Well, I am on the move again. Just waiting in anticipation for my ride to the airport. I am off to Sydney for a night and then on to NYC/Connecticut, Vermont, then Maine and finally New Hampshire. I am feeling a bit sad leaving my family here (darrel and zoe), but they will be here when I get back. I hope Zoe doesn't think that I am totally abandoning her. She was just rehomed here only 6 weeks ago, I think she is familiar with the packing of bags and general flurry before departure. I think this is the most prepared that I have ever, EVER been for a major trip. I am sitting here relaxing and drinking a cup of tea. This is a good sign, although flying by the seat of my pants has never failed me before! I suppose I could unpack my bag and then pack it again, just to be sure I have a list of all the items that need to be declared at customs and that everything I am taking ACTUALLY needs to come with me, but I am over it. What is packed is going at this point. I am a bit worried about the 20 kg limit for luggage on my first flight, just because I am not really sure how much that is- I just don't think in metric for weight yet. My rides here!

Hello!!! Family and Friends- I must apologize for my absence on the web. We have been in the depths of winter, which is not so motivating- especially since our internet connection is in the hallway- the unheated- uninsulated hallway- I am shivering just thinking about it. Despite all this- I thought it was about time to fill you in on the running commentary going in my head. Yes, I constantly think about updating my blog, but lately the words have not been making to cyber space. Since the days are getting longer and it’s not pitch black when I leave for work in the morning and come home in the evening, I have a bit more spring in my step and a bit more energy to share with you all.

One of the highlights of the last month was when I realized my Keniston baking gene. One of my work mates organized “The Great Choccy Bake-off” between some of the teams in the office. It was a competition to see which team could bring in the best chocolate cake. I stepped up to represent my team. I had just discovered a recipe on http://www.celiac.com for a wheat-free chocolate cake called Black Magic. I was advised that the judges liked dark chocolate; the recipe seemed perfect because one of the ingredients is coffee. Everybody loves coffee- especially Darrel. I actually made two cakes, since Darrel was complaining that I make sweets and then give them away. I made one with Wheat flour for the competition and another one with a rice flour mix for the gluten-free people at work and to keep heaps at home, so Darrel wouldn’t feel left out. Darrel helped by teaching me how to make the frosting. I layered it with raspberry jam. It wasn’t the prettiest cake, but it WON! I got heaps of compliments and my cake got devoured.

For Queen’s birthday weekend, Joy and Brian came to visit. We enjoyed showing them our house and the neighborhood. And, of course, we put them to work! Joy and Brian totally cleared out some nasty ivy that was threatening the grapes and just looking messy all over the back fence. Joy and I checked over the roses and smushed caterpillars from my broccoli plants. Darrel and Brian moved a citrus tree, a rose and another shrub that were all super close to the house. They were all growing in the same place while blocking light in to two rooms of the house.

As you can imagine over the last few weeks most of our free time was spent working on the house. It’s rewarding to see the results, but the cold and lack of sunlight has slowed us down a bit- just not the most motivating conditions. We have made some time to have a little house warming and we went to a “good and evil” party (Darrel went as a “dirt devil” he brought the vacuum hose and wore his VT style- insulated carhart overalls).

Day to day, we are both biking to work- even in the below freezing temps. It usually only gets to freezing at night, but when your house has barely any insulation and the teeniest wood stove- biking to work is quite a feat.

And finally, I was tagged a while back by Karole-Ann. So here are the 7 things that I would like to share about my self.

1. I love to knit.
2. I love the movie Amelie, I have seen it 6 times and could probably see it again and again and again.
3. I am secretly writing a book, well, it is still a secret, because no one on earth knows what it is about- except for me.
4. I am actually enjoying working in an office- who would have guessed?!
5. I want to go to Antartica.
6. I like biking to work, especially when I am going faster than the cars stuck in traffic. It makes me laugh out loud and yell- “see ya suckers!”
7. And the big news is I love spending time with ZOE! We have a new member of the Hannon Family Tree. She is a very well-behave 5 ½ year old dog. A workmate was heading overseas, so we took her in. Can you guess what breed(s) she is?

About the tag: Each player starts with 7 random facts/habits about themselves.

People who are tagged need to write on their own blog about their seven things, as well as these rules. At the end of your blog, you need to choose 7 people to get tagged and list their names. Don’t forget to leave them a comment telling them that they have been tagged and to read your blog!

So, I am tagging:
Danny, Shelby, Bonnie, Richard, Erin, Amanda, James
(most of these folks don't have blogs, so I am using it as an excuse to get them started)

Take Care,
Josie

Hi, so I Darrel and I have been really busy around the house. Here are some pics of the progress we have been making. So far we have really just made a bigger mess of the yard, but I think we are starting to see some results.


This is what the greenhouse looked like before I began to dig it out from the clutches of the grape vines. I did pull the vines out without damaging them too much.

Ta Da! It still needs a bit of work, like removing all the paint, painting the frame, cleaning the glass and then replacing all of it. I was pretty happy to realize how big it is. Instead of aiming for winter greens, I am just going to try to get it ready for spring propagation and a jump start on the veggie garden.

