Winter projects

The wintery weather has encouraged indoor activities. Aaron has been busy in the garage building various wooden items for the house. I have been doing a quilt course over the last few weekends at one of the local sewing shops. I was going to just give it a go - but a friend of mine who has won many competitions with her quilts suggested that I start by going on a course as there are a lot of tips and tricks that make it a lot easier.

Here is the front and back of my first quilt. I am quite pleased that it turned out almost square and almost the right size.... I am not ready to make a simple one without help.

The front - rather bright and colourful.

The back is a little more subdued and you can see the
diagonal quilting lines - almost straight :)

One of Aaron's projects has been to make storages boxes for under the bed. He had a bunch of plywood left over from a project that didn't work out so came up with the boxes as a way to use up the wood. Our bed room is quite small so anything that provides more storage is good.

Boxes under the bed

Box with the lid closed

And with the lid open

And the side table. This started out as a $30 table with metal legs I bought off Trade Me. I removed the legs and cut the top into two pieces. The larger piece became the top of my side table and the smaller piece the shelf at the bottom. I had to buy the wood for the legs but everything else came from the original table.

Winter storm

Wellington has been hit with one of the worst storms in several decades. Overnight we had gusts of wind up to 200 km/h (125 mph). The airport is closed, the ferries aren't running (15m swells in Cook Strait), the trains aren't running into Wellington from the Hutt Valley and many buses aren't running.

Lots of houses are without power. We could look out the window this morning while it was still dark and see several suburbs without lights on.

We weathered the storm pretty well. The only damage was to a trellis that gives a bit of privacy on the south side of the house.

The trellis used to extend across the window

But this is where it is now

We heard lots of crashes and bangs in the night. Some of them would have been these trees on the Council land just next to our house. I am not too sad as they had grown a bit too tall and were blocking the sun in our back garden. They did however provide some privacy from the path.

Snapped at ground level

Our fence on the right

New floor beginnings

The time has finally come to finish the back half of the house. Heaps of work has gone into planning and preparing for the new floor. Lots of measuring, removing of carpet and trim from the rooms that are going to get the new floor and of course spending of money.

30 boxes of bamboo getting used to thier new home

The floorboards need a few days to get used to their new home so they are sitting in the spare room until they are ready to go down.

The hallway before

The trim around the doorways in the hallway has taken quite a beating of the years so it is getting a fresh coat of paint. All the rooms will get new trim around the bottom as the floor will be quite a bit higher and it will match the front half of the house.

The study nearly ready

The study needs a bit of paint in a few places as well.

Right now I think I'll start in the hallway, then do the study next. Then the bedroom, spare room, laundry and finally if I have enough leftover I'll do the hall closet. I will be making a few more small cosmetic changes that Helen probably won't notice, but they will make me happy.

Japan

It is a long flight directly back from the UK to New Zealand and you always have to stop on the way to refuel. So we decided to take the opportunity to check out Tokyo for a couple of days. Aaron had studied Japanese (briefly) in highschool and can count to 10, but otherwise we were relying on pointing and a few English signs (not quite as many as we had hoped).

We managed to negotiate the subway and navigate our way to the hotel, even in a relatively sleep deprived state. After checking in we went out to find some food. None of the local restaurants had English menus or anyone to translate - but thankfully they did have pictures of most of the dishes... so we just guessed what they might be. The next evening we found a sushi train, much easier to negotiate, just pick off what you want and stack up the plates...

Sushi Train

So we spent a couple of days visiting many tourist sights in Tokyo - lots of old temples and shrines, beautiful Japanese gardens, the national museum and experiencing some of the modern buildings and towers... including the rather crazy electric toilet seats with their flushing sounds and various types of showers to wash your behind - yours for a cool 38900 yen at the airport electronics shop.

