Builder's Butt

These are a few of the many silly signs that I see on my way to Zack's school in Kelvin's Grove.

Get your garden STONED

Not like this:

A Marijuana Garden

or this:

A Garden Frog smoking a joint

BUT this:

A garden quarry
 

Builder's Butt

Not this kind:



But this kind:

And the thought of the day, brought to by the back of a truck:

FAILURE OFTEN COMES BEFORE YOU WIN!

Anyhow, thought I would share.

Kiwi Thanksgiving

It's time to celebrate Thanksgiving in New Zealand. I have made my pumpkin pie from a local greenish gray pumpkin. The first pie was burned along the edges, but the second pie came out great!

My $84 turkey has defrosted and is ready to cook.

We went last night with green beans and one pie to Ian and Monica's house in Palmy to celebrate Thanksgiving with some other Americans and their Kiwi extended family and friends. We brought candy corn, which Mike had shipped us from America.

 Ian is NZ native and Monica is from Long Island, NY, so their kids have dual citizenship, which is neat.

Some of the Kiwis were relieved that candy corn is made out of corn syrup and not pieces of actual corn. "They look like teeth!" one person said. "Oh, they are lollies. I have seen these on TV but never ever had one in my life. They are quite good, "another Kiwi said. Too funny....

We stayed to chat and party until 9:00pm or so. BThe kids bounced on the trampoline until sunset and then tired themselves out.By the end of the party, Zack was asleep on the couch and Ben was zoned out watching Smurfs on DVD. It was great fun.



Thanksgiving day two was also a hit!  We celebrated in the evening with Kerry and Darren, Esther and Matthew, and Siouh Kim and Malcolm.

 The turkey was cooked and two more pumpkin pies were made (couln't bear to serve the burned one).

Everyone took turns cuddling the cat, and Darren gave Mr. Purrsalot some turkey.
 The kids played in the sandbox in the back, since it was a warm sunny day.

Esther made a delicious sweet potato casserole and Kerry made a yummy pecan pie.

The kids loved the desserts the best, of course!

Mike celebrated his 34th bday with a chocolate cake and a long speech about the twenty things he was thankful for, like friedns, family, the internet, and the "real housewifes of Orange Conty" TV.


Mike's 34th bday!

 

Ticketed and Home Cooked Disaster Chef

Got in trouble for parking under a school sign here in New Zealand.  Apparently, a yellow polka dotted zone is no parking, and I was hit with a $60 fine for parking my car near Ben's school to pick him up. 

There aren't any school buses, so pick up is mandatory.  I am just peeved that I keep getting in trouble for stupid things here- in two months, Mike got a speeding ticket for going 112 in a 100 km.hr zone and I have received two speeding tickets. Mike and I are going to take a AA defensive driving course and work on getting our NZ drivers licenses.  These rules are wacky!

Grumble....all well, so it goes.  Off to cook up some raw pumpkin to make two pumpkin pies for Thanksgiving.  Step aside Martha Stewart, here I come!


Good thing my apartment has a smoke alarm, just saying.  Beware of the home cooked disaster chef.

Mums Meetup and Chicken Done Right

Esther and I met up for a lovely Friday playdate at the Esplanade.  The ducks liked the vanilla wafer crackers Zack threw, and Koen enjoyed the picnic blanket and watching the birds.


Also, I made a yummy roast chicken with creamy mushroom soup, potatoes, and green beans in my slow cooker.

Tomato Cafe date

We went to the tomato cafe in Palmy for date night last night with Kerri and Darren and had a fun night. Kerri and I had a Riesling bottle of wine.

Mike's flounder dish came with tail, head, and fins intact, which was tasty but gross to dissect.

I had a chicken marsala and some choc pudding ( choc lava cake) which was yummage. Kerri got some mysterious mussel frittata and Darren got a chicken, chamberbert and cranberry sauce pizza. Creative medley of meals!

Simon and Karina's aviary

Here's a close up of a rainbow bird:

 

Guinea pig

Robbie feeds a parakeet some grass.

Karina invited us over for a BBQ luncheon and playdate this Sunday. We got to see Simon's impressive hand-built aviary teeming with quails, ring necked parrots, and parakeets. He also had some rainbow parrots.

Very cool to see all the critters in action.

The kids loved their no spring trampoline and the massive collection of Legos.

Simon gets to go on. 2 month carpentry work trip with theNZ army to maintain the science bases on Antarctica in Jan and Feb. How cool is that work trip?

Owlcatraz

Ben's school field trip was to Shannon to go to Owlcatraz and see some rare NZ birds, including the weka birds, the more pork owls, and pukekos.

Baby weka bird
No pictures of the owls were allowed, but we saw four of the six more pork owls there, which were really well camouflaged, as were the weka birds.

Mint sauce with your lamb?

Windy,the ostrich reaches up 6 feet easily to eat some grain.

Pukeko bird

Carnivorous snails

It was fun because it was an aviary and wildlife center with a kid-friendly environment, including a play area, a Thomas train ride, free coffee and tea for adult volunteers, and a scavenger hunt for ceramic bunnies, dogs, and frogs on logs on the trail.



I got an ostrich egg nightlight as a holiday gift from the shop, one of 90 eggs laid by Windy the ostrich there.