Ah, the grape harvest! This is just a fraction of the full bounty, and of course I can't let anything go to waste, so I squeezed the grapes into juice and froze it in ice cube trays. The cubes go great in mixed drinks!


Free wheel barrow with house! Woohoo! Just needed a bit of oil- check out the metal wheel.

Darrel going down into the crawl space for the first time to start planning the bathroom project. He was not so happy when he came up for fresh air. It is definitely meant for crawling- no basements in NZ.

This is the early days of the bathroom project. It has been going on for a few weeks now, so far we have put in a shower head and replumbed the tub filler, and removed this pedestal sink. After adding the shower, there was not really enough water pressure to have a proper shower (pretty disapointing after all of that work) so Darrel added a pressure reducing valve and cut out the header tank in the roof... and now we have the best shower in the world! Thanks Joy and Brian for all of the plumbing advise!

Here is the sneak preview of the bathroom vanity. We have made the box out of shelves from one of the bedrooms. The wood is Rimu, the floors through out the house are the same wood. We hope to uncover them someday soon.

This is one of the hundred of roses on the property, most are in need of love and attention to restore their glory. There are tons of beautiful plants hidden behind overgrown bushes and under grass.

Darrel has drawn the whole house up on the computer, he even created 3-d movies of the place. These are some sketches that he has drawn to brainstorm ideas.

I hope you enjoyed the show!

Hello!!!!! Well we have been without internet for ages - but we are back online now- in our new house! So much has happened since we moved in, parts of walls have come down and showers have gone up. I have planted winter veggies, saved plants from the clutches of the evil weed twitch grass and cleared the greenhouse from a vigorous grapevine. I saved the vine by untangling it and proping it up, so some day it can wind and twine around a pergola. I am dreaming of the day that I can hang up my hamock and laze away the day with a good book while picking grapes off the vine. (The grapes are very delicous and abundant at the moment) I have pics to share, but I just thought I would write to let you all know that contrary to the rumors, I did not buzz off the Antartica- although it seems to call my name every once in a while- the house is way too cool to leave behind for a cold, dark holiday on the south pole. More soon...

Hi, well I forgot to mention that a few weeks ago we were blessed with a visit from Jessica. Here we are together going for a swim on a crisp evening. She was only here from Sunday morning to Saturday morning, so we made the most of a few evenings together. She was here for a conference with her Grad School advisor from the University of Vermont, Cully. Cully is now at Virginia Tech, so one of his new Grad Student's came for the trip as well, her name is also Jessica and it turns out that we had a class together at Penn State back in 2001. Here are the two Jessicas:

One evening the Jessica's, Darrel and I went to Sumner, were supposed to go for a swim, but some crazy kelp/seaweed stuff was clogging up the shore, we all chickend out and just enjoyed the view.
Super early on Saturday morning, before Jess got on her flight home, we took a trip to the Botanical Gardens in Christchurch. We took these pics of tree ferms. I quite like the blurry one, but to get a better idea of what the picture is off, just look at the pic below it, they are identical, by the second one I used the flash. The brown bit in the middle is a new frond unfurling, just like a fiddlehead, but as big as your fist!

Thanks Jessica for sharing all of your photos with me and my fans, um I mean friends and family!

So here is an update on the house situation. We take possession on the 27th- so yes, If any of you know my sister she is going to beat us out because they take possession of their first house on the 20th. We are going to do a load or two after work each day, just so we can unpack and get settled over the following weekend. We can't really start packing yet, because our place is so small. The van is proving to be very handy these days. I picked up some free lounge chairs and a kitchen table last weekend (2 of the 3 items were injured in the process, but hey they were free and they needed some work anyways) so we just left the stuff in the van because there is nowhere else to put it.

And today we went to look at a second hand bike for Darrel and ended up at this big smelly guy's house. His entire yard is covered with bikes and other things, but mostly bikes stacked on top of each other. Most of them were locked together, so no one would steal them, but D and I figured that they were better off stolen than sitting in his yard for eternity because he couldn't find the key for half of them. Out of the whole deal, we spent $75 on a commuter bike for D, a hand push lawnmower, and a stepping stool.

The guy said that he moved to the house 17 years ago so he could take walks on the beach, which is literally 7 houses away, but he actually had not made it to the beach in 2 years. He was very interesting to say the least.

Then we hightailed it across town and bought a $140 Fisher and Paykal fridge off of an Indian dude, who I guessed to be an engineer. He had some great fridge advice and he was pretty clever at helping us fit the fridge in the van with all the other stuff we have been collecting.

We had been considering buying a new fridge and getting some deal where you have 12 months to pay it off interest free, but we decided the weekly mortgage payments were probably going to be hard enough to handle. I just hope the fridge is not an energy hog because it is 10 years old. At least it's a Fisher & Paykel, they are well known for energy conservation.

Not much else going on here. Oh, we had some viscous weather this past week. Three days of driving rain and a cold wind. It snowed down to 1000 metres. It's all mostly gone now, or else we would have been hiking this weekend to catch the first run of the season!

