We went to the church nativity the other night, it was in an open barn in the middle of a field, there was straw bails and straw all over the floor, they had real sheep and a donkey and all the kids were ecouraged to dress up and take part. Some mums narrated the story and got as many kids involved as possible including letting the numerous Mary's ride on the donkey. We all sang carols in the evening sunshine, it was really lovely and have to say the best nativity I have been to. Jess is on the back right dressed as an angel.


No I dont think that the angel rode on the sheep in the nativity story but Jess wanted to - so anything goes!

We also had the school trip to the beach for sun and sea safety. The kids spent the day at the beach with the lifeguards. They were told all about keeping safe in the sun with the slip slap slop bit. Then beach games including running in out of the sea and jumping the waves.

Jess was brave and jumped up and down over the waves - holding the lifeguards hand though, but a big improvement.
If anyone has noticed there is a lack of photos of Sam and Joe this week, Joe refused to go to the nativity and sam hid away from the camera with his friends.

We have also had the school prizegiving at the church followed by a picnic in the school playground. Some of the kids were even swimming in the pool at 8pm! I have to say it was freezing cold in there, we were all wearing coats so I cant imagine how cold the kids must have been. The Millard kids never made it into the pool, obviously not climatised yet!

Martin enjoying his mince pies at school!

Josie and Derrick took the kids to the beach yesterday and caught some fish from the wharf. Today we went to Mclaren Falls and marshall farm. We had a lovely day walking in the sunshine and having a picnic by the lake. Only got bit about 10 times!!


All the kids managed to get to feed the lambs and the goats.




Found the 3 little bears whilst at the farm!



Just in case anyone is thinking of visiting - here is how you have to earn your keep!!

Going for the traditional xmas lunch this year, we have been told by the neighbours that we will only do it once and then we will be at the beach with them having a bbq from next year onwards.

Will try to keep this up to date - wine allowing!
love to all
xxxx

The Beach BBQ was a fun, nearly abandoned on several occasions due to the wind and the rain, but in a truly british fashion we stuck out the cold, to be suprised by a lovely afternoon. Out came the waterslide and jess and joe had lots of fun getting covered in washing up liquid.



Plenty of things to do over next few days, school trip to the beach, school prizegiving and picnic and we are taking advantage of our visitors - we are off to a party on Friday without the kids!!
xx

This is the meaning of jet lag!! Derrick asleep after a 36 hours of travelling!. Off to a British BBQ this week down on the beach. Went to the other side of the world to get away from the pommes and now we are surrounded by them! In other news.......................

We had the school production this week - this is Jess as a cheeky fan tail dancing on the stage. Joe was an orca - killer whale but was very camera shy.

It was the Mount christmas parade, the town was closed so the parade could go up and down the street. Still seems strange seeing Santa in the sun.

Well we have had a busy week again but glad to say no trips to the hospital. Jess had her sports day and she is seen here giving her team the pre game pep talk!

Well sorry we have not posted much on the blog as we have had a very busy couple of weeks. As you can see sam was not content with a broken arm and decided to put his hand in the way of his friend playing with an axe. He nearly ended up with 6 fingers on one hand as his little finger was sliced down the middle. After surgery everything should now be back as was , we just have to wait for the healing to happen. We now have several hospital appointments over the next few weeks to get him better. He has been warned not to leave our side but he is managing to still argue and fight with Joe.


Other news - The boys had their sports day ( joe only). They had the whole day competing with 4 other local schools. Joe did well and got to the final of the high jump - thats him actually doing his jump in the red tshirt. His lazy bum streak came out though in the running and quickly worked out that if he ran slow enough he would only have to run one race! Jess has her sports day tomorrow.

Last week was the annual family christmas festival in Omokoroa. It was a lovely day with loads for the kids to do .

Jess had her first ride on a horse and loved it. She now wants riding lessons so we are going to look at her joining the pony club. Only thing with that is they have to look after the horses completely. Mums is not helping with mucking out!!
We also had a ride around the village on the old fire engine which was fun. Sam managed to win at the football competition (yes with one arm). It was just kicking cans off of stands and scoring goals, no one else was involved so we let him have a go.

Today we are off to the Mount as its the big christmas festival there. The town is closed to cars and the streets are lined with xmas stalls and games for the kids with a big xmas parade. There is also a big 'flip flop' event or jandels as they are know here. $20 for charity gets you a giant blow up flip flop and at 12pm everyone is going out into the sea on them to try and make a giant flip flop in the sea. Think this will be an event we will just watch! You never know what sam could do to himself if we let him have a go!

Kids of got a lot going on at school over next few weeks and we have our first visitors so will keep the blog up to date.
Love to all
the millards xxx

Who said red and green should never be seen!!

This is how Waitamo Caves camp ended. Abseiling, caving, rock climbing and much more but Sam fell over after a game of soccer ( football to you!!) He scored a goal and then slipped and fell back on to his wrist and broke it. Now the pain has gone sam is managing to enjoy the attention and looking forward to having a coloured plaster on next week.

