June 2007 - Still in Wanaka

We have settled in well, spread ourselves around and getting used to all the space..

Most of the time we have been in Wanaka I have spent everyday walking from the bank to the police station to try and sort out our van sale!

The business cheque I was given in Auckland bounced! After ‘phoning the chap daily and despite assurances from him that he will pay the money in, none was forthcoming. Therefore I went to see the police, never even been inside a police station let alone have to give a statement etc, it took another couple of weeks and the threat of a visit from the Auckland police, but eventually all the money has been paid- Thank goodness, otherwise we would have been coming home sooner than planned!

June is much the same as May really, very slowly we are meeting people, Greg’s instructor invited us to Sunday dinner when we met him and his wife in ‘New World’ supermarket. We spent a really lovely evening with them and were fed with a huge joint of roast pork. They only live up the hill from us so we walked there and back under a clear starry sky.

One afternoon the children and I went to an open air pool complex, heated to 33oC, I sat in a nice warm pool for a couple of hours reading my book and they spent the time playing catch and chase; we were the only ones there.

We have met an American family who are now living in NZ and spending the winter in Wanaka, they home school and have 2 girls 6&9. We have seen them a few times and Rowena seems much happier having a friend.

Still travelling here, there and everywhere for Alistair’s rugby games, Greg says he needs to get ‘Stuck in more!’ but he is enjoying himself at the moment and if in the future he doesn’t get stuck in then he will learn.

The days are getting progressively colder and the mornings frostier, we have log burner on all day, I try to keep it going overnight but have only been successful twice.

21^st June- shortest day, mid winter, SNOW…..

It started at 11.30 and by lunch time we had 3.5cm, that afternoon 11cm and by bedtime 12cm. (Thank you Alistair)

I had to work out how to put our snow chains on… okay what I really did was flutter my eyelashes, play the dim female and ask a bloke that was walking by to help!!

Once we got home the children wanted to try out their skis, so they put them on and skied up and down the road for an hour or so. It was lovely, lots of glittery snow, it was almost dark by the time we managed to haul them inside.

Just settling down to have our ‘upside-down plum cake and ice cream’ for desert and we had a power cut! Did we know where the torch was?- No! Did we have any candles? No, actually wait a minute we have some to keep to mosquitoes and sand flies away, they were fine…!!

This morning the snow is starting to melt, but another fall is forecast.

Cardrona ski resort hasn’t opened, inspite of all the snow we had, hardly any fell on the mountain. So opening day was postponed.

Still we did quite a bit of school work, trying to get in credit for when we eventually get to go skiing.

I took the children to the climbing wall for an afternoon of fun, I had a coffee! They spent the time scaling one wall after another. They have a Clip’n’ Climb session, where they put on a harness, are shown how to clip on to an automatic belay and off the go. They love it. Alistair spent most of the time speed climbing up one wall trying to beat either himself or the clock, Rowena climbed the wall in the dark, with only a small UV light to guide her.

Eventually yesterday Cardrona opened, the children and I got up at the crack of dawn and drove the 45 mins to the ski field. We found where they were going to meet for their lessons and I was told to go away! No parents were allowed in! So I wandered around like a spare part for an hour until my lesson started.

Now bearing in mind that I haven’t skied since before I had Alistair and then only 3 times I was very impressed with myself! I joined the beginners’ class but was told that I was too good and needed to go up one!!!

By the afternoon it was starting to come back to me and by the end of the day I could get down from the top of the mountain quite respectably.

Alistair and Rowena are doing snow plough turns and really enjoying it, Alistair says that skiing has risen to 2^nd place on the leader board of his favourite sports- guess what is first! They can’t wait to go again.

Next Day Raining all day in Wanaka, Snowing in Cardrona with high winds, Cardrona CLOSED. What a disappointment.

Cardrona opened the next day again and has been open to some degree since, still hoping for a good snow dump as the snow is getting a bit thin here and there.

Good snow, 25cm in 24 hours on the mountain now all open and we are skiing every day, getting better daily…

We are skiing almost every day, Alistair & I have streaming colds so we took a day off and sat by the fire learning about scale. He is much better at Maths than I am, what takes me minutes to work out he does in seconds.

All the Cardrona runs are now open and so long as you avoid the weekends then the slopes are not that busy. The school holidays end 14^th July so it will be even quieter.

I have started baking bread, without my bread machine, it’s so easy and really nice, much better than the horrid stuff they have here. Just like Mothers Pride!