Randomness

There are 'landbou skou' type events here in New Zealand too - we spent an afternoon wandering around the 'field days' at Feilding and Marieta captured this moment - where all I could think about was how difficult it was painting the tractor wheels like those ones, when I made a couple of tractor clocks.














Julia has recently started guitar lessons - she's been in New Zealand since she was very little so we are spending some time learning some of the traditional Afrikaans folk songs like Suikerbossie.











The very best thing about electronic drums is that you can practise to your little heart's content without having the neighbours call noise control to complain - on the other hand, our neighbours are of the crumbly variety - either blue rinsed or bald so most of them are verging on the hard of hearing - so there you go it would not matter to them really. For my part, there is just so much one can handle of a 'mechanical drum kit' before threatening murder or suicide, whichever comes to mind first.


The drums belong to our friends Annelien and Carel Botha in Hamilton - (Annelien pictured below with Jo in the final stages of clearing out the booze cabinet back in May) and are on loan to us - thanks guys!

Mariaan decided that piano lessons where a little ho hum since she's about grade eight level so, in search of new challenges and things to keep her honest, she has taken up the viola (for those of you who don't know, a viola is fractionally bigger than a violin and consequently sounds less like a dying cat in the beginning stages).

This picture was taken a little while ago - just never got as far as the blog, but somehow it's a memory that I for one, would like to keep! Neither of these two are what one might classify as 'drinkers', but I'll have you know that we had a pretty marvellous weekend with the Bothas in Hamilton and all the bottles in the cupboards that had a few drams in them where finished and tossed out once and for all. Here's hoping that the cabinet will have been successfully restocked before we visit there again!

When we first arrived in New Zealand, Glenn and Tracey were pretty well the first 'real kiwis' that we got to meet and although Glenn and Jo worked together at MWH Hamilton (where Glenn still works) we became firm friends too. Tracey loaned me clothes to tide me over until our container arrived from South Africa and methinks that once clothing has been loaned and shared, friendship kind of becomes inevitable!

We had a lovely catch up visit and were thrilled to have our guest room used again! Little Dylan has to be the cutest, most well behaved two year old we have come across in a long while, maybe ever! Hopefully, we will get to see more of them since Glenn's brother lives in Wellington and if you drive from Hamilton to Wellies, taking a slight detour to the right off the state highway, you can't miss Wanganui! No excuses!

So I think I did mention that Richard and Pippa took a little flip over to Scotland and were around for the big sister graduation and celebrations! Here they are in the green hills of Scotland to prove it!

Naturally, we are hoping that the next time they are in the vicinity of green hills far away, those green hills are the ones found around our part of the world in the land of the long white cloud - now that we have a little experience, we can assure you that the scenery around here is as spectacular as any you can find anywhere and well worth it! We look forward to entertaining you here!

Dis al!