How Long Does It Take To Buy A House?

The first big news we have is....after 15 months of searching and after viewing over 150 open homes we have FINALLY bought a house!

We bought it at auction, and I must admit the whole process was fairly nerve-wracking. I used to take for granted the old English process of seeing a house advertised at a certain price, offering 5% less and eventually meeting in the middle - usually with no other buyer competition. So easy!

By comparison, the actual house buying process here in Wellington has been fairly difficult! We've put in three tender offers over the last year, which has got to be the worst method ever (for the buyer), especially when there's no price given on a house and you have to pay for all your due diligence (lawyer, builders report, etc) before you place your tender.

The first time we were beaten massively on price. The second time we were beaten by just $2,000 (although we didn't know that until afterwards), and the third time we were the highest bidder but the vendor pulled out at the last minute.

An auction is a bit more preferable - at least you know what the other bidders are offering. But it's a nerve wracking process never-the-less and during the bidding my heart beat a hundred times louder than it does during an average Zumba class.

But we got it! We got it, we got it, we got it!!!!!

Other news..... last week Alfie went to his first school disco. For those who've never witnessed a Primary School disco, they are completely insane events which take place for fundraising purposes - and I guess for the kids' enjoyment too, although as they're usually held on a Friday evening of course there are always a few tears and meltdowns.

The kids had to dress as celebrities for this one, so Molly went as singer Katy Perry (pronounced Kay-dee Pirry if you are a Kiwi Kid) complete with purple hair, handbag, lipstick and studded belt - and Alfie wore his Superman pyjamas.

After a lot of dancing and a late night, Saturday morning began early with piano and rugby, followed by a birthday party.....so by the afternoon things had predictably got a bit messy and Jake and Molly went off to take a nap leaving me with the difficult task of managing a 5 year old on the point of a major meltdown.

So I turned to the kitchen - when it comes the males in this family, I always follow the same rule: if there's trouble, make a cake.  It always diffuses a tantrum.

We made a birthday/anniversary cake, as this weekend marked 2 years since we arrived in Wellington! What an amazing two years it's been. So very fast, so much fun. It's been a blast...Happy Anniversary Wellington!

House Dust Mites

And the blood test results are...

.....Molly has an off-the-scale reaction to house dust mites. There are no known food allergies (although she hasn't been tested for every food in the world, so you never know), just simple house dust mites.

(except of course, it's not really that simple).

On a RAST blood test, the results are scored from 0 to 6 on an allergy scale, with 0 being negative (ie no

allergy), 1 being a bit inconclusive, 2 being a positive result (ie an allergy) and then 3 to 6 being "strongly positive".

Molly's results look like this:

CODFISH                                      0.01
COWS MILK                                0
EGG WHITE                                  0
HOUSE DUST MITE                  >100
SOY BEAN                                    0.46
WHEAT                                          0.54

So, that's a fairly extreme reaction to the damn little critters!

We are firstly, extremely relieved that it's not more serious, but we are also feeling quite dazed and confused by all the advice and recommendations on exactly what we have to do and how successful it's going to be. We're hoping that a house dust mite allergy might be easier to manage than a food allergy - although it's going to be impossible to completely avoid exposing her to dust mites. We can be responsible for limiting them at home, but she'll inevitably be exposed in other places.

The results mean that many things are now explained: for example, why she always comes out of the library with big red rings around her eyes (those dusty books and cushions), and why she always becomes unwell when we stay at baches for the weekend.

My bed time reading has now become all about dust mites. Riveting stuff, ha ha! But here are a few interesting facts, for anyone out there who is interested in this kind of stuff:

1. House dust mites are extremely common in most New Zealand households. Most of us live with them with no symptoms, but in some people they cause eczema, asthma and rhinitis (basically a permanent year round cold). Unfortunately Molly is one of these people.

2. House dust mites love high humidity levels - which is probably one of the reasons we have so many of them in NZ! With this week's forecast for Wellington being 80%+ humidity all week, we certainly have a challenge on our hands. Expert recommendations are to keep your household humidity level below 55%. Easier said than done, especially in a rented house where we can't install a ventilation system or decent heating equipment. Yet another reason for finding our own home soon! In the meantime, we'll need to invest in a dehumidifier and keep all our windows open.