Mr. Purrsalot, our awesome kitten!

I thought that it is time to dedicate a full post to my new cat, Mr. Purrsalot.  He is a wonderful kitty that we have been enjoying for the past few days.

Things about Mr. Purrsalot:

1. He prefers sleeping on your neck and shoulders.  This makes him kind of like a cat neckwarmer.

2. He purrs A LOT.  That's why Ben named him accordingly.  When we took the kitten to the vet, they had to dangle him next to running water at the sink to get him to stop purring for long enough that they could check his heartrate.

3. He loves the kids. Zack carries him around like a sock puppet, which he doesn't mind even. 

4.He is playful, and likes to wrestle with your feet. Here he is before a pounce!

 

 

5. He lives with us here in Palmerston North, New Zealand.  If we can't afford the import of our Ragdolls from the states, then at least we have Mr.Purrsalot to fill that void in our hearts.

Sorted!

That's what Kiwis say when they finish a project or get out of a dilemma.  Now we're "sorted", meaning we finally found a rental 4 bedroom house in Ben's school zone. 

We move in on December 8th, just in time for the holidays. Our container is arriving this wek and going through customs. It will be so awesome to be reunited with our stuff again- family photos, our comfy couch, the kids toys, and our nice mattresses from the states.


Mike and I have been waking up with huge backaches from the bed in out furnished rental.  It seems to be hard and yet compress down for no support when you sleep on it.  Uncomfortable.  Of course, I am super glad we had a furnished rental to move into for these past two months.  Otherwise, we would have been in a hotel or completely unfurnished rental sleeping in sleeping bags on the floor.

The kids managed to pull the old wallpaper off of their kid bedroom in our temporary furnished rental, so we have to pay extra to get the wall steamed and finish repainting it before we leave Dec 8th. Those mischievous boys!


In other news, I am super sore from going to the gym yesterday.  I went to enrol in City Fitness two days ago, and went yesterday for the first time in two months.  I did a silly thing and locked myself out of my gym locker by putting my keys inside my purse, and then locking up my purse.  I had the "walk of shame" with the metal clipping shears to my locker to snap off the lock.  Classic move for my first day!

Cheep Cheep Chicken Week

This week, it's time to go to Pack N Save supermarket, for "cheap chicken, and things that taste like chicken, and things that have chicken in them, ans things made by chickens, like eggs," so the ad says.


So, chicken satay, potatoes, capsicums, and carrots on rice is for dinner tonight.

This is to offset the expensive $84 turkey I got to serve 10-12 people from the Moreish butcher shop, one of the ONLY places that imports turkeys. They don't like the wet NZ climate. Getting ready for my Thanksgiving dinner, which I am holding on Fri Nov 23rd, the same time as people in the US who will be celebrating their Thanksgiving on Thursday. Yay for time change loopholes.

I have invited our Kiwi friends Esther and Matt, and their two kids, and UK expat Kerri and her husband and two kids.

We are also getting ready for summertime Santa.  The Pajama Party at the mall with Santa is this Thurs.

Take that ants!

The ants have finally met their match. Raid Ant Killer provides a delicious sugary and slowly poisonous treat for the ants, so they lure all out of the nest to eat it, where they die in the ant trap.

Take that you stupid indoor arthropods! The final straw was when I set my glass of red merlot wine on the mantle and then came back 30 minutes later to 20 ants crawling all over the glass and some floating in the wine.  Yuck!

That's when I busted out the Raid and lured them to their doom.  About 450 ants died over the course of two days. 

Mr. Purrsalot, our new cat, did a good job of eating some of them from the windowsill as they marched up to the mantle. Then he took a nap and watched Mike play Candy Crush on Facebook with Ben.

Success! Final score: Liz 1: Ants 0.

House Hunters International

The hunt is on for the perfect rental in Palmerston North, NZ!

Just like the show on HGTV, we are on the search for our international pad to live for the two years we are here.  It looks like our container is going to arrive by boat on Thursday of next week, so we need to secure a new rental house this week.




I am looking at 3 houses today, and one on Monday. Yesterday I went to two other houses.  Exhausting!

The perfect house for us will be:
*3 bedrooms
*1-2 bathrooms
*cat-friendly
*In the zone for Ben's school
*fenced in backyard
*garage
*dishwasher/dryer/washer

This sounds like it shouldn't be too hard, but Ben's school zone is only 15 blocks wide in the SE corner of Palmerston North. That means I have a very small area of the town to look in- about 1/8th the size of downtown Plymouth, MA for my MA friends who get that reference.

Houses also look homely from the outside, so it is hard not to judge a book by its cover.  The nice homes are called "executive posh estates" .  We don't have the funds for one of those fancy 300square meter places. 

Body Part Bob

The anatomy of body Part Bob was revealed to Yr 5 and 6 students at the Russell St School on Friday.  I co-taught with Kerry, a Ph.D. immunologist who works at Plant and Food Research Institute in Palmerston North.

It was great teaching again and I am hoping that the science outreach helps network me and leads to more work.

The kids liked the taste test experiment and were amused greatly by putting the body parts back in Bob and thinking a bit about how they are all connected.