It's late and I'm tired

It's late and I'm tired so the last thing I should be doing is updating our blog. I don't even know what to comment on. We went to church today and it was good to see everyone again. There are two functioning chapels in our city, the others are down for the count (which is probably 2 years we heard). We went for a drive out to Redcliffs, Sumner and Brighton to see what was left and to take photos for Sam and J. It was blimin' depressing is all I am going to say. I cannot imagine how it will ever get cleaned up (photos tomorrow maybe). When I was younger (in high school even) we used to have red phone boxes on pretty much every other street. Today it was like someone had turned the clock back, but instead of phone boxes it was port-a-loos everywhere. There are 3-4 on every street in some areas. And the worst thing we saw today was a white-haired old lady coming out of one on Ferry Road. Nana would have laid down and died rather than used a port-a-loo, in the rain, on a main street. It sounds silly now that I write about it because everyone has to go to the toilet, they just do... but you don't expect to know about an 80 year old woman's bowel movements on a Sunday afternoon. And how did she get there? Did she walk home in the rain? How did she get up and down her front steps, and what about the mess of a footpath she had to walk on? I've got nothing to complain about personally but there are many people in my city in difficult circumstances. xx

Thanks guys

I don't know these gentlemen but they are my heros.

Sam and J, the grass is where Askos was, and I heard the Victoria St Jubilee Clock Tower is going to come down... :(

In town

We ran around Hagley Park this morning. :)

Yes, the path was pitted, bumpy, closed-off at some points and covered in chestnuts BUT it made it feel like life was a little more normal. We loved it and the kids had so much fun on their bikes. It also got me thinking how normal the abnormal seems now. And I'm not talking about the fact you still can't even brush your teeth with the tapwater, or that we have a long drop and a chemical toilet.

Everywhere in town there are buildings that are broken up. Even in the suburbs it is normal to come across a big ol' pile of bricks that was once a house or a set of shops. If we hadn't had an earthquake this would not have been tolerated for more than a day or two.

We also don't find it odd that for miles you can go without having a working traffic light, and shops are working weird (super early closing!) hours. Lots of my friends are like us, they have only one door and a couple of windows that open. No one is bothering to wash windows because of the dust swirling around.

But saying that it was a beautiful summer day today and we really enjoyed our run around the park.

Oh and if you want a tip for disaster survival - buy some extra sponges to go on your mop. And tons of paper towels. Nothing cleans up glass (especially when there is no electricity for the vacuum cleaner) better than a damp paper towel and believe me, you do not want to scrub those mucky, dusty floors on your hands and knees. Mop heads do not hold up well under earthquake cleaning for long... Just stock up on some extra mop heads (they sell out really fast, so do it now)

xx

Do you love the way someone has tried to be funny and put a green sticker on the gate outside this house. AS IF!

Some poor bloke is saying "my shed! MY SHED!"

Any vollenteers to help tidy up the garage?

Pony-Boy turns 1

This is his cake. I am not kidding, this is truely his cake. Have you ever seen anything like it???? And what is more it is amazing and has caramel or something in it... Sam is freezing the head for next time we go to Australia - bring it on!

Okay so this has nothing to do with his birthday but he is in a costume (when isn't he???) and he is adorable so I thought I'd throw it in ;)

THIS is Colt at his 1st birthday part at Gekkos (oh yes, Sam likes to theme the costume with the party venue...) and he LOVED it and had sooooo much fun! I wish I had been there.

love you Pons

xxx

Aunty Trapper

Beauty and the Beast

Here's the beauty...

Mike came over with Fifi and pruned by bay trees... He is a *master* at it so I didn't even try to do it myself... but it happened on the perfect day. Everything was just TOO DARN MUCH and then I came home from running errands to this :) It really is the small things that save your sanity sometimes...
And here is the Beast. My poor front doorstep, cracked down the middle, and pulled off from the porch of our house (by almost an inch... where the paint looks like it is coming off it is not, that part was never painted because it was under the wooden porch). You can also see some of the horrible liquifaction sand that is *everywhere*. It never ceases to amaze me how you can go to bed apparently quite clean but wake up with a bed full of sand. 2 minutes after I vacuum the house it is all over the floors again. It is in the bath, on the windowsills, in the glasses on the kitchen shelf, on the couch and it lightly dusts all the fruit on the table. And this is with me keeping the doors and windows shut (not too hard considering they are jammed shut) and vacuuming all the time.