This is fascinating. It completely explains why Molly had eczema in Auckland as a baby, which disappeared when we went overseas. She had no trace of allergies when we lived in the desert (Central Australia) with zero humidity, and it all came back again when we returned to NZ.

3. Some of their favourite places to live are in carpets, soft furnishings, soft toys and bedding - hence the recommendation to replace carpets with wood or tiled flooring. We can't do much about the carpets in our rental property, but we can do something about the bedding.

I'm concerned that we may have a bit of a mission on our hands when we tackle the soft toys, many of whom have been an important part of our family for years now. Many of you will have come to know and love characters like Bobby, Rabbit and Penguin over the years, but goodness knows what's living inside these dear creatures...

Anyway, it's a relief to finally know what it is that's triggering our little girl into developing such angry reactions which affect her quality of life so much. Now we start a big journey into trying to resolve things as much as we can for her.

PS Big apologies for the yucky images of dust mites on this post!

Wellington's Sunday Food Market

Firstly, let me just say for the millionth time.....you can't beat Wellington on a good day.

You just really can't. And yesterday was really a good day. The sun shone, we pulled our summer clothes back out of the cupboards, got the sun cream out again, and drove down to the waterfront.

Wellington's waterfront has got to be one of my most favourite places in the city. Yesterday morning was a stunner. The water sparkled, the mountains looked sharp and crinkly, the sailing boats were out, the sun was bright and low, and the sky was the bluest blue.

Every Sunday morning in Wellington there's an open air food market by the harbourside that we just love.

For a start, you can get your fresh fruit & veggies there for a fraction of the price you pay at the local supermarket. It always seems much more tasty too. Yesterday a whole punnet of cherry tomatoes were wolfed down within 30 minutes by our lot! The bag of feijoas we purchased are currently in hiding so I can make sure I can eat some myself during the week!

It's also just a really great place to while away a sunny Sunday morning. You can get a very tasty brunch/snack there (particularly the Chinese dumplings, oh how we love the Chinese dumplings).

You can sit and drink a coffee in the sun while you watch the buskers - and there are always buskers, sometimes ordinary guitar playing ones, and sometimes really unusual elastic band playing ones or clever ones with string puppets that do portrait paintings.

The smells are amazing - coffee, bread, spices, fruit, fresh fish, pizza, crepes....Seriously, if you are a food lover, this is THE place to hang out in Wellington!

Apparently about 7,000 people attend the Sunday market every week and I must say, it feels like it! I think it's probably about the busiest place you can possibly go to in Wellington.

One of the things we love about living here is the lack of crowds and general relaxed and easy-going feel to life. But I'm always happy to endure a bit of crowding for Wellington's harbourside food market!

A bit of R 'n' R...

Over the last few days, we've introduced Nana Jenny to the little piece of paradise that is Himatangi Beach. Regular readers of this blog will know that we head up there relatively often, for a bit of r 'n' r and general family downtime.

It's not the prettiest part of New Zealand, and the accommodation options aren't the most luxurious. So, I was thinking....why do we like it there so much?

I've come up with lots of reasons. Firstly, it's a place where the sky is endless and the sea is endless and the beach is endless. A place like that is always good for the soul. It makes life simple again and allows us to get things back in perspective.

It's a place where it's always ok to open a beer or pour a glass of wine at 3 o'clock in the afternoon, with no feeling of guilt, as there is literally nothing else at all that you *have* to be doing.

It's a place where the beach is always interesting. It's full of shells and pumice stones and fish bones and lots and lots of driftwood. So you can make pretend "shops", build driftwood teepees and collect bits and pieces. The kids enjoy it so much, and the strange thing is that we do too. Something about being in Himatangi slows us down and makes just pottering around really enjoyable.

It's a place for being outside all the time and feeling refreshed. Where you can climb up tall sand dunes to get to the beach, where the wind blows through your hair and where we always go for afternoon runs. For Molly in particular, it's good to be at the beach, as her skin always improves. But for all of us in general - we always feel invigorated and healthy while we're there.