Sensoji Temple

5 storey pagoda

The large lanterns at the gate of Sensoji Temple - Helen for scale

The brand new Skytree tower - the tallest in the world - 634 m 

 The view from the 45th Floor of the Tokyo Metropolitan Building

Tokyo Metropolitan Building

Japanese garden in Shenjuku Gardens 

 View from the Taiwan pavillion in Shenjuku Gardens

Tokyo Tower with fancy light display - the same but a little bit taller than the Eiffel Tower in Paris 

One thing that struck us about Tokyo was that there were lots of bikes - people riding everywhere including women balancing up to 3 kids on the same bike. There were lots of pot plants on the pavements/sidewalks  - I assume because most people don't have gardens. It was also very clean and we barely saw and litter and no graffiti. Also after the traffic jams of Phoenix and Aberdeen, there was no obvious congestion in the city - possibly because lots of people ride bikes or take the public transport. Then there are the vending machines on the street corners - mostly selling cold drinks, but also cigarettes and alcohol.

After a busy trip and 2 days of full on sightseeing around Tokyo we were completely exhausted and slept most of the flight back to New Zealand. Happy to get home - even if it is winter - cold, wet and gets dark at 5pm.

United Kingdom

Scotland

However we arrived in Aberdeen, Scotland, where it was a cold 6 degrees C - a drop of 30 degrees since Phoenix. We had thought that by May it would be warming up in Scotland (May 2012 had been very warm). So we didn't have a lot of warm clothes with us.

The thing about blogs is that it helps you to remember when you did things.... we realised that the last time we visited the UK was in October 2009 - 3 and a half years ago. Where did time go? The excuse for this trip was an invite to James Bostock's wedding just outside Inverness (Thanks James and Becca). It meant that all the Bostocks would be in one place and easy to catch up with everyone without having to travel around the whole of the UK - or near enough.

On the way up from Aberdeen to Inverness we had an obligatory stop at a whisky distillery - Glenfiddich Distillery and a wee taster or two.

Glenfiddich distillery

The wedding ceremony was in the church at Strathpeffer and the reception at Tulloch Castle in Dingwall. Aaron and I had dressed in our smart Tartan outfits - as befit the occasion. It wasn't really summer weather anyway. 

Aaron standing in front of Tulloch Castle with his tartan waistcoat.

The wedding was followed by a Ceilidh (pronounced Kaylee), traditional Scottish dancing with a live band (a bit like American square dancing). The great thing about Ceilidh is that you don't have to be good at dancing and you can dance with anyone, in fact most of the time you are switching partners during the dance.   However it is hard to take photos as it is very fast and there wasn't lots of light. 

The next day there was an afternoon tea at Becca's parents house, and then most of the Bostocks went out for dinner at a local pub. Where Aaron got to try some haggis (traditional scottish food - mixed grains and seasoning, stuffed in a sheep's stomach - sometimes also doused in whisky). The day after we went for a  rather wet walk in Glen Affic to burn off some of the calories, then we headed down to Loch Ness to hunt for the infamous and mysterious monster. 

The monster in a pond?

Loch Ness - waiting for the monster to appear...

Another castle on the shores of Loch Ness

So Aaron got the true Scottish experience - rain, cold, whisky tasting, castles (more castles), ceilidh, haggis, and looking for the Loch Ness monster - the only monsters, our nieces (not really). 

Our nieces Andrea and Annabel

Bristol

After a cold week in Scotland catching up with most of the Bostocks we had a couple of days in Bristol to see Helen's friend Laura. Unfortunately we both had colds and the weather was pretty awful, so we had a relatively quick look around Bristol and then just chilled out, including Laura treating us to the Lido pool and spa to warm up. 

The iconic Clifton Bridge with Laura's flat at the base of the house just to the right.

The Chilterns

Our final stop on our quick UK tour was to catch up with the remaining Bostocks that couldn't make it to the  wedding, Uncle Paul, Thalia, Christopher, Hattie and Sophie. It was great to finally meet Sophie who has just turned 3. We stayed with them over the weekend playing with the kids and visiting the hole in the ground - that will be their new home, hopefully in the not too distant future.... We are excited for you... we would have loved to have built a house from scratch. 

Hattie the princess (4 almost 5 years old)

Christopher the astronaut (6 years old)

Sophie the ballerina in a box (3 years old)

The hole in the ground that will be the new house... 

Arizona

We began our around the world tour with a stop in Arizona to visit family and friends as well as go on a few adventures. The last few times we have been to Phoenix it has been mid-summer, with extremely unpleasant temperatures. In late April Aaron promised me it would be a lot cooler. Unfortunately temperatures were higher than average for this time of year (over 35 degrees C, >95 degrees F)... so after a day or so catching up with family, we escaped up north with Aaron's parents Ralph and Judy, where it is higher in altitude and cooler.

