Swimming and getting Beetle ready for sale

Spent a bit of time last weekend cleaning our beetle so that we could take some photos and start listing it in various places. It is now for sale :-( !

Also went swimming with Josh and Ross and Maz. Josh loves the water and is almost a little too confident at times! Not sure where he got that from (love of the water that is! not the being too cocky! :-p) as neither Beck nor myself are really 'water rats'. He goes swimming basically every week with Ross and Maz during the week so it was well overdue that he showed his parents how much he loves the water! Grandma got him a ride on the school bus after his swim - not sure if that is part of the normal routine!! I guess that's what grandmas are for - the things you wouldn't get from your parents! :-)

Brunch with Marcus and Toni

Had brunch with Marcus and Toni (our old neighbours from Papatoetoe) and Marcus took some nice pics of Josh - so here are a couple: (click to enlarge!)

Weekend with Oma and Opa

Josh and daddy spent a weekend up north at my parents (Oma and Opa) as Beck headed south to Hamilton to spend a night out on the town with Fleurt.

Had a good time up north with the weather being OK - not the best but at least we got a little bit of a walk outside and said hi to Luky and the cows. Josh now knows what the cows say - muhhh muhhh! He looks like a real little farmer in those overalls! He even helped with the cooking and drying dishes!

Finally a few more photos

Not sure how many of you actually look at this site - to date no-one has complained about lack of updates so maybe not too many of you look at it?

Anyway - finally got some more work done in the garden over the weekend and almost finished out planter boxes (haven't started on the ones round the front of the house yet though!) Also bought a spa pool so have a little work there to fit this in alongside the new deck we built last summer. Have it in the garage at the moment so that we can use it - so nice being able to soak and relax at night once Josh has gone to bed. Josh hasn't been in it yet though I'm sure he'd love to - will need to turn the temp down as it would be too hot for him at the moment.

Josh has been to a homeopath as we are trying to get him to stay off the antibiotics for his tonsils. They'll probably still have to come out but at least if we can keep them under control and keep his immune system up so that he doesn't get sick all the time then he won't need to be on antibiotics constantly! Time will tell if the sulphur tablets he's been given help or not. Will see the homeopath again in a couple of weeks - would be nice if he didn't get sick again over that time.

Other than that he is doind great - he loves being outside and helping daddy. And he's quite happy to do his own thing while daddy does his and doesn't really get in my way often. Will need to put up our trellis gates to close in the garden round the back of the house so he can run around without disappearing out to the garage or the cars. He hasn't gone down the drive but is pretty quick at making a dash for the cars parked round the front or to go and knock on the garage door!

Planning to go up to my parents this weekend (just Josh and me as Beck is going to Hamilton), since they havn't seen him for almost 2 months now as they've been in Germany.

A quick update

Must be time for some more photos (especially for his Oma and Opa who are overseas at the moment!). Weather hasn't been that good so haven't spent much time with Josh outside, though he loves to be outside when we/the weather let him.




I've spent a bit of time in the garage over the last couple of weekends (with that weather what else can one do!) and last weekend Josh came out for a little bit too. Mum came out too as 'supervisor'! Josh loved it - he was checking out the car and was quite keen to get his hands on my tools. He was pretty good and didn't really touch stuff without giving me a look as to say 'is this ok to touch dad?'. I was sitting there unscrewing something off the car and he came over and sat down next to me - beck and I cracked up laughing - it was so cute!


So here some photos of that. Will have to see if I can figure out how to put some video up on this website too - he's hilarious in the bath at the moment (water gets everywhere!) and does lots of dancing (thanks maz - next thing he'll be wearing pink shirts and ...)

Working in the garden

We're building some planter boxes in the garden and Josh came out to give me a hand - by choice! I didn't force him to honestly!

Josh's first trip to the Zoo!

We went to the Zoo with Josh over the weekend. He enjoyed the giraffes and zebras, possibly the elephants and definately the seagulls and chickens/roosters running around! Most of the other animals were too slow or blended into their habitat too much and so weren't of much interest!

(Click on the pictures to make them bigger!)

Josh's 1st birthday party

It's Josh's first birthday on the 8th and so he had his first party this saturday (5th). Lots of family and friends but unfortunately not many of his friends were there - several have now moved to Australia and one of the others for some reason never received the invitation which was a bit sad.

He got lots of presents and some nice clothes (which was lucky as he was starting to run out of clothes big enough to fit him!). My grandparents are also over from Germany at the moment and so it was nice to have them there too. On sunday we then showed them (and Josh!) where we got married and had our reception. We still had our fruitcake from the wedding in the freezer (as we know we should have eaten that for our 1 year anniversary or the birth of our first child) and so we defrosted that and took it with us to the rose gardens and had a picnic there with the my family (incl dad's parents). Almost took the beetle for drive too but we would have had to take both cars as Josh can't really go in the back of the convertible and so we decided against it - just proof that we really should sell it as we're not using it!

VW nationals 2008 - Cambridge

Took our beetle down to Cambridge for the VW Nationals over the easter weekend. The weather was perfect for driving round in a convertible and the beetle finally got a bit of time out of the garage and on the road! The tyres had actually developed a little bit of a flat spot from sitting around for so long without being moved - but the tyres stretched themselves back to almost normal now. Our beetle won 3rd place in the convertible section which was pretty cool!

It was a nice weekend camping and Josh again enjoyed sleeping in his own tent - it convinced us that we should really get rid of the kombi too as it's easier in the tent at the moment anyway and I can then spend more time on our stretched one (which I haven't worked on for over a year now!).

Below are some pics from the nationals and Josh having a bath at the campsite (thanks Rob and Cass for providing the 'bathtub'!).

Josh's first camping trip

We took Josh camping last weekend at Opito Bay. Had to take the tents as Felix wanted to use the kombi and we'd already told him months ago that he could have it - as it turned out it didn't get the last minute warrant of fitness and so didn't actually get used at all that weekend.





It probably worked better with tents anyway as Josh had his own tent and so couldn't hear us get into bed or move around during the night. He didn't even have a nightlight which he normally has in his room.





We were so happy with him; he went to bed without fuss and only woke once during each night at about 2am - didn't even have to get him out of bed though. We just went into his tent to let him know we were still there and he went back to sleep. I think he actually quite liked his own little tent and he was quite the happy little camper.









Unfortunately sunday brought a few showers and so the tents got packed wet and had to be dried out when we got home - that's where the kombi is just so much easier!