It's a place where there's always time for lots of playing. As well as spending lots of time on the beach, rugby, tennis and waterfights also tend to feature in most days' activities. The kids are always really, really happy.

It's a place which never changes, yet it is always different. We always go exploring and we always find something new (like a giant mound of hay). There's always excitement about something. 

It's a place where, no matter what time of year and what the weather, there's always time for an ice cream from the dairy. And at just $1 for a cone and a choice of about twenty or thirty flavours, how could we ever not do this?!

And it's a place where, even with two noisy children, I can always somehow find the time for peace and quiet, a good book and a deckchair, or a sunset walk along the beach...

Mainstream Medicine vs Alternative Medicine

It’s the school holidays at the moment, but it’s been a fairly low couple of weeks in our household. Both kids are truly knackered. Molly’s skin is still raw and sore. Jake’s been away a lot for work. There’s been a lot of rain (which is absolutely great for the farmers but not for Nana Jenny who doesn’t like rain!)

So yes, Nana Jenny is over once again for a couple of weeks. Despite the tiredness and the rain, she’s managed some special times with both kids – she's pottered on the beach with them, not minding at all when they collected the stinkiest specimens of fish bones in the world, she’s taken them to the theatre, the Marine Education Centre, swimming lessons, she’s made a den and played endless games of Bey Blades with Alfie.

She's also watched Molly doing ballet and Alfie playing his first night-time rugby match (with Jake as assistant coach!) and she's tolerated the chaotic visit to McDonalds for dinner afterwards. 

Meanwhile, last week I had an amazing experience at the homeopath’s with Molly. The lady we saw, Therese Boyle (I must give her a plug!) had been recommended to me from so many different sources that I really had to give her a try.

The appointment included some kinesiology (muscle testing) – I have no idea whatsoever how this actually works and it seems completely illogical to my western-educated mind, but Molly showed really strong responses.

The appointment was fascinating and there’s far too much for me to write about here, but in a nutshell we have identified some reasons why Molly’s immune system is firing all over the place and have some Probiotics and other remedies to try to sort it out.

Within 48 hours, it was clear that something major was happening in her little body. Her eczema patches were healing up, drying up, and flaking off (all over the house). The big red rings around her eyes had disappeared. She is still sore and still tired, but something’s definitely happening. Watch this space, we’ll keep you posted. 

Back to mainstream medicine.....last week, we also took Molly for her RAST test and unfortunately it was a terrible experience. She was so brave while she was there, but afterwards she nearly fainted and has become more and more traumatised by the day. Every evening she’s been crying at bedtime in case she ever has to have a blood test again.

But yesterday evening we tried something pretty cool. On Therese Boyle’s advice, I asked Molly to draw a picture of her feelings about the blood test. It was an AMAZING series of pencil sketches, in fact it was so good I would have loved to have kept it. But Therese’s advice was to rip it all up and throw it away (analogy = we are throwing those bad thoughts and fears away).

Molly insisted that the A4 sheet had to be torn into the most tiny pieces imaginable, so the whole process took a very long time. We finally threw it all out – way past bed time - and I explained that the men will take it to the dump and burn it. And last night was the first time since the blood test that she didn’t cry at bedtime. Result!

(Alfie joined in the activity as well, as he has had a few bad dreams lately and wanted them to go away. His picture was of a haunted house and several cute looking blue ghosts saying “ooooo”. He too slept through last night. I thoroughly recommend this activity!)

Next, we wait again. The blood test results are due within the next week. 

Taking it easy...

On account of Molly being so under the weather at the moment, we're taking it easy this week. We've skipped all her usual after school activities, and instead we're keeping life simple and relaxed.

Alfie too, is getting tired. It's nearly the end of his first term at big school, so it's only to be expected. Sometimes I think about the UK school system that I grew up with, and how much sense it makes from the childrens' point of view. In the UK they have 3 terms a year (compared to 4 terms here in NZ), so each of their terms is theoretically longer than ours, but they get a week's break in the middle of each term.

