home again

The busyness has continued since we have been home. We celebrated my mothers birthday virtually straight off the plane. We had a lovely lunch with the family. Super lovely to spend time with my cousin Wendy who I never get to see and also my ailing uncle Brian who basically came off his oxygen to come along. Lovely food and family.
On Sunday I needed to get out from under the clouds and get some sun so I checked out the web cams for the South Island and found the sun then headed north. We made it to Amberly and then headed inland on a mad adventure that took us on to farms and through sheep paddocks. After many stops for pine cones and u-turns we ended up in Waikari. Nic and I had a ball getting the cones. Jonty was reasonably mortified and sat in the car and we did 'teamwork' to fill up some wool sacks. Sitting in the cafe at Waikari we heard the very loud and distinctive hoot of the Weka Pass steam train. At a trot we made it on to the platform where Jonty and Nic jumped aboard and enjoyed a gorgeous sunny, smokey and sooty trip to Glenmark. I kept pace in the car and just loved watching them having fun.

What started as a grey heavy day ended up being such fun and such an adventure. Taking the road less travelled was hilarious and Nic loved it. Boy can he talk!

One of my biggest and almost shameful addictions is magazines. Whenever I go through an airport I leave with at least two, often three new titles tucked in my bag. This time I discovered Jamie. I am a big fan of Jamie's cooking and love the styling and recipes in the mag. I have made a few things already including a beef and quince stew with quinces that Ruth gave me...must get on and do something with the rest of them. Maybe tomorrow night!

The only sad thing about the weekend was making an 'intuition' call to Louisa my sister in law to find that she and her son Oscar were in hospital. Oscar has spent a lot of time in hospitals in his 16 years of life and it is really tough to be there again, this time preparing for dialysis. It is hard being so far away and not being able to do anything at all useful to help out. Kia kaha.