Boating with Nan & Pop in Bay of Islands

We had a fantastic three days (two nights) boating with Nan & Pop (Murray's parents) on their boat in the Bay of Islands. It's normally chartered most of summer but we managed to squeeze a few days in.

This was Tyler's first overnight on the boat and he settled in really well. Actually, the boat was in Whangaroa Harbour to be exact, which is a little further North than the actual Bay of Islands where it is kept. The harbour is surrounded by high cliffs and left over cores of volcanoes and makes for spectacular (and sheltered) boating. We didn't actually do much sailing due to the high winds, but did some exploring up some rivers in the dinghy, some fishing, and swimming around the boat. We can't wait for more!

July 2009

Housewarming, more Ted and Tyler cuteness and settling into the house. We didn't take many photos of the housewarming, but the house looked fabulous and we did manage to capture a pic of the food before it got demolished. The photo of the trees is our view from the living room window.

May 2009

We got a bit smug in May about how wonderfully the weather was behaving. So we took lots of photos of sunny, warm walks. We knew it wouldn't last, and were dreading heading into another winter, so we tried to make the most of it. Ty had been scared of the waves when we left New Zealand, but he showed no such hesitation upon our return!

April 2009

By April, the excitement of the new job for Murray and new playground for Tyler and I had worn off, and we decided to buy a house. As you do.

We also bought a house that looked like it had carpet on the walls. The resemblance of the wallpaper to our carpet was too much, so we stripped it and painted it before we moved in.

In typical Durbin fashion, we fashioned a one-week settlement so we had possession of the house exactly a week from when we made an offer. Which was a good thing, since we had all of Murray's brother's camping gear to move in.

There are some really great things about the house:

• it is about a 3 to 5-minute walk from a really nice primary school
• it is about a 2-minute walk to a cute little park, and another 15-minutes to a really big park
• there are bush walks
• we back onto bush reserve, which cuts down the number of neighbours we have considerably
• it has a playroom for Tyler, an double garage for Murray and walk-in wardrobe and office/craft room for me (unfortunately the kitchen, which is where I spend most of my life, is nothing to wax poetic about)
  
• we're close to a good number of amenities (a nice change from our last house in NZ)
• It is really convenient to the motorway for Murray to go to (and come home from!) work.
  

March 2009

We lived with Murray's parents when we moved back to NZ. Murray started a new job, and Tyler and I got back to work as usual.

We lived with Murray's parents when we moved back. Murray went back to work, as did Tyler and I.

Back-posting

It seems I've been a bit remiss about posting updates of our move. We're finally starting to feel like we're regaining a bit of a normal pace to life. As many of you know, however, this means that we are undertaking approximately 5 million house projects. However, we still don't have as many daylight hours as we might like, so now Murray and I are cosied up at the kitchen table with his and hers laptops (the couple that 'putes together...uh...yeah, we're geeks) while our little bundle of energy has finally fallen asleep. Anyway, I've decided to undertake back-publishing all of my half completed blog posts about our move back to NZ. As I shortly must crawl into bed so as to be fit and ready for another day of toddler wrangling, I'll be using lots of pictures and few words. Amen.