Kia Ora!

Well all that gloating about going to the beach and getting sunburn has come back to haunt me, as this week it has turned absolutely freezing! Almost as soon as the clocks went back, we have gone from lovely sunshine to cold winds, rain, rain and more rain and a drop of about 15 degrees! Mark is so cold leaving the house at 6.00 am in the dark and driving to work in the van, and it isn’t much fun going to work in the rain on the bus either. Apparently this is a normal change to Autumn for New Zealand, you just get a cold snap as the wind direction changes and comes from Antarctica instead of Australia.

So its bye-bye bikini and hello bobble hats! We have been wrapped up in the house this weekend planning a skiing trip back down to Queenstown in the South Island. We are hoping to pick up a cheap flight rather than drive down in the van, the ski season starts in May/June so that is something to look forward to.

On Saturday night my new work gave us some free VIP rugby tickets along with a meal and ‘all you can drink’ pass to the sponsors lounge, so we had a great time getting bottle after bottle of wine from the bar! The match was a bit slow but the atmosphere made up for it. It was a rather interesting meal – cheese soup, cheese burgers and cheese cake followed by cheese and biscuits (no joke) so we were all cheesed out by the time we went home! A few people from my company were there and one guy from London, so we were chatting away all night. It was a really nice event actually, and my boss has said that they happen quite often, so we might get to go again.

Ashley and Martin (company I work for) do a lot of sponsoring for the Auckland Blues rugby team, and they do loads of advertising at matches and things, and one of my responsibilities at work is to go to the promotional nights at the club (Sounds more exciting than it is) I give out flyers and stand next to an Ashley and Martin sign with a big smile for 2 hours, it beats sitting in the office I suppose! I am enjoying the job, it is really hard work learning all the procedures and things, but I am getting the hang of head massage and steam treatments now, so next time we come over to England I might treat you to one!

Mark is still working in Henderson for Salthouse. It is very hard work and he comes home pretty exhausted, but we are just getting our heads down for the next year or so, and then seeing what we want to do then. The house market still hasn’t balanced out yet, and we don’t want to risk losing a lot of money, so staying in the flat seems a good idea at the moment.

Not much going on really, our new freezer has just broken (L) so we are having to eat everything in there …mmm icecream…until they come and fix it, but that’s about as exciting as it gets on a Monday afternoon!

Hope you are all well, let me know what you have been up to

Lots of love from us

xoxo