Pippa and Prince Harry

And for good measure... Colt!

I just can't get enough of this picture... Colty-woo is sending me kisses xxxxxx SO FUNNY!

Our new baby...

Meet Coralie Lallemant - our 24th niece/nephew! Isn't she adorable!!! And she was born on ANZAC day :)

Sara is snuggling Coralie, David (Dom's look-alike brother) is holding Matis and Nellia. Isn't this a cute photo? I wish we were there xxx

And here are her chubby wee cheeks one last time.... SO PRECIOUS! And she looks so much like Nellia, Sara and Matis... Coralia, your cousin Lucy says "I send you lots of kisses" xxxxx

oh, Pippa got earrings too!

It is hard to pick my favourites... Sure the acorn and oak leaves are kinda weird, but not when you know what they symbolize. So, I guess I'll have a pair of each. (except that maybe Pippa's middle bits don't move independantly?? Jessica, what do you think?)

I loved all of it

I loved it.

All of it. Her hair, dress, makeup - the lot. And I especially loved these earrings.

I'm totally besotted by them. I think I even want them.

I hope that the couple had a great day.

Princess Catherine (Grace)

I do love the dress... it is very Princess Grace though. What is going on over her bum? Some kind of bow? It is perfet for her. I wish she and Will would look at each other occasionally and look a little... happy....
And where are the pictures of Beatrice and Eugenie! They are the story of the moment!!!

Here's Grouchy Spice

(at least David's hair is not traumatizing me today...)

Oh Chelsea.... no!

The hair, the yellow teeth, the lining of the dress popping out all over the place, the matronly bosom, the garish colour! I don't want to be uncharitable but eeeeeek! Sam, I can only assume you are with me on this one.

Oops, I forgot our Prime Minister's wife...

She is wearing Trelise Cooper, in pink and navy. I have been wondering what she was going to wear...

The Royal Wedding

Well dress #1 has now been seen, and it is a navy blue sack. Sorry Posh, but really, that is what you came up with? Just because you are pregnant... I do like the "hat" but I believe it is slipping off. Good luck with that.

So now we sit back and wait another hour-and-40-minutes for dress #2, Kate's dress. Ho hum. Megane is LOVING it. Sebas has eaten his weight in chocolate cake and rice krispie treats and Lucy is playing Barbies in the bedroom.

(What I want to know is... all those people in the Abbey - how many toilets have they got? And at what point are they told to "sit still and hold it?"

Now I have to get back to planning how to teach the relative pronouns QUE and QUI, and how to broach the subject of Y and EN. (oh there is Posh again, waiting in line... that's gotta be a first)

Feijoa season!

yummy yummy yummy!!!!

Look at the size of this feijoa!

In case you are thinking it is all doom and gloom around here... it isn't. Our garden looks so pretty and the feijoas are big and tasty this year

xx

I can't grow plans but I sure can grow cracks...

That blue light that you see... is outside my house. This crack between the carpet (dark part) and the wall is rather drafty now that winter is coming on. We have a (blue) tarpaulin over the hole in the wall and a door sausage blocking the gap...

This is a new crack, from the aftershock last week. Pretty, no?

This is right by the "blue light" photo.... you can just see the door sausage in the left side of the picture. ARGH!

And this is that crack close up. Is it big enough for you? It leads... OUTSIDE!

Town...

THIS is to show you the traffic... I am standing at the corner of Salisbury and Victoria St and this line of traffic goes down to the (demolished) Firestone Building in Papanui!!! That is 3km people!!!

And 12 hours later... the Strategy Building was gone (downstairs was a pharmacy and a post office, it was on the corner of Salisbury St and Victoria St) because that earthquake last week made it too dangerous to take down slowly

The good news is that they are trying to save the Diamond Jubilee Clock Tower, but just look at that poor wonky spire!

My Art class made this... There was a lot of thinking, planning, talking, research that went into it... I love it.

and this (it is WAY cooler in real life, and 3D. You can't tell but Chalise sticks out and there is a lot of texture on it. It is panel 1 of a triptic BEFORE NOW AFTER). Can you see how the girls have made some of the major tourist attractions out of their own photos (so that it represents how We are part of the city)... loves it!

This also is way better in real life (and BIG, did I mention the size of these?) and it is the NOW panel...

Trip to Redcliffs and Sumner

Remember how I said there were destroyed houses just sitting round as piles of rubble all over town... Here is a good example of that...

And here is Sam's old house miraculously unscathed!

Just your average New Brighton Raod... covered in liquifaction silt.

Sigh, the Santa Fe house is no more...

Yer, so I'll let the picture speak 1000 words here...

Shag Rock... aka Frocky's swimming hole

Can you see the huge chunks of rock inside the cave? We weren't allowed to stop so we had to get a shot while driving past.

