Hi,
What a marvellous weekend although it was quite tiring. It all started with a late flight to Christchurch on Friday night. Our flight was delayed a little as we flew into a headwind. As a consequence, it was 10:30pm before we left the airport in our rental Camry. Toby was fast asleep before too long and he slept all the way to Dunedin.
Driving down in the dark was a little boring. I do like the road from Oamaru to Dunedin, but without the daylight to show off the scenery, I must confess to falling asleep and missing Palmerston altogether. Twenty minute snooze only though. Mike was a trooper driving until 2:30am when we got to 733 and fell into bed.
We did sleep in a bit on Saturday morning, but Mike woke with a migraine and he stayed in bed a little longer, recovering after taking his migraine tablets. But by the time Toby and I got back from shopping in town, Mike was up and ready for the walk up Flagstaff with the Holloways. They were the reason we were in Dunedin. It must be easily over 6 or 7 years since we have seen them. Their daughter Claire is 6 years old now, and this is the first time we have laid eyes on her. Apart from the growth of their children, John and Judith were exactly the same. It was as if we had just seen them last week.
We met at John's mother's house and drove up to Flagstaff in convoy. We walked up over parts of Flagstaff I had never seen before. It was a lovely day - t-shirt weather. I got a startling red nose from the sun! Oh dear. We walked to Ben Rudd's hut and had lunch and then geocached some caches. All up we walked 6.2 miles (their GPS is in miles - heheheheh) before we got back to a car and down came the rain. Good timing.
We ferried everyone back to John's mother's house and ordered Thai takeaway (the rain put paid to the BBQ idea) and chatted for ages around the table. Finally it was time to drag ourselves away. Home to bed.
Mike got another migraine the next morning. This was worse as he couldn't find his tablets this time. We had organised to meet Jack (Toby's friend from Wellington) for breakfast as they were down for the weekend too. So Toby and I went off leaving Mike buried under his pillow. We had some time before brekkie so I drove Toby to our old house at 36 Dovecote Ave. It was about 35C already and a lovely day. I showed him my bedroom window. There are so many trees and shrubs in the front yard that you can hardly see the house. And the "Silver" has grass and houses all over it now! No swamp.
Back for an excellent breakfast with Jack and John and then off to see the Chinese Gardens down behind the Early Settlers. Mai met us there for a quick catch up. The boys bought Fortune Cookies. Toby's life will be enriched by new friends and new experiences. Good! Heheheh.
Back up home for lunch and a surprise visit by Jack. His parents were doing boring things so he was dropped off to play with Toby for a while. This was the highlight of the weekend for him. We did have to leave Jack surfing the internet for 10 minutes under Granddad's supervision as we had to leave before John came back to collect him.
So off we went driving back to Christchurch. Toby fell asleep again and woke in Oamaru. We got to Timaru before hunger kicked in. And good thing too as when we parked to get Maccas, we climbed out of our air conditioned car to hit a wall of heat like an oven. Turns out Timaru was experiencing 40C heat! It was hot! Weird, eh? And the temperatures stayed in the high 30s for ages (the car had an external thermometer) as we drove north.
Back to Christchurch at 7pm (slower driving in the afternoon compared to midnight!) and on the flight home. We are all pretty tired after the weekend but it was a great weekend.
Hope the week flies by!
Love,
Angela
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