But let me refer you back to my beautiful bay trees again... they make up for a lot! (PS Styci do not even look at my grass... we are having a drought and Dad was on "lawns" while we were in Aussie so he decided to keep the edges nice by SPRAYING them with Roundup. Gulp. Love ya Dad!)

Masumi-san is okay....

I am so relieved. Masumi-san emailed me. She is okay but her house (in Tokoyo) is a mess. Hideaki is also okay but looking after a baby in this kind of situation is stressful. Hiroko, Yuki, Mayumi - where are you? How are you?
xxx

I'm thinking of you, my Japanese friends

Actually it was an 8.8 earthquake in the end...
Please, my friends from Japan, email me and let me know you are okay xxx Suzy

My beautiful children

Megane had her hair curled (by Shannon, the best babysitter in the world), doesn't it look pretty?

Lizzie and Lucy ready to go to Campbell's Bay Primary School (thanks for loaning her your spare uniform Lizzie xxx) Lucy says it is fun and she loves the lunches Aunty Maria makes for her. She also loves it that they aren't allowed to wear shoes inside!

Here are William and Sebastien dressed to kill... Today they went tree climbing and mountain biking - but normally they spend their days at Murray's Bay Intermediate. Will, I really appreciate you taking Sebastien into your world and making him feel at home there.

Beautiful....

So I was lying in bed last night thinking how beautiful my reconditioned bedroom is... just thought i'd share xx

Woodhill Tree Adventures

My children are evacuees in Auckland.
Just like the kids in the Lion, the Witch & the Wardrobe...
Lucy and Sebastien have been going to school with Lizzie and Will (Meg has been hanging out with Shannon watching TV and going to the Mall) and tomorrow the boys are going on an EOTC adventure with Murrays Bay Intermediate School to Woodhill Tree Adventures! They are really excited - good thing Seb didn't inherit my fear of heights
xx

by Megane

We were all talking away on the bus never expecting anything as bad as what was going to happen to us.

We were all talking as the earthquake happened. I was the back of cars starting to bounce up and down, then a huge bang as a wall crashed on to a car. Then screams and cries from the people coming out of the falling down buildings. I saw people crying - in and out of the bus. As soon as the shaking stopped we all got out of the bus and walked back to school and hugged our siblings. We remembered that horrible nightmare that we had just been through.

Ahhhhhhhh, and thar she blows

We are moving on.
Dominic is currently plane-ing the bottoms off all our doors so that they "shut." We can't wait 3 years to have doors that close so drastic measures are being taken. So when you come over and see 1 inch gaps at the tops and bottoms of our (cowboy) doors, don't say anything. We've had 6 months with the doors like this and I guess Dom has decided NO MORE.
Also, I think we might have water again! I experimented with the cold tap this morning and there was enough water coming out that I am giving our dishwasher a trial run (on 70C to clean out the mould that has grown over the last 2 weeks... vile). If that works then my next step is the *washing machine*!!! Happy days!
Can you imagine, electricity, water, doors that shut and we can now safely park in the garage! I'm giddy with excitement. We are also on the list for a chemical toilet - which should come sometime next week.

Any suggestions about what we can do with the windows and external doors that are jammed shut with the weight of the house? I'm not complaining because we do have a sliding ranch door we can use but... if this can be worked on I want to do it.

I've been asked how the house is holding up...

Well... I guess I am just so thankful that we are able to live in it (Sebastien is slying licking St Hurbert gravy sauce off his plate GIVE ME STRENGTH) that I really haven't bothered to take stock of damage.

But since people are asking:
No water (a tiny trickle of cold water slowly fills the hot water cylinder in the attic so we can get water out of the hot tap, but you have to boil it and if you want to take a shower you have to be quick because there is no cold to cool it down)
No toilet (sewer pipe is broken somewhere) so we have a long-drop/out house behind the bushes at the back of the property
Big hole in the side of the house where the brick chimney wall was. It has a tarp over it, but... that will have to be fixed before winter
Cracks in every wall
Lino in kitchen and bathroom ruined (scratches, it has unstuck from the floor because of the water under the floor making the woodbeams swell and go squiffy)
Floor so wonked that doors can't open/close properly cos the piles are sticking up in the middle of the floor
Door jams off kilter so the closing mechanicsms don't work (even if we could close them)
Windows can't open
Driveway is a mess
No electricity to the living room lights
Let me mention again that the kids have to go to the toilet out in the back yard in the middle of the night
Tons of house stuff broken

And who knows what kind of unseen damage is done behind the walls/in the ceiling.

