grounds in preparation for selling.  Speaking of selling, I thought I would touch on the selling with you, and also bring you up to speed on what we have been doing since June. The preparations involved in making your house presentable for selling are quite time consuming.  And as you can imagine we have a big job ahead with making our yard look "urbanised" and beautifilly landscaped.  But we think it's worth every ounce of effort to get the best price we can, that money will allow us to spend more at the other end where it matters.

The last of the rhodos in bloom

So, what have we been doing lately?  Well in general, parts of Christchurch are very slowly returning to normal.  A new normal though, 9 months after 22 February and 14 months after the initial big quake.  The aftershocks  have disapeared almost completely, and we are just getting the odd one every now and then.  People are now being forced to move out of their homes due to whole suburbs being unrepairable meaning a massive scale of home/land buy up by the government , 6000 homes so far.  Deconstruction work is still going on in the city where still more buildings are coming down.  There are lots of spaces where there once stood buildings.  Small businesses are popping up in these spots, mainly vendors selling coffee and hot food.

Well, the gardens are planted out with less vegetables this season.  Infact the gardens are being removed in a big way to make way for lawn and that landscaped look.  Once the garlic and potatoes are done that garden will go as well.  That will leave the main garden behind the picket fence.  We were just going to leave everything pretty much like it is.  But I read a really good article in Saturday's Press about not underestimating the value of a landscaped section when selling.  People want to see that that all the hard work is done so that they can just move in and enjoy what's there.  People will be unlikely to buy homes with gardens and lawns that need lots of work doing to them.

The garden beds being returned to grass & the new grass we have to grow under the clothes line where the tent sat for 6 weeks.

In September, EQC began repair work on our home.  We were given the option of moving to a motel for the duration of the work, however, with all our pets this made it difficult to do.  We compremised and moved into our tent on the lawn.  For about 6 long weeks we lived in that tent.  Our garden shed became a makeshift kitchen complete with fridge and microwave.  We had the use of our 2nd toilet in the laundry, but no showering/bathroom facilities. MMMmmm, this was hard let me tell you. Our family, neighbours and friends kindly let us use their showers for that time.  But we were all pleased when we got our bathroom back.

 The extra room on the end has been taken down, so the tent originally had 3 rooms

Life in a large tent with 2 teenagers and 2 dogs certainly made life interesting to say the least.  We had to evacuate on 2 occasions due to major storms flooding the ground.  There were times when the tent was lashed all night with gale force winds as well.  But I look back now that we have moved back into our newly decorated home and think how thankful we are that we only had small cracks that needed some plaster and paint.

Thanks for stopping by,

Blessings

Lee-Anne

Frugal Vegetable Soup (bulk freezer recipe)

Around the home

It was Queens Birthday weekend and also a long weekend for New Zealanders.  The Queen's birthday is actually in April, however we celebrate it in June.  Haven't ever found out the reason for this, perhaps someone knows?

A strong earthquake measuring 5.5 jolted us all yesterday morning at 9.09am.  We have had a real seismic couple of days.  I will need to straighten my bookcases again, as the books all slid sideways.  Last evening, I had just finished giving Alex the earthquake drill before leaving to pick Georgia up from her friends house, when another one hit.  It pays to just remind the children when they are being left at home for a short time, what to do if one strikes and Mum and Dad have popped out.  I admit to feeling uneasy leaving him on a day with so many aftershocks.  Turned out there were no more while I was out.  Just one when I got home instead.

Georgia has been away all weekend, staying with a horsey friend and being groom at a 2 day horse competition.  I have to admit to missing her.  We share such a close relationship, so I missed her chatter and excitement around the house.  Alf and Alex had Air soft on Saturday and worked together yesterday and Sunday.  So I've actually had some quiet time to myself.  This is most unusual and almost never happens.  So what did I do with my time? I finished a (non homeschooling) book I was reading, spent some time reading blogs, got up to date with the accounts for our business, and pottered around the house.  Not terribly exciting at all.  However, I feel refreshed with just having had a break from other people.

In the last week, we have adopted Isaac, the country dog.  This came about because his family had moved to Australia for work about 6 months ago.  Since then he has missed having children and people around him.  Isaac is a 12 year old Black Lab/huntaway cross, with the most gentle personality and only one eye.  He is very good around the cats and doesn't even bark at the chickens (he is very good at rounding them up when they get out).  He will invariably retire with us and is no problem at all.  Hopefully he will be a good teacher for young Moose when he gets here. Which won't be long now, as they are running around outside now.  So our pet population has suddenly doubled almost overnight!