Hello! Darrel and I caught some great music over the weekend. If you are looking for some new tunes, then google Fat Freddy's Drop, Shapeshifter and Kora. They are all New Zealand bands that we saw perform at the "Cheap as Chips" concert. Chips are big french fries and they are really cheap. So that means the concert was pretty reasonably priced for 3 bands. It was a beautiful day, we really lucked out because this summer has been the coldest on record.

I think we are moving into fall now, or so I am told. I don't see much difference in the weather or the foliage though.

We have 12 sleeps till we move into our new house!

Guess what?!!! They accepted our offer!!!!!

This is the house we just put an offer on! I will keep you posted!

Hello! I bet you have been wondering what Darrel and I have been up to for the last month or so. I have posted some pictures from our holiday over Christmas and New Years. We went up North to New Plymouth to celebrate with Darrel's parents, Joy and Brian, and his sister, Sharleen.

I had been having problems getting into the holiday spirit, because the days were getting longer and the weather was relatively warm. Being from New England, I associate cozying up around the fire and crisp winter weather with Christmas; Kiwis associate BBQs and going to the beach with the holidays. But after a very rough 4 hour ferry ride to Wellington, on the North Island, we were greeted with these lovely Pohutakawa blossoms. Like you can see in the picture below. Pohutakawa is known as the New Zealand Christmas tree and it helped me get into the christmas spirit.

Our holiday was filled with yummy deserts like this mound of merengue , turkish chocolate, and raspberries surrounded by brandy snaps. mmmm.... This desert is a reincarnation of Pavlova a standard at holiday parties here.Here is Darrel with his dad!

Sharleen and Brian with our drink of choice- champagne and strawberries!Here I am with my new Christmas goodies including a hand made hoody from Sharleen and a made with love apron from mom.Here is Joy with bags made by Darrel and I (left) and Sharleen (right).

Brian with a Vermont cutting board.
Darrel had fun putting his new toys to good use, including this icecream maker. You fill it up with cream and sugar on one end and stuff the other end with ice and salt. You roll the ball around for half an hour and voila- yummy icecream!
So, after some serious relaxing at Joy and Brians. We ran away to camp at the beach just south of New Plymouth in Oakura. This was our view at the campsite. We have kitted out the van with a bed, so our our boogie boards, food and stuff can fit underneath the platform. It's sweet for traveling in this land of unpredictable weather.While we were camping we had to try out another new toy Darrel got at Christmas. It is a stealth camping grill- all the bits and pieces fit into one of the tubes. It works great! We put it to the test at a campfire ring on the edge of the beach.

The next day Darrel and I hiked to the top of Paritutu rock. The rock is an ancient remnant of a volcano that is much older than the current Mt. Taranaki cinder cone volcano that towers over the landscape of New Plymouth. The weather has been a bit wild here lately, heaps of rain and much cooler than normal. Actually, we were kicking ourselves for not bringing our snowboards to New Plymouth because Mt. Taranaki had just gotten a fresh dump of snow!

Here are Darrel and I at the top of Paritutu rock looking out at the other bits of volcano remnants.Here is Darrel trying out his new skateboard at his old stomping grounds in Taranaki. We gave each other long boards for Christmas. We bought them from our friend Jaime who has a business making them. So I am learning by skating to work and taking baby steps towards riding in the halfpipe.

After a fun New Years in Wellington with our friends Odie and Joel, we hopped back on the ferry to travel to the South Island. This journey was just as choppy as the first one, but I managed to keep my breakfast in my body! Yippee! Which is very fortunate because even the veteran ferry goers said that it was the roughest they had ever seen it. It's pretty amazing when a boat the size of a small cruise ship is slapping waves. For our trip from Picton to Christchurch on the South Island, we traveled down the seal covered coast through Kaikora, which is a very cool seaside town where the mountains meet the sea.

Hey! Darrel wanted to share this movie he made of some preliminary drawing that he has done for a new client. Check it out!

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I just started a new job, and yes it is in an office. Top secret stuff though, so can't say much about it. I think I will be improving the plant life inside of the building as soon as I get the feel for the place. The picture above is kind of like a first day of school picture, since I am in training for the next two months. The biggest thing that I have learned from my new work experience is that girly shoes give you blisters, so don't walk 45 minutes to and from work in them (bring walking shoes!). I have since learned how the bus system works and have also been riding my bike from time to time. I am really enjoying not depending on a car, but it's nice to have one so we can get away to places like Godley head (pics below). See if you can spot the sheep in this one, I think that if you click on the picture it will be enlarged for you.


Godley Head is a penninsula that divides Taylors Mistake from Lyttelton Harbour (just to the South of Christchurch). There are a number of mountain bike tracks and walkways throughout the area. Truly intriguing are the concrete bunkers and narrow tunnels running down the hillside, constructed during the Second World War to secure the harbour against a potential attack.


These sheep were visiting the Christchurch Art Gallery in some nice woolen sweater. teehee

later skaters!