Lake Brunner Primary School. I've been going here once a week, working with a group of four eight year olds, as part of an understudy with a woman who runs a program called Leading Edge. Schools contract her to come in and work with challenging students using Neuro-Lingustic Programming (NLP). Some of you have probably heard about it before- basically understanding how we have control of our brain and therefore can choose to succeed, conquer our fears, change our thinking patters etc.

The playground of the school. It's such a beautiful spot! We have our sessions in the library with a great big window overlooking the lake- so nice.

I took the dogs with me this time and stopped for them to play on the way home. This black swan decided it was best to observe us from a distance rather than on land.

Looking across the lake at Moana- the town where we school is. It takes me an hour to get there driving on back roads from home. From Greymouth, the bigger of the two towns we live near, it's a half hour drive. Moana has become the trendy, quasi-yuppy place to live and commute into town. There are a lot of holiday homes too for Christchurch people during the summer. I stayed a night in Moana almost four years ago on my wee bike tour. Mom and Dad do you remember visiting Moana? We ate lunch on a cafe deck overlooking the lake.

Inside our house

I feel a bit funny posting the pictures of the inside of our house but I really like it and am bit sad that my friends and family can't just pop over and visit. So you can visit- virtually- how moderno-cool! The floors really are tilting which makes it difficult to take a picture that doesn't look wonky.

You can see from the picture at the top the angle the floor is slanting. The house is about a hundred years old and while the floors are still solid there is not basement or foundation. The house is built on piles- very common around here (basements are nonexistent), which have been slowly sinking into the earth for the last century. Luckily it's not rotting, so as long as we don't mind the sliding downhill in our slippers to the loo, it's all good. We're holding back from doing too many fixer-up make an old house new projects as we still want to build a house on our land in the next few years.

Rimu's learning how to play fetch. He gets frustrated when Kaiya has the ball too much- he's savouring this moment with the ball and no one's gonna get it, for a few minutes at least.

I wish the redeye fixer worked for their crazy eyes- wierds me out if I look to long!

Round Home

Rimu climbed in there and then chilled out for the better part of the afternoon.

Spring is in the air- some days at least! These flowers are from our garden- does anyone know what they are? We moved into our house during the winter and it's been so exciting seeing the treasures coming to life.

Bundled up to go outside- the hat and two hoodes were very necessary!

Rimu basking in the little spot of sun after a week of rain.