In the Kitchen
I make this soup almost weekly over the winter months.  Very cheap to make and is delicious.  You can even watch it on YouTube.

Pumpkin & Vegetable Soup

5 litres water in a large pot
Bring to boil and add the following:- pumpkin, celery, carrots, silverbeet, 4T chicken stock and minced garlic
Boil soup for 20 minutes
Add 2 cups red lentils
Boil another 20 minutes
Puree soup

 

My blog has finally gone to the dogs

Around the Home
It's doesn't feel like that long ago that I began blogging about our daily and weekly lives.  Eight months has now passed...where has that time gone? One thing I do remember with great joy, was the encouragement I received from experienced bloggers here in New Zealand, like Leanne @ Cottagetails. I suddenly felt part of a huge community of like minded women, with lives fairly similar to mine.  My lovely cousin Ruth, who lives in Queensland, Australia, is just starting out in the blogging world as well.  If you have a moment, pop across to her new blog creations by Ruth.  If you are into crafts and quilting, Ruth is a gifted quilter who even runs her own patchwork and quilting business.

More Dog Stories
It seems these days that this place has really gone to the dogs.  Banshee, the puppies mum, is now feeding a 6 day old cocker spaniel pup.  The puppy is from a litter of 9, and the mum has become seriously ill with peritonitis and endometriosis.  The 8 other pups are being fed successfully by bottle, but the one we are looking after is refusing to feed.  So Georgia has taken over the role of midwife again and going over and putting this wee fella on.  The puppy then has his own wee box to live in.  He makes the 3 other puppies look enormous.

In the garden
This past Sunday was a perfect day to spend in the garden.  Alf and I had kept the day free of errands and other jobs, we even stayed home from church.  Sunday for us was a much anticipated day and the winter weather was gloriously clear, with a crisp frost to start the day.  Two big jobs were on our "to-do" list and were scheduled to be done. Firstly the silver birch tree that we stood under in the midst of summer, was finally cut down to make way for a new big garden.  Alf had a wonderful homeschool moment where he taught Alex chainsaw safety and how to cut up small branches.  Baby steps first thankfully, before any actual tree cutting down gets done.

 Alf sawing down the tree & Alex sawing off small branches

A homeschooling lesson for the farm loving boy and his dad.

Secondly, we are putting in a new path from our "garden gate" through the garden.  Instead of having 3ish smaller gardens, I will have 1 large long garden and a shorter one next to the chicken coop.

The new path heads towards the tree that Alf is trimming, turns right past the compost, then to the plastic house.

Mmmmm....clearly some tidying up to be done here

Who needs to hire a compactor, when you can just grab the nearest teenage boy

Georgia picking off the summer's dried beans for storage

Happiness is.......sunning yourself in the winter sun

Mothers Day - Part 1

Around Home
Welcome to my new look blog, hope you like it.  Am trying to go "simple" in real life and in blogland and it's taken me a wee while to find this particular heading that I 've always liked. 

We were woken abruptly yesterday morning at 3am by a large nasty earthquake, a 5.3 magnitude centred in Rolleston .  This takes our total of aftershocks and new earthquakes to nearly 6000 in the last eight months!  That seems an incredible statistic when written down.  Even more unbelievable that we Christchurch residents have suffered through it all, day in day out.

Carpe diem  -  translated as "seize the day". Carpe literally means "to pick, pluck, pluck off, cull, crop, gather", but Ovid said the word in the sense of, "To enjoy, seize, use, make use of".

The above phrase is something a lot of people in our city have embraced, and for us despite all the hardship and suffering going on around us, the events have meant an unexpected employment opportunity in our home.  Alf has finally taken a life long dream of self-employment and has made it a reality.  Three weeks ago he resigned from the drilling company he had just started work at, and has become a contractor to the City Council.  My my, I can tell you we thrashed this move out, over and over, pros and cons, do we - don't we, we prayed with our church members for the right answer.  There really isn't a right or wrong answer to a situation like this.  We are optimistic that based on Alf's qualifications and the abundant employment opportunities in the infrastructure of the city, he can earn a "decent wage".  So for the last few weeks, my time has been taken up with office jobs, phone calls and accounting.  But that's quite OK with me.  I come from an accounting/office background in my previous life before children.  So I am quite happy to play office lady to my darling husband.  We pray each day that this new direction will be successful and lasting.

