Weekend in Auckland

This weekend was slightly longer than most as Steph and I headed up to Auckland for Jenny’s 50th birthday. We started north on Thursday evening with a 2 hour trip to Waipawa to see Mum and Dad. When we arrived Jenny had left a message asking that if possible we should try and pop across to Tauranga to see her Grandad as he was going to be unable to make it to the party.
After spending the night there we carried on heading north on Friday morning around 8:45am. Unfortunately about 30 minutes into the Napier-Taupo road I started seeing “sparkles”, a sure sign of a migraine coming on for me! Thankfully Steph was already driving so we just stopped at the nearest gas station (Taupo!) and got some pain killers. Due to the headache Steph decided that we would just head straight to Auckland as Tauranga would add at least 4 hours to the trip, and that wasn’t something I needed with my head thumping! So as it was Steph drove all the way from Napier to Auckland and we arrived at her parents place around 5:30ish in the evening.
On Saturday, the plan was that I would head down to the factory with Ken, whilst Steph and Jenny went out shopping, before which Jenny took Steph and I out to the unit at the marina to see the alterations and decorating they had been doing.  It looked really good. After that most of my morning was spent chainsawing up a purirui log (about 1.5m long and about 63cm diameter).  I ended up hiring a chainsaw with a 24” bar, First I trimed 30cm of the end in a round and then the trunk that was left was halved and then quartered. Whilst doing the first quartering cut the chain came of the saw, it snapped! Obviously I was wearing safety kit and standing well clear, but what surprised me was instead of twanging around and being quite scarey, the chain just dropped to the floor in a heap; I think I was lucky. After getting another chainsaw I finished the two quartering and then Ken and I headed back to the house as it was nearly lunch time (a quick detour on the way though to pick up the birthday cake).
Whilst we were all having lunch Tristan turned up, much to the surprise of Jenny as he was supposed to be in Australia.
For the afternoon Steph and I headed out to a saddlery to drop off Steph’s saddle, and then we trundled down to Albany and then back to the peninsula to get ready for dinner.
When we got to Valentines, Ken had organised a little surpise for Jenny, and Steph, Jamie and myself had to quickly implement it – Ken had got 50 “tweeties” (as in the yellow cartoon bird) and he wanted on tweaty at each seat and the remaining clustered on the table.  Talk about causing a stir in the restaurant, everyone was very amused at the 50 fluffy toys; they thought the party was for a child; nope it was for a Kiddie!
The evening went without a hitch and everyone had a good time.
The next morning Steph and I left Auckland around 8:45 and because we were unable to visit her Grandad on the way up, we were going to pop across on the way back. In all the drive down was quite good, I did the first bit from Auckland to Tauranga through to Rotorua and across to Taupo (well almost, about 30 minutes out Steph took over). Steph drove from Taupo to Turangi, I then drove to Taihape where we stopped for coffee, Steph took over again until Palmerston North, and then I did the last stint to home. In all the trip took us about 12 hours (well 11:53 actually!) and over the course of the weekend we drove around 1600km. Time for the filters and oil change on the truck now.
Well, that takes us to Monday, as you can imagine we were (and still are) both pretty tired, so not a great deal was done, we moved all the stock; Markissa is now where the alpacas were, the alpacas are grazing the new grass (it will make the grass grow better if the tops are cropped off slightly) and the sheep are in where Markissa was. Which means one paddock is now being spelled (hopefully it will grow back reasonably fast).
But now we’re back to a normal week – so probably more to come next weekend, next weekend we’ve managed to double book our Sunday, we have a carding/felting workshop and the wood turners club Christmas party. Thankfully one is in the afternoon, so we might just get them both in.