Anyone for tea

I came into the lounge to see what Rachel was up to this morning and she has set up a little tea party for her and "Baby"(her special dolly at present). This is one of her favourite activities at present. The footrest makes a great table. The pink chair was mine when I was child. When Rachel saw I was getting the camera she had to check her appearance in the reflection of the TV. Rachel is now teaching Dolly a song from music that involves counting. She isn't quite getting the numbers in the correct order but it is delightful to watch.

Andrew's earthquake story

This morning Andrew started to tell me a story about his earthquake experience. I wrote it down at the time. This afternoon we made a book up with his story. It is delightful so I really want to share it. Sorry, it hasn't photographed that well so I have caption the photos with the words plus some explanation of the photos. All the words are Andrew's. The ideas for all the pictures are his but I helped by drawing most of the pictures. As you can see I am not an artist.

Page 1 "Lots of shaking." The picture is of the little plates on the earth shaking.
page 2 "lots of getting under doorways." Mummy, Daddy, Rachel and Andrew are under a doorway in the picture.

Page 3 "Lots of noise. The picture is of the hallway "because the noise came down it".
Page 4 "I couldn't sleep with the noise." The picture is of Andrew asleep in his bed with Daddy sleeping on the top bunk.

Page 5" Our house got minor cracks."
Page 6" the house across the road lost a chimney."

Page 7 "It was dark because there was no power"

Page 8 "The supermarket didn't have flour." The picture is of a three layer cake on a plate. There is a muffin on the top.

Page 9 "This is the drum (that measures the earthquake)." Above is my attempt to draw a seismograph.

Cromble Holiday - part 1

Andrew initially had a hard time saying "Cromwell". We got away on holiday a day late after cleaning up from the earthquake.
Our route to Cromwell was via Lake Tekapo, were we took the obligatory photos of bronze dogs and churches. This one, in between bus loads, turned out quite nice.

On Monday we went to Stuart Landsborough's Puzzling World, and got lost for a while in their maze.

The kids grew up quite a bit, and quite quickly - it's amazing what running across a room can do!

On the way back to Cromwell, Stephen stopped to sample some wine at The Lazy Dog (near Mt Pisa), while Kathryn took photos of the wine-making equipment. It was a fortuitous stop, as one of the vineyards we'd been keen to sample - Bannock Brae Estate from Bannockburn - have closed for tastings, making their wine available at The Lazy Dog instead. They also had 2 Degrees, Locharburn, Misha, and Valli (I think) wines for sampling.

Cracker of a Morning

Here are some of our photos showing the minor damage we sustained.

The pantry had opened and emptied itself. This photo also shows the oven on a lean, which was easily fixed by moving the supporting pieces of wood back in place.

The last of Kathryn's ClickClack was destroyed. Tupperware survives earthquakes much better.

The other side of the kitchen was covered in mixed-spice, of our own secret recipe. The earthquake also broke one small coffee plunger, and one small coffee cup.

Andrew located our biggest crack - at about the line that the downstairs concrete blocks stop. This one extends around the corner of the stairs.

This next one is above the sliding door in to our kitchen. Most of our windows and doors have got cracks, presumably where the jib board joins, but not as bad as this one.

We'll be replacing our picture hooks with stronger ones, since they mostly look like this now. Thankfully none of the pictures were damaged.

Christchurch Earthquake

We had a rude awakening this morning, due to a massive earthquake.

We're all ok. We seem to be much better off than many of our neighbours. None of them have brick chimneys anymore.

We had spilt food & minor broken glassware in our Kitchen, a shelf in the laundry came down, and the plaster has minor cracks around a number of doors and windows. Our oven is on a minor lean, which we'll be looking into.

Carolyn & Matt's place sounds about the same.

Margaret & Murray's place had a number of broken windows, and some cracks in the brickwork.