Here each of our four terms is about 11 weeks long - with no rest!

So we usually find ourselves slowing down a lot for the last couple of weeks of term. It's actually usually quite a nice time, and this week has definitely been pretty lovely and relaxed, so I thought I'd post a few pictures of what we've been doing in general this week.

Autumn has most definitely arrived, so there's a real chill in the air each morning and our blankets have come back out of the cupboards for night time, but most afternoons have been warm and sunny so we've played after school most days in the school playground.....(hey, Alfie still has a certain amount of energy to burn!)

Despite the ongoing tiredness, we've still found the energy for scootering home from school...

Most days we've been coming home and having snacks in the garden.

And I'm trying to get plenty of fruit into Molly as I read an article recently about the benefits of fruit for kids with eczema.... (I took a picture simply because I just love the colours of Autumn fruit!)

We've whiled away hours and hours just blowing bubbles on the deck...

Homework isn't so full-on now we're near the end of term, and most of it doesn't feel like hard work - it's mainly just spelling, reading and maths.  Molly will happily sit and read a book for hours after school (she finished the latest one in 2 days), and doing "Mathletics" on the laptop is still innocently considered to be a real treat!

Meanwhile, Alfie's current obsession is with Bey Blades, and he now has eight of them. They're the first thing he grabs when he wakes up each morning, he takes them to school and battles with his buddies at lunchtime, and they're the first thing he grabs out of his school bag when the bell rings at 2.55pm. Generally he'll be spinning them around the floor while I'm trying to cook dinner each day too.

He's also getting ready and excited for his second rugby season, which starts this weekend.

And when the day's over, the sun's gone down and the chill has set back in again, I've been really appreciating some early nights, with the odd sneaky glass of red wine and pile of books under my warm blankets!

Our World Of Eczema

When Molly was a baby and we lived in Auckland, she had terrible eczema. We were constantly in and out of the doctors and the Plunkett rooms and the naturopaths. We removed dairy from her diet, and I was obsessed with alternative sources of calcium. We had a bucket load of creams to apply all the time. We reduced the severity, but we never cured it.

Then we left New Zealand, and we were away for three and a half years. We had some great adventures during this time and lived in some very incredible (and very remote) places. One of my initial worries was how we were going to keep Molly on a restricted diet and how we were going to manage her eczema with no access to big supermarkets or specialist stores, limited doctors and no specialists.

But then a very cool thing happened. It seemed that as soon as we left Auckland, her eczema pretty much disappeared.

Three and a half years went by and we’d pretty much forgotten about those difficult early days.  We returned to New Zealand (this time to live in Wellington), and all of a sudden Molly’s eczema returned.

By now, Alfie also had eczema, so our bathroom cupboard quickly became an enormous mountain of creams and we had to adapt to a regular management programme involving, at certain periods and during certain seasons of the year (it seems to be worst in Spring and Autumn), the application of creams on two children 4 or 5 times a day, special bath products, little bodies covered with gauze and bandages, weekly doctors’ visits, antihistamines, regular antibiotics to fight infections, etc, etc.

Alot of the time Molly’s eczema is accompanied by a stuffy or runny nose and itchy eyes. Given our experiences overseas, our belief so far has always been that her eczema / allergies are caused by environmental factors that are specific to New Zealand, perhaps things like long native grasses, Pohutakawa trees and Cabbage trees. But according to the experts there are thousands of causes of eczema, so who knows?

Last weekend we also discovered that Molly is allergic to Flucloxicillin – an antibiotic that is part of the penicillin family and most commonly used to treat skin infections. Bugger!

Overall, the eczema is slowly driving us all completely INSANE!!! The amount of time and money we are spending on it is ridiculous, and the emotional consequences are worse. The kids get exhausted as they don’t sleep properly, and they get irritable and grumpy....and so do Jake and I!

Molly has been teased at school about it, and last night she cried herself to sleep, saying “I wish I didn’t get eczema”, and “I wish I was normal”. (Trigger my broken heart...)