A couple of weeks ago we made a trip to Sumner to see how everything we loved had fared... I guess I should report "not well" but considering how town looks, it is actually pretty good. Shag Rock is shagged, the streets are full of liquifaction and sewer, and lots of houses are looking "crushed" (as Lucy would say) but the cave at Redcliffs is kinda still there... They have big train containers lining the roads beside the cliffs so that more rocks can't roll over the road (???) which sure inspires confidence... Anyway here are a few pics for those that know and love the place xxx

Look at me Mum, I'm not my usual self...

I'm a sherrif!

(and her top tooth came out yesterday... can you see the gap Josie?)

But wait! There is more on his CV!!!

Right when I was thinking Dad couldn't get any cuter... he told me another story! Nana used to work for Hays Department Store...

Jim Hay (1888-1971) opened his Gloucester Street department store on Friday the 13th of December, 1929. In 1938 the shop expanded on to Colombo Street and four years later, with the purchase of the 1910 Hayward building, Hay acquired an Armagh Street frontage. His upper floor office in the top (1957) image overlooked Victoria Square.

Hay's subsequently became Haywrights in 1968 and then Farmers in 1987. The old building was demolished in 1997, but the new Farmers department store is but a fraction of the size of its famous predecessor




When a circus came to Christchurch in 1933, Hay’s department store hired its elephant to advertise a sale.



Hay’s, with its slogan ‘the friendly store’, was renowned for innovative window displays and promotions. It had a rooftop playground, complete with ‘Aunt Hays’ (Edna Neville) organising children’s activities. In 1948 the store began annual Christmas parades featuring nursery-rhyme characters. Nana, Dad, Sam, Jessica and I were all part of the Christmas parades (how cool are we?!) and my favourite childhood memories involve the enormous Santa that sat on the roof of Hays (for 40 years) at Christmas time and it had a finger that beckoned you to come shop at Hays....



But I digress...

While Nana worked at Hays Dad worked part time during the school holidays... as the egg laying chicken at Easter. Oh yes, he certainly did. He said he would sit inside the chicken for a week and whenever people would come along and put a shilling into the slot he would make chicken noises and then he would roll an Easter egg down a chute so it looked like the hen had laid an egg! Sometimes he would sit outside this big huge chicken and just duck inside whenever kids would drag their parents over to it and he would perch in there with his egg all ready to roll... If only there was a picture of him doing this, sigh.

Dad was the record icecream seller

des. Melville Lawry
61 - 63 Edgeware road, St. Albans
seating 571
22 Feb 1940 - 1968

Nana and Grandad's Supervalue supermarket on Edgeware Rd has been demolished.
When we were little (and we stayed at their house every weekend) they would take us to the supermarket to get stuff and Grandad would sit in the car (where it was nice and warm and there were no chattering grandkids) and we would go into the shop with Nana... I always thought of that every time I went past...
This morning I was talking to Dad about how it is now gone and he told me all about when he used to work there as "an icecream boy" when it was the Century Cinema. He had the record for selling 3 trays of chocolate coated icecreams during intermission (they started off at 9pence and then went up to a shilling each). He always worked upstairs and would have his regular customers picked out... Before intermission he would fill up his tray and go and bob down at the middle aisle, with his back to the circle, so as soon as the lights came on he would pop up and start shifting those icecreams! (How cute is that!) As soon as his first tray was gone he would race back downstairs for more and then be back up and selling within minutes. No one else could sell more than 2 trays but Dad could do 3. He worked there from when he was about 12 years old, to 15 years (and he had other part time jobs too) on Friday nights and Saturdays.
(sorry Dad, the only picture I could fine was of an icecream usherette...)

Sunday 17 April 2011

So, we had another earthquake last night. Actually we had a rash of them yesterday afternoon and then at dinner time we had a 5.3 that rocked the house. Sebastien was helping Dom do the dishes and he got all excited and started prancing around the house squeeling excitedly... this set Megane off who started yelling "Mum! Make it stop! Make him stop!" and Lucy got scared and came and cuddled me and said "I don't want to died from crushing!!" Poor angel - it was noisy and everything shook like mad (only a couple of things fell) but it was okay. There was no need to fear death. We were lucky and no one was injured, but the sewer system was *destroyed* again (sob!), a lot of houses/roads/parks over by the beach have been recovered with liquifaction silt and power was out to the east side of town.

