Month: May 2015

Good Junk Food

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In our family we refer to the restaurant with the golden arches as “Dirty-donalds”.  I’m not proud to admit that my children have tasted a McNugget or two from there but we haven’t been through in months and I intend to keep it that way! That’s not to say that our children don’t have junk food, in fact at least once a week I throw caution to the wind and serve up a dinner for the children…pause for mum to turn away from what I am about to type… that doesn’t have any green vegetables in it!!  Six days a week I plan and cook evening meals for the family that are clean, healthy, representative of all the food groups and one day a week, generally Friday because it’s curry night for mum and dad, I provide what I like to call good junk food.  It’s junk because something on the plate came from a can or the freezer or has added sugar.  It is good because it’s the highest quality of its kind, I cooked part …

Pitched Perfectly To Come Second

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I shall warn you now, Anna Kendrick will not come off well in this review.  If you are a lover of the little songstress prepare yourself to feel defensive and most likely a little offended. The film is of course a sequel and sadly like 95% of sequels (unless they are part of a trilogy or adapted from a volume of books by the same author) it really didn’t entertain like the first.  I think it tried to.  In that, I’m pretty sure the new Director and her team sat down and said, ‘whatever was good in the first one, let’s do that again but louder’.  I think this will have been their to-do list: 1. A plot about the underdog.  The Bellas were successful at the end of the last one so let’s bring them back down to rock bottom with something super shocking.  Which leads to… 2. Fat Amy. She is by far the funniest character in the whole film so let’s make her part bigger and more outrageous, cue her flashing her …

Every day is a school day

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When you have a young family, sometimes a lesson to be learnt trumps fun times together. It’s a lovely Autumn day and we thought going to the park would be fun for all of us. That is until Jackson decided he was going to bring his cars, about 50 of them, in a box, that they didn’t fit into. At that moment I saw the opportunity for a lesson in taking responsibility for your things and kissed goodbye to fun in the park. We explained what we were planning to do – we’ll be walking a lot. Gave him clarity on the help we would give in carrying his cars – none. Suggested an alternative – don’t take the whole box, just take one or two that will be easy to carry. Reminded him that his cars were his responsibility – not ours. We went through this three times before arriving at the park and still he wanted to bring them. Within two minutes of walking Jackson had had enough carrying his cars. His arms …

Mother’s Day

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Being a mum is the great equalizer between women.  No matter how your babies came to you, now matter how ready you were for their arrival or qualified you feel to look after these precious gifts, whether you are a real disciplinarian or spoil them rotten, you are exactly the same as the next mum when it comes to how you feel about your children – literally every part of your being loves them, from the tips of your toes to the ends of every strand of hair on your head. Mother’s Day is this Sunday in New Zealand so I’m getting pretty excited about my lie in.  Today I was treated to a special assembly by Minnie’s class that included a short play on everything mum’s do for us and then also a song about how our children try to show us love but often end up making a mess and trashing the place.  I also learnt that more than $18 billion is spent each year on Mother’s Day in the States – yikes! …

The Age of Adaline

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This category of blog is the one I am hoping for the most interaction and feedback, a Movie Club if you will.  Please wade in with your thoughts, if you have seen the same film. I like to watch films.  I’m no buff, I don’t want to set my stall up as being someone who is qualified to be a critic but I enjoy “the movies”, so this is my space to share what I think of a film. Last night I went to see Age of Adaline.  I really enjoyed it. The story goes that Adaline, played by Blake Lively, was born in San Francisco at the beginning of the 20th century.  She marries and has a daughter.  Her husband dies in an accident connected with the building of the Golden Gate Bridge.  Soon after, in 1935, she is driving at night during an unusual snow storm, crashes off the road, her body freezes, gets struck by lightning and for some crazy made up scientific reason her body stops ageing. The film is set in …

Recovery

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We hit our NZ three year anniversary at the end of March and whilst the day passed with little recognition, it was in fact a significant milestone.  When we first had the crazy idea of moving our wee family over to the other side of the world to be part of Christchurch’s rebuild we said the adventure would be for three years. We’re still here. Because how long does it take for a city to recover?  The Oxford English Dictionary states that to recover means, “to return to a normal state of health, mind or strength.”  When you travel to other cities, you realise what is currently “the norm” for Christchurch is far away from normal anywhere else. Gareth came here to work as part of SCIRT (Stronger Christchurch Infrastructure Rebuild Team) which is essentially the horizontal and underground rebuild that makes the vertical, buildings going up rebuild possible.  SCIRT has recently passed its halfway point, see https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yrg8SnvSn0M and look out for Gareth, but that’s not even halfway to the city being rebuilt.  I think the general consensus is it …