Hostage situation

Jer left his shampoo at family camp this weekend. Luckily our friends, Nate and Rach, live there and Nate is the Camp Director. We emailed him today about leaving it up there and asked if he'd bring it back down with them this weekend. This is the photo with randsom note we got back. The note read "I have your lush soap in my custody please don't call the police, leave the ransom money in the designated area or the soap gets it!!"

If you can't read it, the shower head is saying, "You're soap suds, Buddy"

Corin stories

So, last night the four of us were downstairs practicing singing a couple of songs for the talent night portion of the family camp. One song is all four of us, the other is just Leslie and I. Anyhow, we mostly practiced the one for all four of us. In the process we had 2 cute Corin moments.

1. Corin is pretty good at hearing a note either on pitch pipe or you humming it and repeating the note. It was pretty great. He's better at the low ones rather than high ones right now. It was pretty fun to discover though!

2. We sang the one song so many times, that Corin actually put his fingers in his ears at one point and walked around the room this way. Remember his is 12 months now. It was quite cute and humorous. We called it quits for the night shortly after this.

Van iPhone Trade

2 interesting things

Right now, it is 10pm Monday night here. Two crazy things. One happened today. We're at KareKare (Carrie Carrie is the pronounciation) today to see the beach and a waterfall. We take Leslie, Corin, Will (the intern), and Casey Marlar (teenager i've mentioned before who family is from texas). We borrow the Marlar's minivan to go b/c our car isn't big enough and the whole family had plans to go along with 2 other friends, but that fell through. So, we're at the beach and are walking back to go to the trail to the waterfall and decide to stop by the van for something. Casey sees that it's been broken into. At first noone understands, and then we all panic. Mine and Leslie's purses are in there (including mine and Jeremy's passports) along with phones and ipods. Not a good situation. Then to discover they busted out the front passenger window and just grabbed what they could, which was Casey's bag (with extra clothes, wallet, phone, and ipod) and the diaper bag. We decide to forgo the waterfall walk. We walk all over the area and talk to several people. We didn't find any signs of our stuff chucked out or anything. While looking, Leslie notices one house nearby has small children. We knocked on their door and they graciously gave us a diaper and wipes for Corin. He was wet and we weren't looking forward to a long drive home when he was already wet. After the majority of the glass is cleaned out of the car, we start our drive back sans window. Luckily it wasn't raining. We decide to drive not the way out for a bit to see if the stuff was thrown out the window that way. It wasn't, but we could see the waterfall from the road. So, at least we got to see it. On the way out, we did find Casey's bag and his clothes, but that's it. We really thought we'd find the diaper bag once they realized that's what it was. It doesn't look like a diaper bag at first sight. It looks like a messenger bag, so they might have thought it held a laptop or something. I'm praising God that nothing was stolen that is terribly hard to replace.

2nd crazy thing goes down tomorrow. Colin and Andre'a are a couple of young Americans that were here on a working holiday visa for not quite a year. They go home tomorrow. They haven't been able to sell their van. They haven't had much time. Jeremy and Colin have decided to do a swap of the van for Jeremy's iphone. Now, out of contract iphones are worth a lot and vans here aren't too expensive. But if we can sell it, we are making a profit. I'm just surprised Jer's doing it since the iphone has been his new baby since he had to leave the miada behind. He LOVES his iphone. Anyhow, it's his phone, and can do with it what he wants. If you'd like to see the van, here's the link to the blog Colin set up for it to sell. http://1995mazdampv.blogspot.com/

Island Bay

Leslie, Jeremy, and I walked to Island Bay pier on Tuesday morning. This pier is just down the hill from us. Here are some pics from our trip.

Our house is in there somewhere towards the top.

Waiwera Hot Pools

So, Monday, we went to Waiwera to the hot pools. it was very nice and relaxing. We went into several different temperature pools. one was 48 celsius(118 F). i didn't try that one. several other people in our group did though, including jeremy. he didn't get much farther than his foot. :-) we watched a few others do it for pictures, which was pretty dumb. they also have a number of slides. that was pretty cool too. the only problem was getting out of the water and wondering around in the cold before you go to the next one. luckily, it's not a busy time right now, so we were able to hang out in the little pool at the bottom waiting for the rest of our group before we had to get out. we had to practically beg several times to get a lifeguard to come out and open the 2 slides that required one. i think he just didn't want to work. he didn't have to do much and he was wearing warm clothes. he looked grumpy. we had a lot of fun though. i did taste sulfur for 2 days after though!

Random photos

This is a photo of 4 little boys watching a movie one afternoon at the church building. That is what the front of our hall looks like, and our pews.

This is at the cool movie theatre just north of us that we went to for Jeremy's birthday movies. The seats are fancy schmancy. They're wide and soft with great cup holders and arm rests. They're built for people just taller than me, in the head rest area, but once you get into the movie, you forget about it.

This is at a game night at our friends' house in Blockhouse Bay a few months ago.

And this is from Christmas in Rotorua. Aaron, Grace, and Emily.

All these photos are from Jer's iphone.

Scary washers

So, here in NZ we use Trademe to buy pretty much everything. It's similar to Ebay, but used all the time by everyone. I don't know anyone who doesn't shop Trademe before they hit the stores. It even does jobs and reality. We bought our car off it, and we found our house on there. Anyway, there's a guy who listed his washer for sale. Apparently it's quite scary. The pictures are great too; they go with the story.  There's also so many questions at the bottom, I didn't even get halfway thru. It's listed thru the 18th. Check it out.

http://www.trademe.co.nz/Home-living/Laundry/Washing-machines/Top-loader-6kg-under/auction-223309871.htm

Small groups

Reading, reading, and reading. I've done a lot of reading lately. :-)

Monday, Leslie, Corin, and I went around parts of downtown Auckland. We found the place to go to find souvenirs and gifts. It's in this really cool old group of buildings called Victoria Park Market. It's a place that I could see Lora going to take cool artsy pictures. We went to walk the area, but we also went to find the Ecostore. We did and I'm pretty excited about that. I picked up a new book there called Living Green which is New Zealand's version of Gorgeously Green. I've glanced thru a bit of the latter when I got it at the library here. I really am taking a lot of out the personal care products. I esp. love the site it gives on determining how much junk is in your stuff called the cosmetic database. It gives a 1-10 assessment of your product. It tells you everything in it and how hazardous it is. I'm pretty excited about New Zealand's version b/c it tells you a lot the same stuff, but doesn't list a lot of places and products I can't get here. Also, I'm learning about all the stuff our version of the FDA allows that most countries don't. Like pesticides...there are a lot of pesticides used here that you can't use in the States or Europe.

Tuesday, Leslie, Corin, and I went swimming with two girls our age from church and their little boys. Corin gets along great with them. The three are aged 3, 2, and 1. It was indoors and a cool little aquatic center, but it's attached to a grammar school and we hit right at the time they were also there doing their lessons. 

On other notes, I'm working with a lady at church named Virginia to get home groups started. We haven't quite figured out who wants to be in one and when and where yet, but we're getting there. Accommodating schedules and those who live across the bridge from us is interesting. We're currently thinking of 3 groups placed geographically and one being in the morning or sometime during school hours.