Happy Halloween 🎃

 Boo!

This is usually one of our favorite holidays. But this year it has been a bit of a challenge to get into the spirit. 

If you have been following the blog, we put in an offer on a house last week, but unfortunately we did not get it. We were outbid. So we have tried to take the news in stride and are hopeful something better will present itself. It is still early in the season here and there are not many houses available at the moment in the area we want to live. We have been with Lance, our gracious host now going on 6 weeks. We will be moving on to stay with another friend next week. And still figuring it out from there. 

Our container arrived! (that was fast). We actually watched the ship from my favorite window as it glided across the water toward the docks. It is one of those reddish brown boxes, hopefully you can’t see it and it is in the middle of the boat where it will get less rocking movement. 

It should clear customs later this week and then it will be placed in secured storage until we have a house to which it can be delivered. 

We celebrated our 27th wedding anniversary. Or at least acknowledged it and are still planning a nice dinner out together soon. We were not quite in the mood after receiving the news on the house.

But we bounced back and had a wonderful Friday night lasagna dinner with friends and spent some time on Saturday at a witches market (Halloween ish craft fair) with some other friends. And since the weather was so nice, we had brunch and walked around Zealandia on Sunday. 

Zealandia is an eco sanctuary. Check out the website!

www.visitzealandia.com

Absolutely love the trails, and listening to all the different birds. 

And for our Dino loving friends(and you know who you are) there are Tuatara. Prehistoric reptile from the time of the dinosaurs!

I even brought out my camera. I have not used it since Yellowstone and found I was quite rusty. Still learning this amazing new camera. Was not happy with the images, I still need to work on the proper settings for this photo activity. It is challenging. But I am determined to figure it out. We bought an annual pass so there is no limit to how often we can go. 

It’s a busy week ahead with Skullduggery art show. Stay tuned…

Oh what a month!

Another morning sunrise captured by Eric. I enjoy seeing them on his phone AFTER I am awake, several hours later.

This vantage point is our favorite from my favorite seat in the house. Even with the rain, the view through this window looks like a painting. Especially with the effect of the water running down the glass pane. 

We have reached the one month mark. Amazing how quickly our first month has gone. We are enjoying ourselves and continue to enjoy catching up with so many friends.

Eric spent a little time helping repair a fence. Our friends Henri & Lance have a herd of cows that they take care of. We visit the cows sometimes on our walks. A section of the fence in one of the pastures had fallen over and the grass and weeds had grown up through it. It was on quite a 

steep part of the hillside. But they managed to get up there and with 

the proper tools and some hard work fixed the fence so the cows would stop getting out. 

We also spent two days in the Wairarapa with friends. This is just a quick 2 hours drive from the city over the Remutaka mountain range which is a narrow and winding road. The first road trip with the new car! It handled great and got great “gas mileage.” (Can you still call it “mileage” if it is measured in kilometers? - ahh I guess that is why it is referred to as “fuel efficiency” here.) The place was absolutely beautiful. And had quite the view from the back deck. Their cat Zero liked to accompany us on our walks.

On our way back we stumbled upon a great burger place in Featherston. Vixen Burger -Highly recommended if you are ever passing through.

We also took a short drive - about 20-30 minutes away to see where a friend has been remotely working on a sword he is making for the Skullduggery art show. The place is also an alpaca farm. The alpacas were very friendly and super soft! 

The house hunt continues… We got our approval to purchase a home from OIO - Overseas Investment office. Because we have not been in NZ for the last year, we need permission to buy a house. Wasn’t too hard, more of a formality - a form, and of course a check$ LoL😁

But we preferred this option to renting for a year and then moving again. 

Of the very few homes on the market right now, there is only one we are interested in. We will be putting in an offer later this week and are crossing our fingers. If we don’t get it, then it wasn’t meant to be and we will just keep looking. It is still early in the housing market season here.

Our “stuff” is currently still on the boat on its way here. Due to arrive on the 30th. We are happy to let it take its sweet time as we do not have anywhere to put it yet. We will be having it held in storage after it clears customs until we have a house to move into. 

We continue to endulge ourselves, eating the foods we missed most. 

One of the things that Eric missed was the regular “sausage sizzle”

commonly found out in front of the local hardware store on the weekends. They are basically fund raisers for local groups. And it is a grilled sausage on white bread topped with your choice of onions, tomatoes sauce (ketchup) and mustard. They are not my favorite, but Eric loves them. 

Week three!

Sunrise… Eric took this photo. I of course was still sound asleep…

Another week seems to have flown by. 

It was filled with more beautiful walks, catching up with more friends, continued with the house hunt, and helped our fabulous host with a kitchen project. 

We also voted in the election here, which felt great. I could go on and on about the politics here. But instead, I will keep it simple. The world is facing many challenges right now. Many of these challenges are the same regardless of which country you live in. I’m not sure what this new parliament will achieve, but we will keep our fingers crossed. The good news is that even the conservative here aren’t all “that” conservative. 

As for the project, Lance’s pantry had a very old non-functioning freezer tucked into the back of it. 

To remove it, almost all the contents of the pantry had to be pulled out, the doorway to the pantry had to be partially dismantled and the refrigerator had to be slid out of the way.

We also had to get the dead freezer out the back door and down some steps to the side of the house, soon it’ll be moved to the dump (commonly referred to here as “the tip”) 

Projects like this are always better with help!

Speaking of helping friends. Eric and I have volunteered to help with the annual Halloween art show -Skullduggery at a local gallery here. 

Many of our artist friends will be displaying their work. 

Really looking forward to it!

https://www.whitecloudworlds.com/skullduggery

The weather has been an expected mix of wet and windy and beautiful. 

Loving the walks on the nice days!

Week Two!

Wow- the time seems to be rolling right along. In some ways it feels like it flew by and in other ways it was a nice slow week of rest, mixed with a bit of productivity. 

We found a storage facility to unload all our stuff into when the container arrives. We had hoped the boat ride from Seattle to Wellington would take a bit longer, but alas, they tell us it is due to arrive the end of Oct!

We are actively house hunting but have not yet found the right place. 

It is still a little early in the season and “they say” it is expected to pick up after the October elections here. 🤞🏻

Meanwhile we learned that the international moving company we hired was purchased(obtained) by another company a week after the container was packed and driven away!

The people we had contact with are no longer with the new company and the URL I was given for tracking the container no longer works. - Gotta love it!

At least the phone number got forwarded to the new company. It only took a phone call, two voice mail messages and a second phone call to finally get someone to help us. 

We are now mostly back on track except for some missing/unfinished paper work that we are now sorting out. 

It is an adventure…

Accompanied with more paper work. 

The rest of the week was restful. Took several walks, 

Love it when the clouds cast shadows on the water.

A stroll at a friend farm.

Read the new Percy Jackson book- fun. And watched all of Ahsoka. 

                                                                  This is my favorite reading seat

Visited with more friends and enjoyed being here. 

AND had another meat pie! Mince (what they call ground beef) & Cheese -Yum