He is not sure if he is going to go for the glittered one yet or not! He also lost a tooth in a seperate incident - just a baby one so all is well with that.

Not to be outdone Joe cartwheeled across the lounge and fell badly on his foot. screaming in agony we went on our second trip to A&E . No break this time but a torn ligament. Although we are not convinced as he keeps forgetting to limp!!

The rest of us are in one piece (at the moment)

Martin has been sampling the NZ christmas do's - iced bottled beer and a bbq, what more could you want. We stayed at home and then played taxi!!

Due to injury we didnt make the sailing club - so we will have to postpone this for 6 weeks and the swimming and the athletics! Sam had just got picked for the relay team so he is disappointed with that.

We came to NZ for the kids to have adventures and enjoy being children - and this is what we have got so far!

We have a birds nest just outside our patio doors. The chicks hatched the other day. Not sure how being next to a well used basketball net! We keep seeing the mom and dad swapping shifts on the nest and coming back with food. Jess is loving it, we keep catching her chatting to them

Most Saturdays throughout the summer the boatclub has sailing lessons for the children. Sam and Joe are going to have a go next week but we have to go and get life jackets first. Lets hope the manage to stay in the boat rather than in the sea! Jess is just looking fore creepy crawlies - her new hobby.

On Saturday the school and boat club organised a duck race to raise money for the school. They sailed out in one of the boats and placed all the rubber ducks in the sea and waited to see whose duck got back first. It was funny as no one had any idea which duck was theirs until someone could jump in and collect the winner. The chefs duck never arrived back and there is now a post card up from the duck saying in Acapulco -gone travelling!

We had our first New Zealand fireworks night. We were invited by some friends to their school to watch the display. The school was in town, with the school field finishing on the beach. The views were amazing. It was like a mini Glastonbury! we all sat on the grass on our rugs drinking wine waiting for the sun to go down. The kids loved running around listening to the music with their glow sticks.

We finally got to see the fireworks about 9pm. They were fantastic but too loud as Joe put it. Next time he will bring his earplugs! It felt very strange not wrapping up in all our winter clothes for bonfire night.

We spent Labour day bank holiday exploring some of the area. We went to Waihi Beach and had a picnic, we visited Katikati and then came back to our beach for an ice cream to finish the day off with a play in the park. Even on a bank holiday weekend we didnt really see and traffic jams or crowded places it was lovely.
This week we have had a quiet week really, just getting used to things. We had our house sprayed inside and out ready for the summer. You can get lots of bugs in the house during the hot season so this helps to stop that. We decided to go ahead and have this done when one of our neighbours told us she had woken up and was sharing her pillow with a large insect! So she has had hers sprayed every year since. Jess thinks we are cruel as we shouldnt kill any animals or insects.
Kids still loving school, they have 2 assemblies per week and certificates are handed out for good behaviour, being kind, good work etc. Jess got 3 on friday - one for good reading, one for good spelling and one for always sitting down ready and quietly to start work. Bless her. She was then given the school dog to bring home for the weekend. As you can see below he has been busy colouring.


We have planted some more vegetables this weekend, we are hoping to get enought to freeze and save on buying. Have to say you can only have so much rhubarb though! We now have 5 crumbles frozen and several pots of just stewed rhubarb. Going to give generously to the street with the stuff that is growing now! Lots of house here have a rack at the end of their drive with all fresh produce in called an honesty box, you just take what you like and then pop the money in. I bought a lettuce a couple of weeks ago and they leave all the roots on in a bag with water in, so they last for ages.

We went to the local DIY shop yesterday to buy some garden furniture and I was approached by a man who said are you from Sheffield?? I said yes is my accent that obvious, he laughed and said no I am from Eckington and your sons Sheff Wed shirt gave it away! They have been here a year and are loving it.
We then went to Omokoroa market yesterday and got chatting to a stall holder, who had been here 6 years with a very familiar accent. They were from Bramley rotherham. He used to work in Kiveton pit and now worked in engineering over here. He said his prices had to go up to a Sheff Wed fan, then a comment came from the back that would this also apply to a ManU fan, and stood behind us were a family from Manchester! Is there anyone left in the UK!!
Thank you for everyones emails, its great to here from everyone.
x

Dont want anybody to faint but yes this is Martin - gardening and yes he is missing Robin who promised he would come out once a fortnight to tend to our garden! We are yet to see him!

By popular email request to post more photos of the house - here they are!!


This is the view of the back of the house from the garden.


This the lounge.



This is a very dark dining room as I have no idea how to work the camera!!


Kitchen 1 & 2 angles!


This is the family living area.



This is our entrance hall which is really rather grand!



This is the part of the garden which you can see we were kindly left a climbing frame.

