Choices….

Well as predicted by a lot of people, the spring has turned into a wet one. After such a dry winter it had to happen. Even the kids sports day had to be cancelled because of the constant rain. We are on a water tank, the weather means the level of that has remained pretty consistent, so there is a plus side 🙂 . For those of you unfamiliar with this method of providing household water, we catch rain off our roof and drain it into a tank, then pump it into the house, there is no other source of water for us, so rainfall pretty important. We aim to do the same thing for all our buildings, catch water from them, even the chook ,(chicken), house to help with the watering of everything. We also have a septic tank which means we have to be extra careful of what goes down there as it drains onto the land in front of our house and waters all the plants there, (after it has gone through the filtration system of course 🙂 ). The photo above is one of our many native trees ,(Kowhai), that are flourishing in this set up.

In between our rainy days we have had some lovely ones, beach days are still happening…

After days like this, Pica takes a good two to recover….

I recently caught up with my family, lovely to see my nieces, they are growing so fast!

I came home to another member in our house, a mouse! Pretty sure Vida brought home this gift. Luca was not in favor at the thought of a usual mouse trap, (this is a major understatement of what was said when I brought one!!!!), so made his own…

Good idea and we gave it a go, but after Pica ate the toilet roll, (she can never resist peanut butter!!), we decided to go with another humane trap ,(store brought this time 🙂 ), so far no luck, but also no sign of the mouse, (ie droppings) , maybe it has gone its own way…

Rich and I are constantly looking at secondhand stores and trademe, (the online second hand like kujiji), for things we need now and in the future. We have a plan of what we are heading towards and recently found our front door for $405! Of course it will not go in for a while, but these don’t come along often so grabbed it. Solid rimu ,(NZ native tree) , with stained glass, could not afford this new, so feeling very fortunate!!

Things are coming along nicely with the vege garden and chook house, will have more photos of those in next post. We are using recycled materials , with minimal buying of new for all we do, but wanting to keep the standard high, so it is a constant balancing act. I recently bought a lawnmower on trademe and it so far seems to be working great, between that and the weed whacker, (also one I found on trademe), the section is really taking shape. Unfortunately it seems I must have hit some vegetation that did not like me..

Means a couple of days off work as not a good look for patients to see this on their nurse! Also means I will cover up in the future when weed whacking !

Pica also obviously found something out there that disagreed with her and had the most explosive diarrhea ever! It has passed in 24 hours thankfully, so she must have learnt her lesson, poor girl, she was feeling very sorry for herself there for a while…

Speaking of Pica, we have found that she and Luca are taking up the bed more and more. The need for more space at nights became obvious ..

found this bed at the Salvation Army op shop for $20, and it is working a treat, of course we play musical beds, but start the nights out like this…

Luca is into his last term for the year and it is an exciting one, lots of cool things happening. I am on the PTA, helping to set up Artist in Residence week, (more about this later), Rich is helping with sailing again and swimming has started for the term. There is a public heated indoor pool right next to the school that the kindergarten, daycare and school all use. Learning to swim is part of the school national curriculum, so a weekly thing for 2 of the 4 ,(10 week) terms.

Speaking of learning…at first Rich and I were somewhat annoyed by Luca’s outrage at our idea of how to get rid of the mouse and were going to force the issue. He was fine with the idea of Vida catching and eating it, as “it is the circle of life”, but us killing it for no purpose other than remove it from the house he was adamantly against and told us this in no uncertain terms.

Then we realized he had a point. We have spent his whole life teaching him certain values and cannot change it up when it does not suit us, we were the ones who were wrong.

This came up on my FB feed a while back, quite fitting 🙂 …