we have FLUSHAGE!!!!

WE HAVE A TOILET THAT FLUSHES!!!!!!!! WE HAD 3 TRUCKS AND A CREW OF 6 WORKERS HERE THIS MORNING

(DIGGING UP MY FRONT LAWN, KILLING MY HEDGES AND DOING OTHER THINGS TO MY LANDSCAPING BUT IT WAS WORTH IT!!)

AND NOW WE CAN FLUSH!

NO MORE VILE CAMP TOILET!

NO MORE LONG DROP!

NO MORE MAKING THE KIDS HANG ON TILL DOM GETS HOME

(SO HE CAN EMPTY THE CAMP TOILET)

Ahhhhh, life is good.

Now I just need the water pressure to get over A Trickle so that the tank can fill up and it can go down the pipes after just one flush, not 3.

But i'm not complaining, oh no, I most certainly am not.

Lucy my hockey princess

This is the 2nd time my Lucy has got Best Effort at hockey... She LOVES playing...

This is her team. I'm been trying to get these photos on my blog for weeks but somehow it just never happens... John - their coach - is a student at Shirley Boys High and he is awesome. I've never known a teenage boy to be so patient and willing to use his spare time to get 6yr olds to play a sport!! He is always cheeful and the kids love him.

Lucy in action... I'd put up a running shot but she moves so fast she would be a blur :)

This is what they do when I am not home....

I was working. Dom was home with the kids (earthquake ment the kids school was shut again)... they discovered a Smile Metre on the camera so they hooked it up to the tv and then took 100 shots! He he he!

my dream kitchen...

My dream kitchen will have this plate rack in the kitchen... (I found this photo on www.panelform.co.nz, they also have really cute country-style drawers and cupboards)

Vanessa and Chris xxx

My oldest niece got married this weekend, and as you can see she was *beautiful*. Here she is with her husband Chris, Dad (Chris) Mum (Dom's sister Marie-Josee) and brothers Lucas, Jackson (Jordon) and Shawn (who makes his bed every day)

xx

Since no one can go downtown...

Some pictures from inside the Red Zone can be found at www.stuff.co.nz (that is the Press newspaper site)...

When I picked up the kids today it occurred to me that most of you probably don't realize that we still can't go "downtown". In a big city like Sydney or Montreal this might not be a big deal, because there are so many other major centers nearby but here... it matters. We still only have 2 operating malls (argh! don't even think about going there because it is like Christmas Eve at all times) and before the earthquakes going "to town" was like going to a mall, but better and bigger and with a more fun vibe. Now however, it is locked up and patroled by the army 24/7. Oh and it is like a war zone... There is rubble everywhere.

So yer, the tourist district and the shops are gone. Maybe they will be back someday but if we keep getting big earthquakes (M6 and over) then I doubt there will be anything left to try to salvage.

comme elle est belle!

Aren't they GORGEOUS!!!!!

Happy happy joy joy!

So fun! Guess what arrived in the mail yesterday?

I have been looking forward to watching this movie for ages because I love the book

(I am reading it with my Yr 12 French students now)

and it has all my favourite French actors in it

(except Romain Duris... don't take offense Romain - I still love you... and Guillaume Canet xxx)

and it rocked!

I totally recommend it :)

Full Moon

When the Feb earthquake hit I was ready for it because the Moon Man had warned us about the moon coming in alignment etc and I had been watching the moon get fuller and fuller... People scoffed, but then he said that on the next full moon we could expect more shaking. And we got more. He then said he would never "predict" earthquakes in NZ again because he was getting death threats (which is sooooo dumb, hello people, he was predicting them not making them happen!). Anyway in the interests of weeding out some potential earthquake related phobias I decided not to let myself watch the moon anymore. Not forever or anything, but just for a couple of years because every time I saw it (day or night, strangely you see it a lot during the day here) I kept trying to work out how much longer until it was full and we would have more seismic activity... But I did that so well that I forgot all about full moon gravity on the tectonic plates and then of course we had the M5.7 and the M6 on Monday and several others yesterday, and the M5 and M4.7 this morning... and then I noticed today that there is a full moon again... duh.

5.7 and 6.3 yesterday

This is what it looked like in town after the earthquake... everyone was trying to get to their children and then home...

This is what the city looked like right as it happened... all this dust is from the collapsed buildings and the general shake-up.