I have just picked our first vegetables from our patch, I have just blanched a whole lot of broccoli and the house now stinks!!
We are off to athletics now in the sunshine.x

Well the big day finally came, we moved into our new home. The boys are posing outside their new house on their new bikes. I will post some more photos soon but it has been raining a lot this last few days so I have not really been able to take many.
The move went well, we dont remember packing so much stuff though!

Here is the container arriving. It only took them a few hours to unpack the boxes into the house but we decided to let them leave the boxes in the garage so we could unpack them later. Most of our stuff survived the journey, just a couple of smashed things didn't. The kids were overjoyed to get their things back, although since we have unpacked all their stuff we have hardly seen them as they have been playing out most of the time. Everyone has been so friendly and helpful. The street has some houses built and some plots waiting to be built. We have a family up 2 houses up from the midlands, their next door neighbours are from Sussex, just up the street is a family from Scotland who spent 3 years in Burncross! Its a very small world.
We have since found out that 40% of the school is from the UK!! and we were trying to get away!
Obviously we all had the same image of how nz would be and we all found it in Omokoroa.
Its been great for us as we have had lots of advice and information on where to get things from.
I even found some bisto the other day!!







We cant leave Jess out, here she is posing on her new bike. The good thing here is that everyone has to wear an helmet - its the law, so we have no arguing about putting it on.
Its now Sunday evening and we have managed to talk to a few people on skype this weekend.
I will as soon as the sun is shining again take some photos of the area and the house and post them on here.

We decided that we should make it to the top of the mount before we moved. so off we went, someone suggested instead of taking the long track to the top we would go for the difficult track.
It shouldnt be that bad! No!! Me and Martin were gasping for breath. It was basically winding steps all the way up. The steps were tall and long so in the hot sunshine it was really hard. The kids loved the steps and didnt moan at all - it was just us that were moaning!! These are the views from up at the top.

I am not sure what the this one is called but we have named it as the little mount. We have had a picnic on this one in the school holidays.
We had to have a rest at the top before we made the journey back down the steps.

Its the school holidays this week so we will be visiting the hot pools next door for a swim and playing on the beach before we move to Omokoroa on Friday.
Our container arrived on the 22nd so this will be delivered to our new home on Friday. It will seem like Christmas when we get all of our things back. Jess has already decided what she will be playing with on each day for the rest of the hols.

This is our new friend we met this weekend. He was happy sunbathing on the rocks whilst the kids played in the rock pools.

He was happy to pose for several more photos as the kids wanted to get closer and closer.

Jess loved him and wanted to stroke him. We are told they often come into the mount and lay on the rocks so hopefully we will see them again soon.
We are just starting the 3rd week and school and everyone is enjoying it. We just have this week to go and then its a 2 week holiday so there is no pressure at the moment to get too much work done. The kids cant wait as we are going to got to the hot pools in the holidays and also have a look at some of the other things we can do. Martin will be working so I will take a deep breath and enter the holidays with a big smile on my face!

This was how we spent our teacher only day (inset day). We went to the rock pools and caught some shrimps, a seasnail and plenty of hermit crabs. The kids had a great time paddling in the waters and catching everything. We then went back to the beach and chased some waves trying not to get wet.


This picture is taken just before the inevitable happened and a big waved soaked Joe through.
He seemed surprised for some reason! We met some other families on the beach that were from Omokoroa school which was good as we are still staying at the mount and we dont know anyone here.

Pictures of my school by Sam Millard. This is part of our school playground and some of the classrooms. We play basketball at playtime here.


This is my new friend nathanial.

This is a picture of me coming out of long cool tunnel in the playground. Its quite dark and you can't really see what you are crawling on.

This is our school rugby field but I couldn't get the soccer field on the picture as it was too big.

This is our playground, we have a great time climbing and jumping on all of these. There is also a sandpit at the other end.
School is great, we have met some great new friends. We are in year 5 and will start year 6 in February. The maths lessons here are fun and we have made a calender which I will put a picture on the blog of when I get it back.
There is a swimming pool in the middle of the playground and in the summer we get to have a swimming lesson everyday. I am hoping to join the basketball team soon.

School by Joe Millard - Its good because you get lots of stuff for playtime - like a tennis court and climbing frames, we are even allowed to climb trees and play with sticks not like in the UK.
In the lessons they dont put any pressure on you - we had an hour do something in england but here we would get a week. (not sure thats a good thing - mum!!) I am hoping to play more tennis and basketball because there cool games.

School by Jess Millard - At school there is a lot of friendly people. I have made a friend called Zara and I have been playing with Alexander today. In some lessons we have to run to get a bean bag animal and then come back. We have a jump jam twice a week which is dancing to 4 or 3 songs like 'who let the dogs out' and an angel one where you have to jump up in the air.
I really love the tunnel that sam is in on the picture, but we saw a tiny spider in there who kept following us and soon got out.
We have been in the swimming pool today.