2009 News.

Hi, everyone! Despite the good intentions I seem to have got around to the 22nd December without any interim posts to keep friends informed of what we've been up to. Having said that maybe once a year is enough. What's really scary is how fast the year has gone and that will not be an unfamiliar feeling to any of you. Once again I'll keep the news in a mostly pictorial format because the reality is that in a nutshell we're all one year older and look a bit different and have done some stuff this year!!


The year began with a holiday up at Totaranui in the Abel Tasman national park. The camp site is fairly remote with no hot water but solar shower bags work fine. We went with friends Mark and Jo and their two daughters Maddy and Neve. Mark has a boat and knows what he's doing when it comes to catching fish and diving for crayfish.The dolphins also put on a free show.

At Easter we had a great road trip across to the West Coast then down past the glaciers and through to Wanaka and Queenstown.

The usual sports activities have been on the go this year with Orienteering, Football, Skiing, Mountain Biking and Cricket.

Chris has really got into his cricket this season and made it into one of the Canterbury teams for the Spring tournament.

Scruffy is still the most laid back member of the family. He's a lovely dog despite his "issues"!! He seems to be scared of everything.

That's a big string of photos without much text. If I'm honest the blog format is better for more text with less photos. At least the photos give an idea of what fun activities we've been up to this year.

Both Chris and Lucy love their sports and on top of those shown above Lucy has been doing some roller hockey and athletics and Chris has played softball, Aussie rules and also done athletics.

Chris has just finished his first year (of two) at intermediate school. He's had a good year and seems to have realised that the academic work is more important than the sport. He won an award for multemedia studies. It will be the big step up to high school next year.

Lucy has just finished year 3 at primay school, she's enjoying it and was given the citizenship medal for her class at the end of the year.

Work has been more of the same for me, programming in Java on an interesting project in the avaiation industry that has just had a patent raised on it. Hopefully that will bring some overseas sales for the company.

Dee is on great form as ever, still enjoying her cycling and trying to be (and succeeding at being) the perfect mother. She has recently started working part time in early childhood education centres. She is really enjoying that. Somehow she still manages to put up with me!

I think the above photos and words should give a reasonable idea of what another year in New Zealand has been like for us. All that reamins is to wish you a very good Christmas and a Happy New Year.

Pete, Dee, Chris and Lucy.

xxx