brrrrrrr

Zak and Hannah have both had great reports this week, although I was a little sad to discover they are consistently late to school; a new regime this week with an earlier departure time enforced!
Hannah's soccer game was in Fairlie this weekend, which made for a long morning, but we came away with a win and Hannah was player of the day, as she really stepped up and even had a go at goal. She has started going to Zak's practices as well, just because it is easier than running backwards and forwards and has made a big improvement in a couple of weeks. There is a girl her size in Zak's team who takes no prisoners, and Hannah is learning heaps.
The two younger ones also had a disco on Friday, which may account for the sluggish performance of Zak's team; he and most of his team mates had a late night, and had nothing in the tank for the Saturday morning soccer game. We live and learn.
Katarina is off school this week; they have a three week break, but not Janine. Weird! She is off to see a movie with some of her friends and has grand plans for visiting in Dunedin during the holidays as well, and I think we are seeing a couple of her friends here in Timaru next week for a couple of days.
Janine is recovering well from her toe surgery; the podiatrist was impressed with the rate of healing. I put it down to good nutrition and exercise - that 8km round trip to school is worth the effort!
Chris is going to Auckland on Thursday, for Connect, the youth leaders conference. I was in Dunedin on Tuesday for a funeral and Christchurch on Thursday for student soul meetings, which all made for a short week!

Janine's news

This post is mostly about Janine, who turned 14 last week and celebrated with a couple of friends over the weekend. Today we spent over an hour at the podiatrist, taking off half a toenail on each big toe and dealing to the nail bed so the offending nails don't regrow in a troublesome manner. The ridges in the side of her toe are quite pronounced and deep, so the op is well worth the trouble. No wet feet for the next couple of days, but she can go back to school tomorrow, and we have another visit on Friday to check on progress.
I baked a cake for her birthday which the kids left on the bench. I popped out to take Katarina to school (not a regular occurance!) and Zak and Hannah left for school leaving Shadow inside. You can imagine what happened. I came home to find the dog muzzle deep in chocolate cake, deep in disgrace, and banished her outside for the rest of the day. You're not supposed to feed chocolate to dogs - but what if they help themselves! Needless to say, I was disappointed, but Janine didn't seem too upset by it. And her daddy bought her a replacement later in the week, isn't he nice!

Middle of June

The teeth extraction was successful, the girls weren't too miserable and went back to school quite happily. Janine is also booked in to deal to her ingrown toenails next week, so it's been busy. Saturday was busy with sport as usual, which is no problem when the weather is so lovely. Saturday was unusually mild in fact.
We've bought a new halter for Shadow, a 'Halti' which gives us much more control over her. She hates it! But no more pulling on the lead when we are out on walks, which I am Very happy about.
It is Janine's 14th birthday today, and while she had big plans for a party, they all fell through. No swine flu in our part of the country but they say it is only a matter of time.
We seem to be seeing a few more at St Stephens but our elderly folk at Trinity struggle at this time of the year, not sure what is going to happen when we change the time to a 9am start.

Winter in New Zealand

Zachary had the opportunity to try out for the 10th grade soccer reps but decided he didn't want to play competitive sport regularly on a Sunday because Sunday is God's rest day.

Hannah and Zachary have been training for their school cross country which starts at 1:30 (Tuesday) tomorrow.

Katarina, Zach and I went to the Transformers reunion service at St Andrews on Sunday after church. We picked up some kids from Geraldine as well and they all did a drama for the service.

Katarina was also in Christchurch on Friday with her maths teacher, for a maths extension outing after school. Youth group was at our house - a move fest, complete with popcorn. (There were only two as we are competing with basketball at the moment!)

Opuha dam

Despite May being the coldest and wettest May since time immemorial, or at least since record keeping began, June 1, Queen birthday Monday was warm and sunny in South Canterbury. We left Janine and Katarina to their homework and took Zak, Hannah and Shadow for a bit of a tour. We turned right after Pleasant Point and drove past the Raincliffs campsite, where we may well have camps in the future, and intersected Highway 29.

The Ophua Dam is off the road that lead to the Fox ski-field. It is a small hydro electric dam that was in the news recently as part of the dam 'blew out' as it was designed to, in recent flooding. The lake is becoming increasingly popular with boaties, although no one was on the water on Monday, despite the sunny conditions. Letting Shadow off the leash is always exciting because we're never quite sure that she is going to come back. She had a swim in the lake and then went rock climbing up the unstable cliff face.

The forecast for the weekend was dire - snow down to sea level, but often those storms cut across the sea to hammer Banks Peninsula. We had some rain but not a lot, and no snow sadly! Hannah and Zak had a sore throat over the weekend but were right as rain by Monday.