Merry Christmas!!

It definitely doesn't feel like Christmas, but that isn't stopping Bernie from baking mince pies - to her Mother's recipe of course!

Temperatures have been in the mid twenties for some time now and thoughts of stockings by the fire seem a bizarre activity to pursue despite Christmas cards here depicting the traditional images befitting a northern hemisphere celebration!

Bernie, as you can see, is doing remarkably well, and is showing remarkably well too! Young Whitaker keeps bouncing around, much to his/her mother's delight as can be seen below (recipe in hand Liz!):


Bernie isn't knocking out as many as Liz and Georgie (her Mother and Aunt respectively) do each year, but she is working single handed due to me going for a blast on my road bike with mates instead of slaving away in the kitchen - horses for courses right?!

Tomorrow is the first endurance swim - a 2km swim from the beach towards the top left of the next picture, to the point from which the picture is being taken. In Feb there is a swim from the same beach, around the island to the right and all the way back to the far beach - 3.8km!

The garden is churning out more spinach, lettuce and Pak Choi than we can consume. Beetroot has been pickled, peas, tomatoes, rhubarb, broccoli, cauliflower etc etc all coming through too in various waves... I've still got a long way to go to match the steady stream my father produces, but I'm getting there slowly!

Poor old Bobby had a freak accident - so freaky nobody knows what happened! He ended up with a couple of dozen stitches and an inevitable scar - we think he wants to shake off the reputation his boyish good looks has earned him in the neighbourhood!

Just to add insult to injury, he has had 4 days recuperating inside and was taken for a check-up today, only to be rewarded with a lampshade to impede his ability to move around... the hyperactive behaviour has been replaced by an inability to move more than 6 inches without getting caught on a piece of furniture!:

You can tell that Bobby-Dazzler (as uncle Mike calls him!) is having a great run-up to Christmas!

We have 3 days of lessons next week, followed by a prize giving morning, followed by a drunken golf session, followed by a drunken leaving speeches / BBQ day.... then school's out for seven weeks of summer!!

As if we aren't enjoying enough sun, sea and summer fun, we're off to Sydney in two weeks time - we fly from Christchurch so it will be interesting to see the destruction down there first... we are staying with the friend who seems to be the only person who was unaffected by any of the quakes... which are still occuring!

Love and festive cheers to all family and friends - we hope that you have an awesome Christmas... we'll try to remember to update this from Sydney but if not have a great time! We're both sorry to be so far away from most of you... you'll all just have to make sure you come and visit soon!

Love from Chris Bernie (and bump) and Bobby-Dazzler X X x X

ITS A....

...Baby!!!


We decided not to find out its sex - a last minute call, but we both imagined we would find out during birth. All looks ship-shape and we were blown away by the clarity of the images - bones, bladder, brains and bum clearly visible!

It wasn't quite as mobile as we expected - it has been moving around a lot for the past few weeks - it made it easier to see it though!

Our friends agree that it has Bernie's facial structure


Bernie is coping really well still - she positively glows these days! School is almost out for summer - exams and marking almost over and a fancy-dress Xmas party tomorrow - my friends and I have borrowed a massive slushy machine to make iced cocktails with... B has enjoyed a few small glasses of Nelson's finest wines over the past few weeks so I am drinking for two... or is that three?!

It looks like I still have a full-time job next year - teaching maths and PE in order to bump up my hours which will give me a bit of variety... we have our weekly sea swim race tonight - over 140 people took part in the first race last week. The sea is already warm enough not to wear a wetsuit, but they give you extra bouyancy and speed so most of us wear one. See if you can spot a Whitaker:

Two Whitaker's here:

Not a bad way to spend a Thursday evening is it?!

This will be us in just over an hour's time:

All is Super!

Bernie is still doing really well - we both felt the baby moving around heaps again last night - its reassuring to see so much action - hopefully he/she is growing fine inside!

The seniors finished the last of their lessons at school today, so its 4 weeks with a reduced timetable and planning for next year... cruise time!


The weather has been ace for some time here - so we can eat outside most evenings - like tonight, watching the pair of Kingfishers feed each other and go hunting as we tuck into our roast chicken! As a result of the good spring, the bees were doing so well before my friend brought them over to me that I had to add a second super (a box for honey to go into) this evening.


Fortunately the bees were much more docile than the day they arrived! I was a bit nervous - going solo for the first time:



The bees just sat there and I jiggled boxes - even pausing for a cheesy grin to the photographer... not that you can see:

Does my bum look big in this bee suit?!

