School Holidays: Week Two

'This past week was my second, and last week of holidays. Here's a quick recap of what we got up to in the last week.

The start of the week was truly awful weather to go camping like we had planned. It was raining and pouring pretty much until Friday. We did make use of the weather to get caught up on some things around the house, and to cook some yummy meals that take much longer than we have during the normal work week. 

I spent some time with friends, having coffee at the cutest little cafe up the street, Bolaven. We got the inspection done on the car.  I also worked on getting the Christmas shopping done as we have to mail everything by November 1st for the holiday season. I also did some course work as I am taking two classes through the university of Auckland that just started up for some professional development. Mark worked on his papers/thesis and was at the university a few days for meetings and work. Although I am on holidays, Mark is not. Mark schedule is flexible, but he still has things he has to get done. 

We celebrated my birthday, on Wednesday, by going out to dinner to a Thai place up the street, and then driving out to the country to watch the full lunar eclipse that was happening. Mark and I enjoyed the event and we both commented on how quickly the eclipse itself was to happen, and how quickly it was to fade. The moon was such an amazing red-mist colour. 

Wednesday was also a really important day as my sister had her second son, which means Mark and I now have TWO lovely nephews. 

On Friday we took the day to hike up Mount Eden, and this time we brought the camera- and remembered to charge the battery. We are going to post about Mount Eden on its own. 

Saturday afternoon we spent on the deck since it was so nice. Mark made the cutest wind chime out of shells he's collected from some of the beaches we've been too in the past year. We went to some friends for supper and cards and it was fantastic. We had a lovely finger food spread and played Wizard. We were all laughing so hard we had a hard time catching our breath, and we plan to do it all again next weekend. 

Today, Sunday, Mark is out on the boats for work and I am going to put together the final touches on my lesson for tomorrow. I need to get the homework page finished. I also wanted to catch up on these blogs, and spend some time sitting in the sun working on my latest knit project - a cute geometric baby blanket for a friend who is due in the near future. 

It is so very hard to believe that in 9.5 weeks I will be on summer holidays and we will be welcoming Mark's family to the North Island for a Christmas visit and tour around the island.