Mothers Day
I was given the most special attention for Mother Day this year.  I really didn't want too much fuss, but the family had other ideas.  They concluded I was the MOST important person in the house and that life would simply grind to a halt without me. BLUSH.

A lovely treat coffee - and a magazine

Spending time with my family

A healthy lunch for the weight and health conscious mother

Outside the cafe, the deck extends out over the Avon River allowing us wonderful views of the river.  Not too crowded which is great for 12.30, not many venturing into the city I think.  Notice the cafe cat, Max, alseep by the gas heater.  He curls up and stays there all day!

Punting and rowing on the Avon has been in this location 125 years and is quite a Christchurch institution, I have vivid memories of being little and rowing here in the school holidays.  Much of the land around it seems damaged, so it was good to enjoy something unchanged from before the earthquake.

They think of everything, especially when lunching on a cold day

Alex and Georgia on the statue of

James Edward Fitzgerald on Rolleston Avenue

Fitzgerald was the first Superintendent of Canterbury between 1853 to 1857

Let Me Show You Around Our Place

While the house was tidy the other day I took some photos to show you around our home.  Come with me as I show you around....

 Our home schoolroom, which was our dining room.  

The whiteboard sits on a dining chair and gets moved around as needed.  The library books you can see normally sit displayed nicely on the hutch dresser, however, they all came down in the 6.3 earthquake and I never put them all back up.

Top shelf holds reference books, middle shelf holds curriculum to be used and math books for me and at the bottom Georgia keeps all her work.

Alex likes having his own space this year, which seems to be working out well.

We have just inherited this shelving from my mother in law, handy for by the telephone.

Georgia sits here at the end and I am beside her at the other end.

The lounge looking out towards the north.  A large room made up of lots of windows and not much wall space unfortunately.

With the lounge being so long, we are able to put our 2 metre dining table here.

The log burner that will finally be signed off this Wednesday coming.  There is a huge wait (3-6 weeks) for plumbers in the city at the moment, eventually we did manage to get one to connect our wetback last Thursday.  Alf has put up the flue and all is done now. It has been sooooo cold in the house with the latest storms and we have had  NO heating!

The big white bookcase did used to sit in the dining room, but I inherited yet another smaller bookcase that now sits better in the small space in the dining room.  I now have the opportunity to fill this up with spare books and have somewhere to keep our games.

Through the end of the lounge into another room where we keep the family computer.  Our computer sits where both Alf and I can keep an eye on Internet use.  The door shown is actually our official front door, but since we made our new garden and fenced everything off, this door is now redundant. This area was our entrance way and leads up the stairs, to the right of the computer desk.

The view from my kitchen bench, Leanne from Cottagetails should be able to recognise that plate holder on the left.....

A lovely gift from my darling husband on a trip to Jo Seagar"s Cafe a couple of years ago.  Most of the time my retro crown lynn plates sit on it, holding our fruit.  But every now and then when I play ladies, we put lovely little tea cakes and savouries on it and drink out of bone china tea cups. here it is advertised at Seagars at Oxford

Lee-Anne

School Holidays

Around the Home
Two weeks of school holidays are finally upon us.  A huge sigh of relief was heard around the house on Friday as the children packed up their books and tidied the homeschool table.  This term, without a doubt, has been extremely stressful on us all.  I wanted to be sure all our work that I set was completed. So we have been very busy with schoolwork, so no blogging for me. Despite starting school a week early, the unexpected break of several weeks due to the earthquake required some double lessons further into the term.  I feel lucky that we were able to do that, most schools in Christchurch are behind in work and will never catch up.

The weekend was dominated by a stormy, southerly blast from the Antarctic, with very cold temperatures, a cold cold wind and driving rain.  Snow has even fallen on our local hills.  As I look around the trees are changing colour even faster now.  There are brown and red leaves beginning to gather on the footpaths and lawns, a wintry feel is in the air.  I absolutely love the autumn season.  Good thing I just purchased a new puffer jacket on special from here macpac.

