Jack Frost working overtime

I know that our temperatures are nothing to compare with places like, let's say, Holland for example, but we are enjoying some really decent frosts. -6 last night. The roads are white! The City Council is keeping the roads well gritted but it is still treacherous, to say the least. At least the days are glorious, makes up for them being so short!
Last Thursday was a particularly nasty morning as it hailed and then froze in the early morning. Signal Hill Road was a sheet of black ice and even the footpaths were skating rinks. They closed the road after four or five vehicles lost traction and spun out. Even the bus could not could up. The children had a late start at school, once conditions had eased a little.
My sermon was well received yesterday, I didn't lost my place or get confused so all was well.
We are enjoying having Trevor with us this week. We will head for Christchurch on Friday, via a night in Oamaru with my parents. Hopefully there won't be more snow on the way there.
Chris and I have a week off lectures this week although the children are still in school.I still have one or two bits and pieces to sort out however, there always seems to be more to do.
No word yet on the job front, we are looking at an option to take a Student Soul church plant somewhere else in the country but time will tell as to whether that comes to anything.

Synthesis week

We celebrated Janine's birthday in style, with a family celebration - dessert at St Lee's with another SOM family, the Purdies. And 8 girls for a movie and dinner on Saturday - a great time was had by all. Janine is now eleven years old, although sometimes she thinks she is really sixteen.

We have finally finished lectures and technically we are working on our synthesis this week. Of course, we both have an assignment still in the works and as you know, the job tends to expand to fill the time available. Although it seems to me that the time available is rapidly shrinking.

Friday is now taken up with a Missions Day, with a visiting speaker who I am sure will be very good and we are fortunate to have the opportunity. And then there are all the jobs that have been waiting all term that I could get on with, someone is visiting town and we should catch up. And I have a sermon to prepare for Sunday. Great!

The girls are thinking about Science Fair projects and preparing for a big concert in the Town Hall on Thursday, a massed choir event.

Zak's soccer was cancelled on the basis of the forecase, which he was pretty disappointed about, particularly as the day turned out fine.

Hannah really enjoyed the party, particularly the dancing.

Class of 2006, SOM

Click the box to see the photo of our yeargroup.

Weather? What weather?

Sympathies to all those in the rest of the country but Dunedin is fine and clear. Apparently no one in Auckland will be reading this today as half the power is out and the traffic means no one is going anyway. Wellington is caught in the middle as usual. Christchurch is covered in snow I gather. While there might be a little snow on top of Mt Cargill, otherwise it is business as usual. Apparently the storm skipped around us and came ashore about Timaru. Cold here though, but everyone is at school as normal.

We went to Milton yesterday for David Balchin's induction, one of those "already but not yet" affairs as he has been ministering there for half a year already, quite succesfully.

Also led worship at Leith yesterday, Chris was on sound, hmm, this is all sounding rather familiar. Anyway, this is the last week of lectures and next week is synthesis week - just two Major assignments to hand in this week, no worries.

Hannah also had a birthday party yesterday - we managed to get her to most of church first! There is a lovely group of children at Montessori which is lovely. This party yesterday had a bug theme, which was a new one on me, but the mum had lots of creative ideas and Hannah came home with a neat ladybird antennae head set which looks, as you can imagine, very cute.

Special greetings to Tante Diny in Holland - hope you are recovering well from your operation.

Nearing the end...

Katarina is away to Deep Cove this week; we had a very early start Monday morning to get her down to school at 6.30am. I just hope she remembers to brush her teeth! They had a great program lined up for them, including a boat trip across Lake Manapouri to get to the DOC campsite. It took us hours to get her packed up on Sunday afternoon, even with Anna's help; she thought she was just coming for tea but really it was a cunning plan to enlist her help.
Janine is enjoying being top dog, well, mostly as there are one or two extra jobs for her to do as well. We went out to breakfast together later on Monday morning, and yes, there was snow but not enought to stop traffic. The grit truck went up at 6am and back down again without spreading anything as the roads were not icy up our way. But of course, we couldn't see anything until dawn revealed that the hills had a decent dusting. There was plenty of snow on the cars around, so some of the other suburbs had a bit more than Opoho.
Zach played soccer on Saturday, over at Waitati. They won, of course, although he had a very dull second half as he was goalie and all the action was down the other end. They have quite a nice little team this year, the boys are not ball hogs and have really upskilled in terms of passing to each other. Zach is so pleased to be back playing again.
I spent several hours waiting at the hospital with him last week, only to be told by the resident when we finally got in that we had probably wasted our time!!! But they told us to come! I don't understand that. But we all agreed that he was running around OK so all is well.
While we were there we had Janine's hands X-Rayed; her two pinkies have short tendons so they curl up. It has not been an issue up til now but they are interferring with her music and netball so we thought we would investigate whether they can fix them or not.
Hannah has had several big days out with friends. We had a first - down to the beach but did NOT get wet. And we enjoyed playing at school yesterday in the sun, good family times.
However, the pressure is on workwise for Chris and I with major pieces of work due this week and next.