But let me repeat, we are totally fine and happy that we are not having to live with sewer-ified liquifaction silt blowing all over us night and day, while we sleep in a tent. And both Dom and I have jobs that are not in jeopardy because of the earthquake, and the kids are going to be with our lovely friends in Auckland for a week. You can't ask for more.

So is Lucy...

We just went for a run (bliss in a totally torturous way) and afterwards Lucy and I were sat down and shared a bottle of water while we watched Sebastien on the bike jumps at the park. We saw a man walk past with a baby in a pram and Lucy said "The Mum isn't with him because she is dead. She was crushed." (Gulp) I said "Don't you think she might be home vacuuming or making lunch? Or maybe she asked the Dad to take the baby for a walk so it could go to sleep without crying?" "No Mum, she's dead. She is crushed." Which led to a conversation about what we will die from... Apparently I won't die until after I've been a Granny and then I will just die. I won't be crushed or anything. My poor father and sister Sam will both die from "coffee." I tried to explain that you don't die from coffee, but she won't believe me. Everyone dies from coffee, cigarettes or cancer. Or crushing.

Oh, and it turns out that Megane and Sebastien were adopted. I picked them up from the "child care place where babies wait until someone comes to get them" because "their real parents died of cancer." I don't remember any of this "because you were in the 40s... no, the 20s Mum." What is more, they died from cancer because of cigarettes and "that is why Megane and Bastien are sometimes silly. The cigarettes make you silly."

What the heck??????

She is quite serious when she talks about this (she broke the news to Megane and Sebastien that they were adopted last week), and she is positive that she is the only one I gave birth to. I have no idea what is going on in her head but I won't worry yet. Surely this is a stage kid go through. No???

Megane is very aware...

This afternoon Megane was packing to go away for the weekend with her best friend and their family. She was really excited, and called Grace to find out where they are going to stay. She got off the phone and said to me "Mum, the hotel room is on the first floor with a balcony which is okay... but it is on the side of a hill so if there is a landslide we will be crushed to death." I replied "There won't be a landslide" and kept doing what I was doing. She replied very matter-of-factly "You don't know that Mum."

How would it be to grow up knowing that the earth could *freak out* under your feet at any moment and kill you? I suspected it could do that, but I didn't know it.

This really hurts....

Christchurch was known for having more heritage buildings than Wellington and Auckland. No more. Half of our level 1 and 2 heritage buildings are going to be pulled down. This lovely old church in Sydenham was pulled down without Council permission (would have happened anyway), do you remember this one Sam and J? It's over near where Nana left Dad outside the old Post Office and went home without him...

my babies

I just found this old picture of my babies. I am so glad they are okay. xxx

Report from Dom at the airport

Did you know we still have international teams arriving in Christchurch to help us find and bury our dead, and clear the rubble? Dom was in the airport yesterday and a new team arrived from Japan and everyone in the airport started applauding them. EVERYONE. The same thing happened for a rural rescue team from elsewhere in New Zealand.

I guess it is like in WWII when the allies helped out in France - the deeds of a few men are still remembered today. We will love these people forever for what they are doing for us today.

The chimney is down! (Thanks Dad)

The Dad came by with his crew today (while I was at school) and took down the dangerous chimney - yahoo! They even neatly stacked the bricks out of the way. What service! He still has "jobs" lined up for weeks but they squeezed me in. I guess I had better get cooking that enormous pork roast I got for them...

La famille au Canada

wow xxxx

Jacob tu es trop mignon!


Salut ma belle Bex! Viens ici!

Chim-chimney!

Dear Chimney,
Please don't come crashing down tonight because my car is parked in the garage and I don't want to have to clear the driveway before I go to school, and the girls don't want a gaping hole to open up in their bedroom wall in the middle of the night.
Love, Suzy

1st day back at school - Wed 2nd March

Our students are so resiliant.
They were really amazing today - just their regular chatty, fun, friendly selves. They were up to all their usual tricks (trying to get on Mathletics during study period, "needing" to go to the library to "photocopy something" at totally random moments and pretending Form Period didn't exist) - it was great!
They were also very welcoming to my children who had to come out to school as their school is.... squished. Lucy wanted to go with the Yr 11 students to their classes all day and the other two settled down much quicker than I expected (they are super shy, like their mother). However, I want them back at St Michael's sooner rather than later so their lives can get back to normal.