Starting Out

It's time for a new chapter in our lives, and so this blog was born as a way to keep all those who are interested up to date with what we're doing. I'm hoping I will get the kids to contribute some posts too.

We were happily living in Austin, Texas until the beginning of January when we were told that Phillip's company no longer had the money to pay him and so he had no job, and hence no visa, and we therefore had 2 weeks to leave the country. This cued a mad rush of sorting and packing and figuring out how we were going to manage everything that needed to be done.

We did it though, and got out and the house is now up for sale, and we're settling in here in New Zealand.

We got here at 6.30am on Sunday morning, first stop was McDonalds for breakfast which had us laughing - travel halfway across the world just to go to McDonalds.

But then we got down to Kaiaua and the beach. Swimming has featured somewhere each day since - the togs barely get time to dry. Kathryn especially loves the water, Matthew not so much. The temperature has us melting (the breezes are nice) - it may be cooler than Austin, but I think the humidity is higher, and there's no air con. The sun is stronger too - we've all managed to get pink tinges despite hats and sunblock and stuff.

{pretend there is a picture of fish and chips here - I forgot to take one - I'll try and remember (before they are eaten) next time}

Fish and Chips (with Pineapple Rings) earned the thumbs up, as did all the flavours of ice cream (although we haven't tried them all yet), and chocolate fish. L&P had a lukewarm reception, and black forest chocolate is apparently all mine - not that I mind at all :)

Kathryn has helped Grandad hang washing out on the line, and Grandma pick vegetables, Matthew has just had his nose in a book most of the time - he was interested in the strawberry plants though.

In the first week we have applied for citizenship for the kids, discovered we didn't need to apply to change a foreign drivers license to a NZ one - we just needed to renew our old NZ ones, opened a bank account, found a doctor, found our IRD numbers, and enrolled the kids in school (which starts for the year next week).

This weekend is a big fishing contest here in Kaiaua, so we're expecting a bit of traffic (this is all relative of course, a bit of traffic here is slightly different to a bit of traffic in Austin). And we get to visit some old friends.