Petrified Forest

First stop was the Petrified Forest National Park, where large amounts of petrified tree trunks sit in the middle of the desert. The trees lived on a large floodplain in the Late Triassic, over 225 million years ago and were then buried by mud and volcanic ash. Silica rich groundwater has infiltrated the wood and crystallised in the wood tissues, preserving the wood. Along with all the wood there have been many dinosaur fossils found in the area. The sediment is rapidly eroding around the trees, exposing more and also causing the fossil wood to roll into hollows under gravity.

Petrified log

Bits of logs that have eroded out of the hills

The national park also includes an area called the painted desert due to the vivid reds of some of the layers.

Painted Desert

This area was once occupied by humans as far back as 10,000 years ago. There is evidence of dwellings and pueblos (villages) built out of rocks and petroglyphs carved in to the desert varnish on some of the large boulders and cliffs. It seems amazing that people could live in this rather hostile environment. They were probably concentrated around the rivers and washes which run at some times during the year. 

Petroglyphs carved in to the desert varnish

Canyon de Chelly

Then we headed north to Canyon de Chelly (pronounced d'shay) National Monument on the Navajo Indian Reservation. This is a spectacular canyon system - Canyon de Chelly in the south and Canyon del Muerto (death - doesn't bode well). Where the canyons meet they are only 10 m deep, but they are up to 300 m deep further upstream. The exposed cliff walls are made up of ancient sand dunes, stained red by iron. 

Sandstone cliffs made up of sand dunes with steeply angled beds

The main story, however, is about the archaeology of the area with the earliest inhabitants around 2500 BC with evidence for organised pueblos in 750 AD. The pueblos were built in caves in the cliff, for protection. I'm not entirely sure how they got up to the caves in some circumstances as it looks pretty vertical. I guess that was the point - to protect themselves.

Aaron, Judy and Helen walked down to the bottom of the canyon to check out the White House ruins, where the canyon quiet was challenged by a large number of Navajo primary school students on an excursion during free entry to National Parks and Monuments week.

White House Ruins

Mummy Cave

Along with the remains of the old buildings there are lots of petroglyphs in the canyon which tell stories of the the people living in the canyon through time.

Spider Rocks

Around 1600 AD the Hopi Indians appear to have left the canyons, the reason is not clear - possibly due to drought, disease, conflict or news of better lands elsewhere. The Navajo Indians arrived in 1700 AD and farmed the land at the bottom of the canyons - just as they do today. They grow corn, peaches and raise sheep and goats. It was very dry when we were there, with only a small stream flowing down the canyons and little grass, but we met a local who told us that they wait until the monsoon season before they start farming.

The US millitary destroyed the crops, Hogans (houses) and livestock and removed the remaining Navajo from the canyon in 1863, after 17 years of ongoing conflict. The Navajo were allowed to return in 1868 to rebuild their lives. 

South Mountain

Back in Phoenix it was hot so we spent a lot of the main part of the day inside in shopping malls or visiting people, we had to get up early to do anything outside, other than splash in the swimming pool. We got up early-ish on two mornings and went for a walk on South Mountain, one of Aaron's old mountain biking haunts. Unfortunately we missed the main wildflower season, but the cacti were just starting to flower. 

Prickly Pear Cactus blossom

Saguaro Cactus blossoms

Aaron walking on the National Trail past a large Saguaro Cactus

Tunnel to Hidden Valley

Just squeezing through Fat Man's Pass

Sedona 

Aaron's brother Craig, brought his our nieces and nephew down to Phoenix for the last few days. We also spent an evening with Judy's brothers (and partner). Due to a large number of the Lyman clan in one place (first time since our wedding) Kendall had organised for family photos.  We look forward to seeing how they turned out.... 

We also had a family outing to Sedona, so that Uncle Les could take us out in his jeep on some of the 4WD tracks around the area. While others were out on the jeep, Aaron and I also went for a short climb up Bell Rock. 

Les Lyman's jeep tours

Bell Rock

Halfway up Bell Rock

Sedona red rocks

With climbing temperatures.... we were looking forward to escaping Phoenix....