Family doings

Our "care of creation" efforts in the autumn appear to have paid off, with a lovely display of daffodils and tulips in our garden this spring. We planted mixed bulbs and so every flower has been a surprise, with different varieties of both. The ghost of the previous owner has also appeared with some jonquils and Canterbury bells popping up that we know we didn't plant! Not that we mind at all - in fact, it just made us more determined to plant more bulbs next autumn.

However, I am not confident in the longevity of my flowers: we have a significant storm over most of the country and some of the first "real wind" I remember in Rotorua. It's also freezing cold - it snowed on the Desert Road today and I smelt more snow in the wind when I went outside to get firewood tonight. We had thought we had nearly finished with the fire for the year - apparently not. It was windy enough to dislodge the top part of our metal chimney: we heard a huge bang this afternoon and then saw it bouncing around in the front yard. I'm fairly certain it isn't supposed to be doing that!

Rotorua has its tulip festival next weekend (there are over 42,000 tulips planted around the city in public spaces) but I wonder how many of them will survive for the festival? The city does look beautiful in spring, especially as all the cherries and plums come into flower, but I saw an awful lot of kowhai and other flowers spread all over the roads today.

The last few weeks have been filled with family doings. Daughter had a trampolining competition in Hamilton a few weeks ago, and we were very proud to see her win gold in the double mini for her age group (her second medal since she began competing). Last week she also won a ribbon in her interschool competition in an apparatus she had never used before (single mini tramp, which is not a standard apparatus - she trains on the trampoline and double mini which are both competition-standard).

We went up to Auckland to the Mythbusters Live event at Vector Arena for a treat for my birthday and Fathers' Day combined. It was a really fabulous day and the Mythbusters were really fun. It was very cool to see them live too - I think they're almost funnier in real life than on tv. Daughter tried desperately to get herself picked for one of the on-stage demonstrations but there were a lot of people there....

I've been doing a bit of moving around for work recently, with trips to Auckland, Nelson, Whangarei, Tauranga, and Taupo recently. Most of those have been one-dayers, fortunately. For my sins, I am speaking at the national conference of one of my clients this weekend, which will be interesting. I have been told to start with shock tactics! The good thing is that I get a day in lieu on Monday, which is the first proper day of the school holidays, so I'll get some time to hang out with the family. Hopefully the weather will behave: daughter is learning to ride a new bike and I'm loving mine, so it would be good to go play outside on our bikes!