Thank goodness her doctor has finally ordered a RAST test (a special kind of blood test that tests for allergies) to see if we can figure out what’s causing her problems. First, she’s going to be tested for allergies to dust mites, dairy, nuts, shellfish, eggs, soy and wheat. But until she’s off the antihistamines (which she relies on at the moment), she can’t have the RAST test.

So we’re playing a waiting game now...

Camping at Rivendell

Easter began slowly for us this year.

After a bit of a full on week, we all woke up on Good Friday feeling fairly tired and run down and a little bit lazy, so we took it easy for the day with a little bit of egg painting, a little bit of cake baking, a little bit of blackberry picking and such like.

But by Saturday we were raring to go again. So, on a bit of a whim, we decided to throw the camping gear into the car and head out to Kaitoke Regional Park, a beautiful patch of Greater Wellington famous for being the location of "Rivendell" in the Lord of the Rings movies.

It's mostly dense forest and walking tracks, but there are a few clearings in the forest where you're able to camp.

It's certainly not a destination for those aiming for a "glamping"* trip, or even a superior "Top Ten" type holiday park. There are flush toilets and a few electric barbeques dotted around, but that's all. And that's the beauty of it. Being Easter weekend, there were plenty of other people around, but you still get that amazing feeling of being away from the city and just out in the bush by yourselves.

There's a little river behind the camping area - actually, it's possibly usually a decent sized river, but we are officially in a drought zone here at the moment as we haven't had much rain this summer so right now there's not much of a river at all - and there's also a waterhole for swimming, so we whiled away most of Saturday afternoon there...

The forest too, provided much entertainment for the kids, mainly in the form of foraging around looking for evidence of fairies (Molly) and foraging around looking for evidence of bugs and collecting empty cicada shells (Alfie). Cicada shells have always freaked me out, from the moment I first saw hundreds of them years ago in Australia clinging motionless to a load of gum tree trunks. Nothing's changed - I still find them freaky, but Alfie clearly doesn't share my phobia.

Apart from that, Alfie biked his way around and around the clearing where we camped, pretty much from dawn 'til dusk - and then he met a little buddy and the two of them switched between kicking a rugby ball around and biking. Needless to say, he was pretty worn out by nightfall and it was surprisingly easy to get him off to sleep!

On Easter Day we woke to rain. (Bad timing!!) The farmers of the area must have been jumping up and down with excitement, but it didn't make the Easter Bunny's job very easy! The kids weren't going to be deterred though, and I had the task of trying to get the rain coats over their heads while they were running around the tent with their Easter basket collecting eggs!

After several hours of rain which involved a mixture of sitting inside the tent playing Uno and chasing the kids around outside in the rain, the tent was starting to become quite wet and grassy inside, and had sprouted a couple of leaks. We'd enjoyed our time at Kaitoke so much that it made it a very difficult and sad decision, but we decided to return to Wellington for a warm, dry and cosy night's sleep in our beds. We will be back though -  we'll just make sure we check the weather forecast next time! 

* Glamping is defined by Wikipedia as glamorous camping, a growing global phenomenon that combines camping with the luxury and amenities of a home or hotel. 

Nelson...without kids!

It was all about good food and wine - with a bit of great coffee thrown in too.

I've just spent a weekend in Nelson (at the top of the South Island) with a couple of my good girlfriends from Auckland. And boy, have I come home feeling relaxed and good!

Nelson's a really pretty place - I could easily live there. It's only a 25 minute flight from Wellington, and the topography is actually fairly similar - sea and mountains, with houses clinging to hilltops all around it. The city is smaller than Wellington but still big enough to offer enough for a weekend away, and it's surrounded by three beautiful national parks (not that we managed to get to any on this trip - but one day I will!).


I'm loving this tradition we've set in recent years: every summer the boys take a weekend away somewhere while the girls stay home with the kids, and then another weekend us girls take a weekend away somewhere while the boys stay at home (and make a mess) with the kids.

Just before Christmas, the boys went down to Queenstown and went tramping in the mountains for a few days - they stayed in huts and brought basic food supplies (and a box of wine as well I believe) and thoroughly enjoyed the great outdoors. It's a stunning part of the country, and I have to say I was a little jealous.

