Pics From The Last Month

From the bottom up: Tim and Adrienne on the day we went for a "wee" hike with the whole Burnie family (and the dogs) and ended up nearly dead from exhaustion, hours later when we finally emerged. Beautiful day though - check out that winter sky!

My workmates Marvin, Hariet and Jude recreate the Xtra Ordinaries (and really lame Xtra ad playing here at the moment) on our Snowplanet day.

The Snowplanet people found it difficult to understand that Jude didn't need LARGE snowpants. So she ended up spending a bit of time just in her longjohns. As you can see, she wasn't too shy about it.

How to save money and risk your safety: When Tim's car needed fixing, he made his own ramp thing instead of buying one. Brilliant, but I feared for his handsome head!

Check out that cute baby! He keeps looking really sad in photos! But he's not - he's a happy little bee and really smiley. And so cute! I'm so biased.

Othello

We played lots of Othello in Christchurch - something I'd sadly missed as a child! How did this game pass me by? I think I was too busy reading Babysitter's Club books to get on to this trend. So now I'm mildly obsessed - but I can't beat Tim! Which is a big problem, ha ha. Does anyone have any tips? Strategy was never my strong point.

These Pretzels Are Making Me Thirsty

Ah. I've been a lazy poo on the blogging site. I will make up for it. Right here. Right now. Well Tim and I have had a bit of a rough week. Tim's grandad Ian passed away last week so we went down with Paul and Nic to Christchurch. The funeral was really nice - great for everyone to be together, but very sad at the same time. Made me think about catching up with everyone and not being so slack!

I've started a very exciting photo wall in our house which is really cool. I'm going to try to get pictures of everyone up there. I already have you, Mr Renall, looking mighty disappointed at the Pauanui chippie - so funny.

Winter has been really mild and spring is almost here. Hanging out for summer - hopefully it will be a good and long one. I'm in training for a "quarter" marathon which is really exciting. It's only 10km but that is like 100km when you compare it to how unfit I am. So tough times ahead.

Yesterday I travelled to Thames to meet the latest addition to the Beaufill family. Helen gave birth to little Madelaine. She is so adorable. Pics up as soon as I can get them. Thames is amazing. One day I will own the second-hand bookshop there. When I'm old and wrinkly.

Tim's been really busy with uni and Griffins. We welcomed back Mere and Mart from the US (Meredith fell over and ended up in hospital - funnier than it sounds!) Danielle and Hugh are settling into their new careers in the jewellery world and the education sector :)

I will have photos up soon. We've got new ones of nephew Zach who is getting so big and clever. And some others which are probably really unexciting.

Not much happening in the world of news at the moment. New Zealand finally has its very own kidnapped journalist - you can imagine how excited we are about that. The Maori queen died and the media went mental about it even though, let's be honest, most of us couldn't even identify her in a photo while she was alive. And that's about all that's happening! Kia Ora.

Black Seeds Hit Number One

One of the greatest Kiwi bands Black Seeds have reached number one in the land of the long white cloud, with their new album Into The Dojo. Mighty exciting. They're touring Enzed soon and they're off to Europe after that. My workmate Nick interviewed them lately and here's the cool vid which features on the one and only XtraMSN:

http://xtramsn.co.nz/music/0,,13572-6148388-300,00.html