Project Life: Week 24

Welcome back to another week in our lives… this time it’s June 8th to June 14th.

At school this week we had the Go 4 It fitness instructors taking our kids for some ball skills.  They learnt skills for both rugby and netball and it was quite challenging for some of my kids.  There were a few tears and a few of the boys even had mini tantrums and sulks… but in the end they all learnt something and that’s the main thing.

Mike and I tried out some of the new Whittakers Artisan chocolate this week.  The Marlborough Sea Salt and Caramel Brittle gets the big thumbs up from both of us… and while I really like the Kaitaia Fire Chili Pepper Spice Mike thought it was too spicy for him!

I also did more baking this week… another Ginger Treacle Spice Loaf and some chocolate cupcakes.  Before I’d even had a chance to take photographs most of it had been eaten… actually quite a lot of it got taken to Mike’s work to be ‘shared with the boys’ LOL

Here’s a closer look at the start of the week:

It’s been quite stressful at work lately and I have to confess that I was being a bit grumpy at home so I decided to take Mike out for dinner to say ‘thanks for putting up with me’.  We went to Lone Star and had a wonderful meal… my steak was cooked to perfection!

Mike really wanted to try the cheesecake but after having roast pork he just couldn’t manage it so the waitress offered to put the desserts into a takeaway container… problem solved and Mike LOVED the cheesecake!

We also had ‘Support Staff Appreciation Day’ at school this week.  Every teacher was matched up with a Support Staff person to spoil them.  Some of us worked in pairs and others did it on their own.  It was all done anonymously and some of the teachers went all out.  I’m not sure who spoilt Erik and Dan but it was pretty impressive!

Meanwhile out on duty it wasn’t too bad… the weather was cloudy but at least it wasn’t cold!  When the kids have to stay inside for their lunch break it really does make for quite a long day.

This week Shriya had her 9th birthday.  She’s the youngest child in my class and English is not her first language.  She regularly goes to ESOL (English for Speakers of Other Languages) class and this week they made ‘solar system’ cakes.  They gave one of the cakes to Shriya for her birthday and it came complete with planets and moons decorated on it.

Here’s a closer look at the rest of the week:

On Friday night Carey and Chris came for a visit.  We’d organised a cheese platter since we had so much cheese from our trip up North and Carey and Chris brought some crackers, fruit and chocolate… perfect!  We all sat around in the family room with the fire going and had a few drinks and nibbles.  It was the perfect start to the weekend. 

Mike took a great photo from his end of the table but to be honest I still really like my ‘arty’ photo of the cheese!

After cleaning up some more of the backyard, Mike and Toby decided that I really needed a new ‘baking pantry’ because we’re fast running out of space in the kitchen.  They bought a kitset pantry that fitted the cavity in the kitchen perfectly and set to putting it all together.  Of course Toby was of little use since he’s ‘got no thumbs’ but he does like to be involved in everything that’s going on!

On Sunday I really needed some newspapers to make up questions for my news team to practice.  Mike went up to the dairy and came back with four Sunday News newspaper but I really needed the local paper so he kindly went back to get them for me.  What I hadn’t realised was that the Saturday paper is a completely different size to the week day newspaper so it wasn’t much good to me either.  In the end we went down to school since I had some spare newspapers in my class that we could use.

Mike also got busy rotating the tyres on one of the cars.  It didn’t take him all that long really and he was quite pleased to tick it off his ‘to do’ list.

So that was our week… and I’m just that little bit closer to having my album all up to date again.