Work done for the day, Bernie and I are enjoying a fine Nelson Chardonnay (B is only having half a glass!) and some home baking. I wish you were all here to share it all with us!

Best wishes,

C&B x x

Oh Bee-have!

I took receipt of my first bee hive just after my last blog post. My friend arrived after dark and we got suited up for the job. Unfortunately my friend didn't tell me that she had blocked the entrance to the hive with a rag and upon pulling the hive out of the car, I pulled away what I thought was snagging the hive and was immediately filled with horror as hundreds of bees swarmed out of the entrance and all over me! My friend forced the rag back in - killing several bees - further aggravating them in the process before we made a hurried attempt to carry the hive down to our house. This would only be relatively painful - we were being stung through our suits and both had a few bees inside our suits - but our house is down a flight of stairs and it was pitch black and we had to walk down our dark garden which also has several steps... It took a few painful minutes and we needed a mid-way stop to wipe the large number of bees of us both, but we succeeded in having a quite immense adrenalin rush, which gave me genuine flash-backs to my 3 bungy jumps in Queenstown nearly 10 years ago!

Fortunately the stings are much less painful than I remember from being stung at Grandpa Whitaker's over 20 years ago. Two days on and some of them are itchy, but fortunately I'm not allergic! They have settled down a lot and I can walk all around them now without a suit or smoke - it will be a few more days until I go in for an inspection though!

I have got back from work the past 2 days and sat and watched them take off and land for some time - quite mesmerising! We can watch them from inside the house or the balcony and fortunately Bobby being White, the bees leave him alone! Not a bad set-up is it?!:

I have another box of supers to put on top next week - to be filled with delicious honey. The hive has come in time to get quite a harvest this summer - just in time for our parents to enjoy this April!



Bernie is still doing really well, despite getting frustrated with the occasional boughts of tiredness. She is out learning how to make various cheeses this evening so its hardly slowing her down! We were both thrilled to feel the baby kicking / moving last night. I thought it was last night's Pad Thai playing havoc, but put my hand on her belly and quickly felt several clear movements inside! We listened to the heart beat too when the mid-wife visited us this afternoon - we are desperate for the scan on Nov 25th!

Love to you all,
C&B x x

From Triathlon to the garden!

I returned from the UK a month ago (feels much longer though!) to find my Beautiful Bernie and a definite bump! Two days later we went for the 12 week scan (which I cant upload onto this for some reason) which was awesome - he/she moved around heaps and looks to be developing fine. Bernie is doing really well now at 16.5 weeks - ocassional boughts of tiredness but other than that I still get 8 hours of labouring out of her... joking - it is damn hard to get her to sit / lay down for a while! We go for the 19 week scan in just over 2 weeks and have the tricky decision whether or not to find out the sex... I'm tempted for us to find out, but not tell anybody else... we'll see!

Meeting up with so many friends and family in the UK was awesome and I wish B could have been there. Socialising helped ween me off the training schedule and back into serious drinking and not-so-serious conversation making - something I'd cut back drastically on before!

Bernie and I had an awesome trip to the Marlborough Sounds (see old pics - I cant be bothered to upload too many pictures tonight!) and had a bath outside each night after eating mussels and fish caught out in the bay. Bobby had a wild weekend with a dog called Earl - they ran around the land for 3 days straight - we fished with Earl's owners out at sea and watched a very white and a very black dog chase each other, play tug-of-war with sticks and chase each other again - they definitely had the better time, although we were a very close second!

School is winding up to final exams and B and I are both busy. Fortunately the seniors leave next week and after a few awards ceremonies, things quieten down. I'm looking for a new job as we have a falling intake and I was the last recruit... a few irons in the fire... we'll see.

Since B is still cooking and reading for a change (Go The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo!) it would be quite rude of me to bugger off training 20 hours a week so I have not got back into the 5:30am starts and lycra obsession, but have focussed my OCD towards making our garden churn out enough food to feed a small Pacific nation! We had previously made the front lawn a native bush area, but I returned from the UK to find more grass than native ever-greens! The 4 chooks are still doing great and churn out 2-4 eggs a day - depending on their mood:


The bottom of the garden used to have flowering cheery and plum trees, but the flowers / fruit were not up to much, so I borrowed a pruning saw and used it and my trusty axe, to anihilate anything over ancle height, before beginning our modest orchard, which now boasts a fig, orange, (a proper) cherry, orange, clementine, lemon and olive tree. I also have 3 plums trees propagating at the horticulture yard at school yet to go in. Our orchard is very modest - but trees grow like America's national debt and I'm sure we'll have fruit this summer... hopefully!



