Images from January

January 2012

Our tent at Orewa

Its been sometime since I posted some info on our family blog so here goes. Since Christmas camping at Coromandel we have been to Orewa twice and started back to school.

A view from our tent

Orewa beach is a massive snady beach north of Auckland with a top ten campsite which has everything. Each time we have been there we have been surprised at the weather and have extended our stay. On our last visit we met a woman who had emigrated from Bridgend in 1970 and now lives in Drury. She heard me speaking and immediately came over to introduce herself as Welsh migrant it was quite a moment especially when she said she used to live in Porthcawl and went to the girls Grammar school. She had been back to Wales in 2008, but things had changed so much. Needless to say her opinion of NZ hadn't changed - it is better than Wales!

Orewa beach

We have also have completed one year here in NZ.


My school has also gained the best ever ERO report in its history and I am enjoying developing 'real' technology at the school.

Amelia has been to yet another camp to Motatapu island not far from Rangitoto extinct volcano.

Ellen has been rewarded at school for competency in English both reading and writing and Hannah is about to start at Cockle bay school, she is now 5 years old.

Here is one more achievement; Amelia, Joanne and I have been confirmed as Catholics. I have taken the name Patrick whi incidentally is the patron saint of Ireland, Nigeria and Engineers - coincidence? I think not. Joanne also took the name Veronica as her confirmation name and unbeknown to us this is my Aunty Margaret's confirmation name too!

In this image you can see a marine reserve called 'Goat Island' the snorkelling here is to die for and the flat bottomed boat trip is well worth the money, but make sure you go after a few day of calm weather like we did. Rough weather turns up the sand and the visibility is low. We went when visibility was really good. The snapper on this reserve were huge and I mean 30 years old huge. A fabulous place.

The girls took in all of the information from the tour on the glass bottomed boat and are now familiar with the species of fish that inhabit these waters. The snorkelling was amazing and I just couldn't get out of the water. Amelia was amazed at the size of the fish as we swam from the shore to the island you can see at the top of the picture.

One piece of advice, feeding the fish is not encouraged, butu fish like frozen peas!

Goat Island

The glass bottomed boat at Goat Island

Camping

On boxing day we went camping for 4 days to the Coromadel. This is an area, peninsula, in the North Isalnd 3hrs from Auckland. The car was packed to the rafters, oil, tyres and water checked and we headed off. After about an hour I heard a loud rumbling coming from the back of teh car. Yes it was a flat tyre. So I pulled over and we unloaded everything to get the spare out. Chnaged the wheel loaded back up and off to go. Unfortunately the spare tyre, being thinner than the standard wheel took its tool on the shock absorber and the shock went. We limped about Coromadel but had a great time when we were there. Here are some of our images. We stayed at Shelly Beach in Coromandel.

Here we are:

Christmas 2011

Well this year has certainly been ground breaking for the Caudys. We have re rooted ourselves in New Zealand and have found new friends and adventures to follow. We had been concerned that this Christmas the children will miss family and so would we. However, with modern technology we had aunty in the room when the girls were openign their presents and for dinner we were 15. Amelia even started a game of international swing ball with our guests. For dinner we had kiwis, south Africans and ofcourse the Welsh/kiwi contingent. The weatehr was kind to us and we could have our dinner out on the deck. Some images from the day below...

New Pages Added

New images have been added at a new page thanks to Iwan. Images have been uploaded to http://caudys.weebly.com this is a free service which has the facility to make gallery pages more easily than the blog. 

On the home page I have added images of the brightest rainbow we have ever seen. Images of Hannah's kindy christmas party and images of the dance festival at Cockle bay school and Amelia's Graduation Video which is well worth a look.

Click here for the pages http://caudys.weebly.com