However, it's without a doubt that I can state this: us girls have got our formula 100% right for our weekends away. In a similar fashion to our 2012 trip, this year we booked a luxury bach with a large deck overlooking the ocean and an outdoor spa and indulged in 3 days of good food, good wine, good coffee, sunshine, sleeping, relaxing and sitting in the spa.

Of course I missed the family. But sometimes it's so lovely to be able to appreciate "grown up" things....being able to eat lunch at 4pm for example (no little tummies to worry about feeding every 3 hours), or being able to spend the entire afternoon sitting by the waterside drinking a bottle of wine and read magazines in peace, being able to sleep in past 8am, being able to take our time wandering around the beautiful Cathedral (without having to say "shhhh" once!), and being able to browse around beautiful gift shops full of ceramics and glass and other breakables.

Here's to many more years of the same holiday formula, Beth and Sam!

Rotorua with kids

We’re just back from a few days in Rotorua - an awesome trip, which came about because my old friend Tracey decided to get married on a lake just outside town and invited us up for the wedding.

We've always wanted to take the kids to Rotorua but it's just that little bit too far from Wellington so it hadn't yet happened, until Tracey's wedding gave us the perfect excuse. The 5 and a half hour drive went well, thanks to a number of Roald Dahl story tapes and regular food stops along the way. And we managed to combine the wedding with a few days holiday (as well as a meeting with a potential new client for me too), so all in all we achieved good value for our money/time!

The wedding was just gorgeous. Our friends had hired a bach on the lakeside, and (very flatteringly!) had modelled their day on our own wedding last year – so it was a relaxed, outdoorsy day with a small-ish group of family and friends. There was a trampoline and swing for the kids and after they’d had enough of that, Alfie went wild on the jetty terrorising the black swans, and Molly went wild on the dance floor learning how to dance rock’n’roll style (!) 

Anyway, congratulations Tracey and Steve on a fantastic day!

Aside from the wedding, we had a brilliant time showing the kids what Rotorua is all about. Alfie had a few moments of frustration on arrival because it was "too stinky" for him, but he got used to it and both of them were so excited about everything we saw. 

The hot pools at the Polynesian Spa were a huge hit - there's a dedicated family area where you don't have to worry about disturbing the peace, and where it's safe for the kids to put their heads under water (and they also hire out togs for those mums who pack everyone else's but forget to bring their own). Needless to say we spent a long time there! 

We also spent ages at Te Puia , somewhere I haven't been for years. The cost for a family to get in almost made us collapse, but there's no way you can go to Rotorua and NOT visit one of the geothermal / Maori cultural areas, and once we realised how much value for money we were getting at Te Puia, we were able to put the lost dollar signs out of our minds (!) and enjoy it all. 

We gave the kids maps and they excitedly led us around the bubbling mud pools and steaming rocks and an erupting geyser - it was all very magical and exciting for them.

We also caught a Maori cultural performance, where Molly was persuaded out of the audience and up the front on stage to learn a poi dance. Her look of pure terror was quickly replaced by absolute relief when she realised they were about to be taught a song that she performs at school regularly (E rere taku poi, ki runga, etc) and as all the other stage volunteers were from China she had a major head start. I'm afraid I compensated with my own look of pure terror when the Chinese tourists began grabbing her for photos afterwards, and I quickly shuffled her away. 

For the remainder of the holiday we enjoyed spending time by the lakes and at our bach. We managed to score the most amazing bach by one of the lakes, which had window seats framed with stunning views - I so wish we could have spent more time there. Just outside town  there are some really lovely spots that are missed by a lot of the people who come on the regular tourist trail.  The lakes and forest are stunning, especially for those who like tramping, mountain biking, swimming and other water sports.....like paddling for example! 

 But it's also great for people who just want to relax. Alfie found a good spot to relax with a book in the window seat...he kept on getting there first and I had to fight him for it a few times!

And we all found a relaxing spot in a bar next to Lake Tarawera....!