Farm House

Today Nan and I went up to the farm to see if we could find some timber to fix the bottom of the dog kennel as it has some holes in it.  I haven't been to the farm in ages and it really was sad seeing the farm in the state that it is in now.  The house burnt down a few years back so now that's left is the barn and the little batch thing that Nan and Papa use to live in when we were younger. 

It would be awesome to go back and build up there or even just to get someone to go there and tidy it up because it's a HUGE mess.  I think all of us cousins need to make a plan to get it all going so that we as a family have somewhere to go to when we all come home. 

I LOVED living up at the farm and loved going down to the creek with my cousins, eating Totara berries off the tree, blackberries and figs.  Amazing memories of living there at the farm.  Now to try to convince my cousins to all get together to clean it all up and build some sort of house there.  Marae styles.

Bread Making

Nan decided she wanted some bread soo quickly whipped it all together it's pretty quick and easy. Warm water, milk, sugar and yeast in a jug. Flour and salt in a bowl and that's pretty much it. Leave the yeast mix to froth and foam up make a well in the middle of the flour pour the yeast mixture in use your hands to mix it all up then knead your bread leave to rise until double in size flatten out and cook away! Soo good!

Grandma's Garden

Both sets of my grandparents live here in the rural far north which is really awesome as even though I don't visit Grandpa and Nana Lesley much it's still nice that they live close by and when Nan and I do go there we always spend hours there talking about anything and everything which is nice.

Today we went there to drop off some money for Nana Lesley to get some more pig food for our pig and I decided to get some photos of their amazing garden and also of our MASSIVE pig.  We will be killing that baby in January!  Perks of living here everything pretty much is given to us!  We are so lucky. That our pig there in the first picture on the left hand side.  I made sure to tell Nana Lesley that that was our pig and no one better come take it.  Lol.

Thorwback Thursday

When your cousin visits with a HUGE bag of photos so you sort through them to see if there are any of you as a kid!  Lo and behold there are a few even one of when I broke my arm.  Crazy story that one. I decided I wanted to jump up and down on the bed to look at my sister in the cot, nek minit I ended up jumping right off the bed and breaking my arm in 4 places. Crazy kid.

I LOVED growing up so close with all of my cousins.  Aunty Sharron would take photos ALL the time when we were kids and we had so much fun together hanging out. Writing letters to Santa. Christmas up at the farm. We really did spent a lot of time together growing up it's why I wish we all lived closer now so that all of the cousins kids can hang out and spend time together.

Can you tell which one I am in any of the photos? lol 

Family

Living in NZ when the rest of your immediate family are living in Australia you miss out on a lot especially when it comes to my nieces and nephew. I'm lucky though for technology where I can still see photos of my family and also still call them if and when I need too.

I am LOVING living here more and more and it makes me want to never move anywhere ever again but then it makes me realise I miss my family as well... I think they should all just hurry up and move back to NZ!!

We need to build a place up at the farm for when we all decide to move back and live there.  In the mean time I can stalk FB and see photos of my super cute nieces and nephew.

Jaime

I have never ever seen my cousin as the girl who has down syndrome. She is just like you and I but what I LOVE about her is that she always (for the most part see's the best in life.  She had soo much fun with the puppies and she especially LOVED Marley (who she named BTW).  She loved to help me feed them and really loved being able to cuddle them and just spend time with the puppies.

A funny story though, she loves Marley more than she does Sox because while we sat playing cards J was outside with the puppies cuddling Marley and blocking Sox from getting into the cuddle as well then I could hear her outside telling Sox off for trying to interrupt Jaime and Marley bonding time.

I love my cousin and it's always so much fun spending time together, even if she thinks we are mean for not letting her play Samba with us :)

NZ Secret Santa

Today was another day spent playing cards.  Aunty and I also took a little road trip to the supermarket and grabbed more wine as we were out!  Saw another Aunty while I was in town so reallly nice to see her and I always remembered that I needed to get my  and also managed to pick up my NZSecretSanta gift!

I have participated in NZSS which in the beginning was run by a guy named Sam but now it's run by NZ Post and it's still awesome.  You participate via twitter and get given a random person to gift.  I had a lot of trouble trying to think of what to get for my NZSS person as they did not put any hints on what they wanted and the only things they seemed to tweet about was my only clue on what to get for them.  In the end i picked up a couple things that were related to their interest and a block of chocolate. Not easy at all but it was fun to be challenged and try to figure out what it is they would or could want.

Here is hoping that they like their gift!

Samba

My family have ALWAYS been huge fans of games.  Card games and board games in particular mostly though it's card games that we LOVE to play.

Last night my cousin and my Aunty arrived late to spend the weekend with us which I love because my Aunty loves to sit and play cards for hours on end until all of hours of the morning and tonight wasn't any different.

We ate junk food, drank lots of wine, ate way too much food and spent the day playing Samba.  I got thrashed and ended up posting to FB to tell my other family members we needed another team mate. Playing solo isn't as good as playing in a team as it's a lot harder to try and get the cards you need but it's still a lot of fun.  My cards sucked and I kept on picking up the pack in the hopes it would help me but not once did it help me at all.

I can not wait for the next time when we are all together to play cards... I actually think my Aunty is going to be here early next year for a week!  Woop!  Can't wait!

Who else plays cards or board games with their family?