Well, Ashlee is here.
I cannot tell you how great it is to have her energy in the house. It has been slightly testosterone-heavy since she left in 2010.
I've been wading through this unbalanced field since.
We stayed with my Aunt on Saturday night, baby-sitting as my cousin and his wife had to attend a school fund-raiser for a few hours. I got to experience reading bed-time stories again and thoroughly enjoyed it, getting carried away and taking the children way past their bedtime.
In the morning we went into Auckland and wandered around the harbour area, before deciding to stop for a coffee. The young man who served us looked vaguely familiar to me. He kept glancing at me, a puzzled smile on his face. I eventually asked him what his name was, cos the jogging going on in my memory wasn't doing very well, I couldn't quite get what it was. He came around the sofa, leaned over and said his name with a smile. Pow it hit me that this was the young French boy I'd sat next to all the way from Heathrow to Auckland when I'd flown out in January. (Okay so he's not actually a boy, but anyone half my age is a boy to me :-) ). We'd chatted a great deal of the 30-odd hour flight - him with his lovely accented English and me with my rather pathetic attempts at speaking French. We exchanged info promising to keep in contact. Neither of us had followed up. Too much going on.
Oh my, how is that? Of all the coffee shops (and in NZ there are MANY) I happened to walk into this one. I'd briefly wondered how he was when his name popped up as I opened my address book at the beginning of the week et voila! here he was in person.
After this we headed out to my other cousin, had lunch while chatting and laughing about the good times we'd had in London when we'd all lived there, before leaving for Hamilton.
I cannot tell you how great it is to have her energy in the house. It has been slightly testosterone-heavy since she left in 2010.
I've been wading through this unbalanced field since.
We stayed with my Aunt on Saturday night, baby-sitting as my cousin and his wife had to attend a school fund-raiser for a few hours. I got to experience reading bed-time stories again and thoroughly enjoyed it, getting carried away and taking the children way past their bedtime.
In the morning we went into Auckland and wandered around the harbour area, before deciding to stop for a coffee. The young man who served us looked vaguely familiar to me. He kept glancing at me, a puzzled smile on his face. I eventually asked him what his name was, cos the jogging going on in my memory wasn't doing very well, I couldn't quite get what it was. He came around the sofa, leaned over and said his name with a smile. Pow it hit me that this was the young French boy I'd sat next to all the way from Heathrow to Auckland when I'd flown out in January. (Okay so he's not actually a boy, but anyone half my age is a boy to me :-) ). We'd chatted a great deal of the 30-odd hour flight - him with his lovely accented English and me with my rather pathetic attempts at speaking French. We exchanged info promising to keep in contact. Neither of us had followed up. Too much going on.
Oh my, how is that? Of all the coffee shops (and in NZ there are MANY) I happened to walk into this one. I'd briefly wondered how he was when his name popped up as I opened my address book at the beginning of the week et voila! here he was in person.
After this we headed out to my other cousin, had lunch while chatting and laughing about the good times we'd had in London when we'd all lived there, before leaving for Hamilton.
