Christmas day in Aussie...

Well as Chrissie Day 2007 draws to a close, I thought it was timely to do an update. At the moment I am sitting here having indulged in WAY too much trifle, but who can resist the mis of sponge cake, custard, jelly and all sorts of other treats all mixed in together. Its not the prettiest desster but it tastes so good. Today is my last day of indulgances before the Tauranga half ironman, there is now just 10 days to go.

Christmas Day started at 4am- not too bad as our body clocks are still saying 7am. The kids (Harry and Summer) had a ball opening all their gifts (and there were a lot of them). Here is Summer with the doll that we gave her... she loved it!!

I got my training in between the present opening and lunch...

After an awesome lunch which included a lamb on a spit (yum)... the boys got out a massive sheet of canvas and added as much dish washing liquid and water as they could and started on the tricks... Here is Harry:

Jason and Mark, with Harry and Tyson in the background:

The boys:

Quentin, Mark and Tyson:

Tyson taking Mum out, and Harry watching:

Somes Island Swim

Sorry for the lack of updates, the last few weeks have been pretty busy. The main acheivement for both of us over the past couple of weeks has been jasons 2 hour swim from York Bay (Kendal's parent's house) to Somes Island (middle of the Wellington Harbour) and back. This has been his longest sea swim without a wetsuit and is a huge achievement considering he has been really struggling with the cold. Here are some photos of Jason and Kendal:

Building a pond

On the weekend Jason and I decided to build a pond in our garden... it came about in a roundabout way really, I happened to mention that I wanted some Chatam Island Forget me nots for our garden. So a trip to the garden centre, 5 new plants, 3 meters of polyeurethane and $98 later (no forget me nots though) we decided to build a little pond.

So we rearranged the rocks in our garden and Jason started digging....



Here it is with a little bit of water... for testing:



Another angle of the pond. We may make it deeper still as we do want to put some water lillies in it.



Looking down on the new pond from the side of the house




From the walway coming up to our house

Looking back up the path

We still have a bit of work to do and this will be a bit of a work in progress but still not bad for an afternoon's effort. I can't believe how expensive plants are though!