I can't believe the first month of the year is nearly over. I had to laugh at Jo's question on boxing day - "how many days til next Christmas" - (groan) - just when I thought the counting had finished.
We had a lovely holiday time with Shane having a month of work, although time goes all too quickly and he is now back into the grind of things.
Our holiday away turned into a bit of a disaster holiday. We arrived in Christchurch and put the tent up in the camping ground. This small task took us three hours as Shane had purchased a hammer from the $2 shop which had a faulty head that kept spinning around (most frustrating if you're hammering - but hilarious to watch). After a few hundred hits the hammer head fell off completely and it was even funnier to watch Shane hammering in the pegs with just the head of the hammer. After a couple of hours and no more pegs (as they kept bending) Shane went off to buy a new hammer and some more tent pegs.
The tent was finally up and so we hopped into bed while Shane watched Coronation Street on his little black and white TV (powered by the cigarette lighter in our car). Jo, being ever helpful, noticed the car was unlocked and decided to lock it for us on his way to bed. Unfortunately the keys were in the ignition powering Shane's TV. So the next disaster was a callout to a lock smith to get our keys out of the car.
We only had one full day in Christchurch (two nights) so we went to Orana Park where we had a wonderful day.
After a couple of nights in ChCh we went to stay with our fantastic friends Clive and Dawn in Timaru where we planned on staying a further two nights. Unfortunately Dessy overdid some of the rides at Caroline Bay and she became quite sick and so we ended up driving home at 1am on the second morning - getting into Dunedin at 4am... amazing how the kids were so wide awake four hours after we arrived home.
Nevermind, am sure we will do it all again next year.... maybe with a different tent though.
