I have been living in Christchurch, New Zealand for six months since yesterday.  This feels like it should be an anniversary that is marked in some way so I thought I would write a blog about England, or rather my missing England. For the first five months of being here I didn’t miss England, which is testament to just how wonderful the welcome to New Zealand has been.  This place is beautiful, their way of life suits us perfectly and the people have been more welcoming than any other bunch of strangers I have ever met in my life – and I’ve been to a few new places in my time.  But about a month ago I started experiencing the odd melancholy feeling for my homeland and in the most curious moments. The first one was brought on by Postman Pat.  My son requested it, well actually he pointed at the DVD shelves and said ‘pat pat pat’ which I translated as wanting to watch Postman Pat but I’ve since deduced that he uses this …

September 2011 to September 2012 has been a long Autumn-Winter-Autumn-Winter, so to see blossom on the trees lining Hagley Park, Christchurch has been a very wonderful thing.  So wonderful I joined the tourists one afternoon and took photos of my children in the middle of this sunny magic. What I’m really excited about is my little boy venturing into the world of walking in this warm, dry weather, which has timed perfectly with the inevitable tumbles and falls he’ll be taking over the coming months as he finds his feet. There’s something so uplifting about the sun that it makes us all much happier.  Minnie has stopped squirming at the camera, which means I can stick her in a tree, point the lense her way and still get a smile. Taking photos of Jackson is a little trickier.  To be honest I would have tried propping him in a tree too but I think the people walking by would have frowned on it and the ever present policemen of Christchurch would have definitely pulled over …

I don’t know what I was thinking when I said I would start a healthy eating campaign the day after we moved into our new home, with no furniture, no heating, in the middle of winter with two small children.  I am now confessing that nothing changed on the 1st of July, in fact things may have got worse for the first ten days when we spent every night unpacking and building furniture – we ate chocolate constantly. So here we are on the 29th of July and I think I may be able to go on some level of a diet.  It helps that my husband is also keen to tone up – we are fighting the jabber together. Here it is, the seven point plan: exercise at least four times a week (Gareth gets this automatically with his hour of cycling to work and back!) strictly no sweets and chocolate (unless they are a gift, then that would be rude to refuse) moderate consumption of my baking (I do it for the children …

Haven’t blogged for a few weeks, but I’ve been busy.  Moved into our Christchurch house on our ten year wedding anniversary (boy that was romantic), unpacked and built furniture for two weeks, turned 36 (feeling pretty melancholy about that) and had a week of Jackson being ill/teething (because he always does them at the same time). For the last few days I have started to have this unusual feeling, the feeling of being home.  We’re here to stay (don’t panic mum, not forever), we don’t have plans to move, this isn’t temporary, we can live our life.  Obviously we haven’t stopped living in the last nine months – I am shattered from all the life we’ve been living!  What I mean is we can build a routine, we can create a home and take time to watch our children grow up with time left over to pick up hobbies and spend time with friends. I’m excited. And for those of you who would like to see this home we’re making for ourselves… Come and have …

In cafes over here, when you order a muffin, they ask if you want it warmed with butter – weird.  But that’s not the muffin this blog is about. One of the problems with two winters in a row (there are too many to mention on one blog) is that you miss that time in 12 months where you are motivated and enabled to lose the jabber that appears over the cold, dark months. This coupled with the fact that we have lived in temporary homes for that whole time (meaning we are without all of our belongings, my exercise “stuff” being part of the packed up things) I have really struggled to keep off the winter padding – the hips don’t lie. Now we are two weeks away from moving into our new house (please God let it be so), 48 hours from the nights getting shorter and 22 days from me turning 36, which rather depressingly means I’m closer to 40 than 30 in this decade. Ergo THE MUFFIN (TOP) MUST GO! I …

I am so over them. Gareth and I have had to work hard over the last ten years of marriage (that’s right, coming up to a decade of The Cowlzies) to find harmony when it comes to spending money.  We come with very different ideas so the work is meeting in the middle or closer to one of our ends, but we meet and that’s worth working at. Most of the time we just have to make decisions about one purchase and it’s not for a huge amount of money, so agreement is found argument free-ish.  However, since coming to New Zealand it’s all about the big stuff; renting a house, buying a house, buying a car and now, how to spend the set amount of money we have left after the purchase of the house to make it liveable.  The list looks like this: washing machine tumble dryer (so necessary in the land of no central heating) fridge/freezer two sofas spare double bed for visitors a proper bed for Big Girl Minnie a gate …