Friends of ours have handed on their trusty bantams which were bought to be cute and have names. I intend to buy fertile eggs and use them as an eating-chicken production line and for the record, I think they look stupid! There is a third, but it flew out of the chicken coop straight away, despite the fact we had clipped its wings... she might pass away a little sooner than God intended!

Here's Bobby - waiting to be thrown soemthing as usual! You can also see my veggie garden - 95% of which was a lawn when we moved in. We currently have spinach, silver beet, broccoli, cabbages, cauliflower, beetroot, peas, potatoes, celeriac, cucumber, courgette, melon, parsley, carrots, pak choi, rhubarb, tomatoes, basil, celery, peppers and artichokes growing in there... much more sensible than plain old grass... not sure where our nipper/s will ride their bikes though... there is a park 50m away fortunately!

In the foreground is the far end of the veggie garden (with respect to the previous picture) with the bizzarely located washing line... a thieving sun interceptor! In the middle of the picture is a gravel bed on which my bee hive will be located in about 2 hours time! First I have to carry the hive down 40+ stairs, but I'm very excited to become a proper Apiarist! In the background is the Bay Tree screen which I pray will stop the bees from annoying our neighbours!

This is the view from our verandah - the orchard (yes, I know its very small!) is behind the light green bushes - which are Feijoa trees produce heaps of bizarre fruit which have become very addictive - ever tried a Feijoa?!

We also have a passion fruit and two different grape vines as well as guava and a variety of pip fruit vines... our bees shouldn't have to travel too far to get a good feed! A new Beekeeping club has just begun in Nelson so I have been hanging out with lots of senior men who want to go to great lengths to explain their favoured methods and set-ups. Fortunately I have an ex-teacher friend here who is flogging me one of her 9 hives (she wants to down-size) and is happy to mentor me which is of great comfort as she doesn't mince ehr words. I have been reading up on bees, but am itching to get stuck in and learn the ropes on the job.

Bernie is in the kitchen making an apple tart as she simultaneously prepares our steak dinner. She sends her best wishes to all family and friends who might be reading this. We have been buying bits and bobs for the baby - I need to focuss on painting and DIY-ing soon... not as relaxing as gardening, but having a baby on its way will motivate my ass into gear!

I'm going to clock out now. Love and best wishes to all of you from sunny Nelson... I forgot to write about my recent school trip when I got to swim with dolphins... twice... I'm sure I dont need to elabourate much further than that!

Love from Bernie, Bump and Chris! x x x

Towards the end of the Heaphy 5-day Tramp (hike!)

Pictures are taking a lifetime to upload on this computer and I do them in reverse order, so here's the end of our recent tramp through the Northwest corner of NZ's South Island.

After 3.5 days walking through native bush and over some pretty sizeable mountains, we arrived at the sea on the booming West Coast.


We dropped our gear off at the hut and enjoyed the sun-set in paradise:

We had the beach, sun and sea to ourselves!

This was the Heaphy Hut, over-looking the sea and on the site of one of the earliest Maori settlements in the country.

Chris walking into the sun - too cold for a dip!

Nikau palms predominated along the gold sandy beaches. The weather was very fresh, but the sun, sea and palms made it feel very tropical!

Bernie having a well earned rest

Later that day we crossed the final swing-bridge and finished our 90km+ tramp... we later returned to the river to plunder enough rocks to re-landscape Nelson (a hobby of Bernie's!)

Taking in the beautiful river below:

The finishing line! Now who brought a beer?!

Duathlons

In the Autumn months we still keep busy. Duathlons replace triathlons and we ignore the frigid waters for mountain bike duties. Today saw the final race on Rabbit Island (the finger of land projecting from top left)- below - just outside Nelson

I still managed to swim in the water a couple of weeks ago, but the locals are soft, and triathlons only begin again in November. To be fair, snow is already falling in the mountains around Nelson:

But the weather is mostly cool and calm, but we still get heaps of sun and the seas are calm.

Apart from that, life is pretty chilled. We walk the dog for hours and hours, we live, laugh and play, and we miss our chums in the UK!

Love and best wishes,

C&B! x x