My jacket will come in jolly handy on the cold early morning starts the children and I will be having as we start delivering a local newspaper on Wednesdays and Saturdays.  By early morning starts I mean 6am.  Yes, 6am! That's because the paper arrives on our driveway at 6.30am, then needs folding (thank goodness it's half the size it used to be) and all 200 papers need delivering before 8am.  This is a new thing for us.  The children wanted to earn pocket money somehow, and small jobs are hard to find.  This paper round became available purely because The Star changed delivery from Wednesday/ Friday 5pm to mornings.  Obviously mornings are problematic to most people and students.  So the children and I discussed in detail  the pros and cons this opportunity presented.  As you can imagine, the timing and having to get up very early (especially Saturdays) meant a huge commitment for us all.  I have to oversee the getting up, the folding and accompanying Georgia around.  So we will see how it goes.  They are excited at the prospect of making some money to save and spend, however the early starts worry me and I worry I may end up doing it all as they pull out.  But time will tell.  Alex at 15 is very motivated to earn some money for himself.  I imagine on a normal school day, we will start slightly later in the morning to accommodate this.

Animals

Xena, "The Warrior Kitten" as we call her, visits us most days when her owners are out, totally disrupting our school work.  The kids just HAVE  to "play with her", they say. I must admit she is a very cute, but energetic kitten, who eagerly checks out our cat's uneaten bowls of  biscuits and annoys Sebbie constantly.  In fact Xena annoys Sebbie so much, he makes a bee line every time he sees her.  He's an old man now at three and just wants a peaceful place to sleep, preferably away from distractions like Xena.  However, she always ends up finding him and wants to play.

Sebbie on our BBQ, but what else is happening?

Xena has found a tail to play with

Sebbie sound asleep on the dining table

Georgia and Niamh walking the dogs from next door.  They are never walked, so the owners quite like it when Georgia gets out and takes them around the block

From left: Wookie (brother), Banshe (sister) and Spirit (mum)

Lee-Anne

The Last Week and Some Domestic Dramas

In Our Homeschool

Why is there an American flag in our homeschool?

We are working our way through Trail Guide To World Geography at the moment.  This week is a study of the North American Continent, so Alex has delved into his bedroom and retrieved his second most favourite flag ( what is his favourite? stayed tuned to find out) to inspire us in our work.  This curriculum has been quite successful for us so far and I'm enjoying teaching it as well.  I like the fact that I have printouts for Georgia, who is studying at intermediate level, and Alex who needs the high school printouts.  They can both work away at the same time at the appropriate level. Alex has some trickier questions to answer, so this is making him work harder. At times we  follow the format quite strictly, but we can choose to stop and study some facts in more detail if we want.  And of course, homeschooling allows us the freedom to do this, isn't it great?

We are planning on eating our way through the continents as we study them.  This week, Thursday night will be American Night.  I asked Georgia and Alex what they thought would be typical fare for America? They quickly announced hamburgers and hot dogs! Mmmm, will have to think on that some more.  Perhaps apple pie for dessert and another dish for a main.  Anybody got any ideas? American readers are most welcome to comment here.


In the Garden

After responding to frantic clucking from our girls the other morning, we discovered an injured baby hedgehog in the chicken run.  The chickens were in defensive mode and had attacked the hedgehog. By the time we got there, the poor little thing was crawling along with 2 very obvious broken back legs.  Very very upsetting for us animal lovers and there were tears (from Georgia).  This is the first time we have had to tackle our chickens acting viciously and attacking a predator. Sadly, something I suppose we need to get used to.

You can just see its little broken legs

 

 But look who we heard snuffing noisily around the yard the other night...

Mum & Dad Hedgehog, probably looking for baby hedgehog

Out and About

Alex has started going to rock climbing again.  Through Autism New Zealand, we have access to great outdoor education and amazing people who are understanding and passionate about what they do.  Alex's old Teacher Aide, Dan, is one such person.  Dan is a very special man to us, who has so much time for Alex.  Rock climbing is his thing, so Mondays we are back with the rock climbing group.  We are so blessed because for $8 Alex gets to climb for over an hour and Georgia can climb as well.  How cool is that!

 Alex being challenged by the climbing walls

Daily reminder of  our September earthquake, this is above shops in the inner city suburb of Sydenham

Blessings