Dad came over after work this morning. He had another long night so he is actually going to go home and sleep today. When we saw him yesterday morning he had been on duty for 24 hours and had been BUSY the whole time. He had spent the day in red-stickered buildings helping people get their important papers out. He was on a high rise building with a crane to transport them to each level. They were taken up the outside of the building where they removed the external window (with a chainsaw around the metal frame), "cleared" the area (this means he has to check to make sure it is safe), then he escorted the residents/workers in while they got their essentials. Well, they were supposed to get their essentials but he said they went mad and were trying to take all kinds of things out. The owner of the building (who lives in the penthouse) rented the crane for $800 an hour and he wanted to make the most of it. Everyone was allocated 30 minutes max but they would get a load then take it down to the ground in "the cage" and then headed straight back up to get more... Dad and the boys were helping the people in and out of the window-entry, and all their stuff. By the end of the day they were exhausted but Dad then had night-shift. They were out all night with fires, car crashes, fire alarms going on... He had to drive an ambulance at once stage because the abulance workers were saving lives or something. They also got called back to the scene to hose brains off the road (of which he said there weren't any but the police wanted to be sure no one got an eyeful when the sun came up). I just don't know how he does it. Last night he had a fire in a cupboard (???), and lucky Dad had to get up into the roof cavity thru the burning cupboad (the manhole was in the ceiling of the cupboard) with his BA gear on etc... and then the guy next door (who shared the roof cavity with the burning apartment) refused to leave the building so Dad had to go and have a wee chat to him about it... and the apartment was FULL of guns, computers, surveillance stuff etc. I bet that was a fun fire to put out - know that the flat next door was an ammunition depot!

On the other hand, it is FINALLY the school holidays! I will have two blissful weeks of playing with the kids and preparing for next term. I'm really tired so I will try to relax as much as possible... Yahoo!

El Moon Man

This is someone else commenting on what he has said... personally I've been waiting for this weekend to be over. It was no surprise to me the biggish one we had tonight - but will there be more? Who knows. Gravity is a big deal to the earth, no?

19-20 March
"Perigee" means moon closest to earth for the month. We have seen the 4 September 7.1 event (new moon+second closest perigee) of 648 kilotons, followed by 7 October (new moon+perigee#6) which brought (8th) the next biggest event, two 4+ jolts around 6.30am totalling 96 metric tons. The following month, on 4-6 November, new moon in perigee brought on 7th at just before 3am, the next biggest aftershock of 118 tonnes. The next month? Perigee was 26-27 December, as perigeal new moon changed to perigeal full moon. On 26 December came the next biggest jolt since the last, a month ago; a 4.9mag king-hit of 346 tons. With 20 January's full moon+perigee, came the next biggest earthquake to hit Christchurch, a 5.1mag event.
It has meant that since September, every perigee has brought successive earthquakes that were the biggest since the last biggest, starting with new moons and swapping to full moons. With 6 successive monthly biggest events, equally spaced at 4-week intervals, all coming right on kingtide times, all hitting the Christchurch region, the pattern is obvious. And the next is the 20 March closest-perigee for the year, + full moon. The next (and last) powerful perigeal full moon is 18 April.
In 2009 the closest perigee for that year + full moon probably triggered the Te Anau earthquake. The closest perigee for 2010 was 30 January. Within the few days following came a 2.9 mag only 10 km north of Hanmer Springs 3kms deep, two 4.5-mag earthquakes in Hawkes Bay, and Fiordland received a mighty 5.1-mag shock 40 km west of Milford Sound that was felt throughout Fiordland and Otago. There were others too, within the week to follow, in Taupo, Manawatu and Bay of Plenty. These events of 2009 and 2010 can now be seen as an early signal that the South Island Alpine Fault region was coming into line for a rough sequence soon to follow.
That the moon+perigee are on the same day makes it even more gravitationally significant. Perigee always magnifies the gravitational pull of moon, especially when the moon is full. The moon will be 356577kms away on March 19, and this will be the closest it has come to Earth since 12 Dec 2008 and won't be as close again until 14 Nov 2016. The 19-21st of March will be a potent date for an extreme event.
Days of potential increase in activity
27 February; 5, 19, 20, 21 March; 17, 18 April

Reason for the April dates: Full moon=18th, perigee (fourth closest for year)=17th, crossing equator=16th. This is the last potential date in the sequence. The interval has roughly the same potency as the February full moon period of 18th-25th. It does not mean a similar sized 6.3-mag will necessarily occur, but it does mean the killer is still loose on the streets, the one that strikes on full moons. We have not mentioned this date thus far in consideration of those traumatised even considering 19-21 March. But perhaps now is the time to keep this date in mind. It means that basic stocks and survival preparations should not be finally eased until after 19 April. If we all take precautions we are safer. If it doesn't occur then it doesn't really matter. It matters more if we are warned and do nothing.

Megane's special day...

Our little Meggie has been waiting a long time for this... 10 years in fact. Today she got her first pair of pointe shoes! We met Grace at Dance Pacific (which is right in the CBD behind the cordon, but they have special permission to be open) and they were both fitted for shoes. Lucky Megane also got a new pair of ballet slippers and character shoes today too, so she was lovin' it! Tomorrow is the big day - she will get them approved by her ballet teacher and then she will sew the ribbons on and break them in. Expect photos :)