weekly catch up

hope you like the long series of photos that follow. it was quicker to load them all up in one go and as it is nearly 9pm on sunday i thought that was wise. won't be long til bed, we have had a tiring week. busy at work preparing for my successor who starts tomorrow. all very very real now! and to think, mum and dad will be in Christchurch this time next week..... incredible. only a little over a month til d-day. we are pretty much sorted, a few more things to sell and paperwork to sort out. currently mulling over the dilemma of our last night or two here when we may be furniture-less! should we go and stay in a hotel?! we have booked our accommodation for bangkok and dubai. to be honest, i just wish we were doing the journey in one (hideous) go instead of breaking it up into bits but toby wants to prolong the agony and do the stopovers.... we've booked a nice hotel in bangkok though with a rooftop pool, accomm in bangkok still comes quite cheap (half the price of dubai). mia has had a rough 10 days - aftermath of mmr jab then several new teeth. they are coming thick and fast at the moment. thank god we had our first sleep thru in approx 10 nights last night. she is very independent and we have had to buy her a table and chair to eat at rather than her highchair. she was just hurling food onto the floor at an alarming rate from her highchair. toby continues to sort out wedding photography stuff, it is all he has done today. i've been to castor bay playground and mairangi bay playground, where one mum came over to me and told me my daughter was absolutely beautiful. you should have seen my grin! caught up with 2 friends of friends yesterday which was great. they were at the end of a 2 week stint checking out nz as they want to move here. lovely couple and so lovely to hear their accents and hear about newcastle, stevo and katie etc etc. they loved it and are planning a move just as soon as visas are sorted. still hot and sticky but forecast to cool down this week thank god. we'd hoped to go to warkworth and look at art galleries today but it never happened. we have found one artist whose picture of whale bay in raglan we just have to have. a souvenir of our life here. toby is also keen to get a bronze weta so he can tell mia about the time she picked one up at daycare and it bit her. anyway, time to close down the computer and drink camomile tea. lots of love to all and see you soon...................xxx