And this is the beautiful liquifaction sand that volcanoes up everywhere. THIS time we didn't get any of this in our lawn or in the driveway but it was all around us.

I was teaching choir for the 5.7 and the school was evacuated. Then I got a call from Maria in Auckland saying "Dom is okay and he will head into town to get the kids soon" (but it turns out the traffic was that bad leaving the airport that he couldn't go... and he had no petrol...) - Maria kept calling back to me/Dad/Dom to keep us in touch with each other (we can't call out on our cellphones but you can occasionally get calls from Outside). When all the children at my school were accounted for I got a text from the Telecom phone tree emergency service saying that I had to go and immediately pick up my children from their school. I signed out and headed into town... People were already starting to queue up at the petrol stations and traffic was bad... My kids were the last to be picked up and poor Lucy was hanging onto her teacher's hand like "the last kitten in the petshop window". As we were stuck in traffic on Montreal St (by Latimer Square) the 6.0 hit and the car really rolled around. I was surprised because I wasn't driving but we were moving all over the place... I put the car in Park and then just tried to talk the kids through it. We were beside some enormous trees that I thought might lose branches, and we saw Rod (Dad's best friend from school) come out of his apartment at top speed with his son. Thankfully they were okay. The historic buildings opposite the old CGHS buildings (ummm, now an empty lot) collapsed further and we saw the dust cloud right in front of us... The police and ambulance were there within minutes and the street was blocked off and we were diverted around Hagley Park. I really don't think they will be saving those buildings anymore. Not too long after we made it home Dominic turned up. I was relieved as everything is better when he is around. The house wasn't toooooo bad. Another broken mirror, the piano moved a good 2 inches, everything was tossed off the shelves and plaster dust was everywhere. I think the worst off was Lucy, who was so scared in the 6.0 that she almost vomited. Everyone slept well last night though, we all slept through the 4.7 at 2am.

I guess we just have to accept the reality that while this is "unusual on a world scale" it is our norm - the aftershocks will just keep coming. I am just thankful that we are all safe and our house is liveable. Many people are not so well off.

5.5 this morning

Hear ye
Hear ye
We are fine.
The earthquake this morning took a painting off the wall but that's all. We felt it coming, then it hit with a bang and a good 30 seconds of mad-shaking, and then it was like jelly for a while longer... and we were fine. Dad felt it hit with a bang (he was out in his garage) but he was fine too and he had no breakages.
On the bright side, if the sewer pipes had been fixed last week like I hoped, they would be broken and full of liquifaction again now so... better to have loved and lost than to never have loved at all. Hang on, ummm, yer whatever. I didn't have my toilet cruelly ripped away from me a day after have it repaired. I am still just waiting on the list.
PS Yes, now I am back to having that nagging thought in the back of my mind... "there will for sure be another Big One that will crush and kill either me or the kids. Bugger. THAT will be very inconvienant"

Tick tock....

Where has the time gone? Weeks just disappear on me at the moment, probably because I am so busy at school and then on the weekend we have a million things to do with the children that we never just laze around and realise what day of the week it is.
This week I was dumb. Just plain dumb. There was a drain layer next door fixing the neighbours sewer pipes (well not really, he was flushing the liquifaction sand out of them so he could see how broken they were) and he said he would come and do ours "the day after tomorrow." I let myself get super excited about having a flushing toilet and all that goes along with it. Now it is several days after "the day after tomorrow" and we haven't seen hide nor hair of him. There are a pile of things that could potentially drive me mad about waiting for the house to be bulldozed/rebuilt but I don't let myself think about them much...
1) it is always damp in the house because of the cracks everywhere (actual access to the outside of the house kind of cracks) and it makes me cough couch cough all night every night.
2) the carpet is trashed (extra vacuuming due to all the mess has made me SUCK UP most of the pile in the living room) but there is no point in putting down new carpet...
3) i want to patch and repaint!
4) i want to open windows, and use the front door and the french doors that open onto the deck
5) the lino flooring in the kitchen and bathroom is lifting off (and is bubbled) because the floorboards were wet for so long that the glue sort of gave up - it needs replacing!
6) it is high time to have the bathroom redone but... again there is no point
7) the contents that were destroyed need replacing but again, why buy furniture when we need to rebuild anyway?
Okay so now that is out of my system I'll go back to trying to ignore it all. I am very thankful that Dom has done every single camp-toilet-emptying........ he deserves a medal.