Aunty Karen has arrived

We've been  in our new home for one week now.  Far too many awful details about the move to go into, except to say that the vendor didn't start packing until settlement day!  Unheard of, and she didn't finally vacate until the following night.  It has now been 8 days since we bought the place and she still has a truck load of stuff here that is waiting to be picked up.  Our lawyer has sent a letter to her lawyer giving them until this coming Wednesday to get it all out, so we'll see how that goes.  We can't fit all our stuff in until she gets rid of her's.

Anyway, Karen and the girls arrived by plane from the North Island today.  They are visiting for a week and were hoping for snow (Taylor was anyway).  That hasn't happended (yet), but for teh last few days there have been terrific frosts.  Puddles have been frozen thick and remain that way all day. 

The ascent through the driveway is a little tricky but we are slowly getting used to it.  On the steepest part of the driveway there is a huge pothole in the asphalt that seems to get bigger every time we drive over it.  This afternoon, Karl and I (mostly Karl) boxed up the broken part and filled the hole with gravel.  It has managed to cope with being driven over at least half a dozen times, twice with a four-wheel drive.  In fact it more than coped with it, its beaut!.  Its inly a temporary fix until we can work out how it is that we want to seal the driveway, but I have to say that it looks pretty bloody good.  Not good enough to last forever but certainly for the next few months.  We have also sealed the bath (when we took a shower more water ran onto the floor than ran down the drain), and we also re-sealed the garbage disposal thing in the sink.  That needed a new gasket and now there are no signs of leaks.

These three things have been important in reasurring us that we can actually do the whole DIY thing (or at least give it a bloody good go).  The internet of course is an excellent source of information.  Karl has already got instructions and tips from the net for putting up a retaining wall.  I think we'll need some sort of professional help or help from someone with experience in that area because we may need to get Council consent (if its higher than 1 meter).  I didn't realise that a retaining wall is like an iceberg - there is more below ground than above it.

That's it for now. Seu!

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