christmas in july!?!

laura jarrod gavin and claire hosted a christmas party.....in july! it was a great party. when i walked in i instantly forgot it wasnt winter in the states, where a christmas party would be quite logical. we all had on some sort of xmas apparel on and brought over a secret santa gift (i won a grow a boyfriend!) we ate like kings, as you can see in th photos. the table was filled with sushi, paua patties, crayfish,roasted veg, salmon, mutton bird...and more! it was a delicious evening filled with friends, food, and wine :)

fishing with eraana and squiz

looking back at these pics i feel a bit of excitement bubble in my tum....the weather has been rather grey and stormy for nearly two weeks now (heh im a bit behind on this blog).the fishing was great, as well as the company.and on our way home...DOLPHINS

dredging

well i am having issues with posting on my blog and lining up text with pictures, so they are out of order...but naturally i only associate with intellects so this will not be an issue :)

jack, loosey, serena, joel and i went dredging...which is another term for oystering. we drag a weighted net along the bottom of the deep flat sand and hopefully pull up some oysters. although serena and i were much more interested in the shells and sea stars :)




























on the way home i was the skipper of the ship! it was quite the setting, the bay in front of me, guiding my way....and the sun setting softly behind me

end of term projects

there is one school here in halfmoon bay. kath is the principle and bonnie the teacher. a total of 22 kids aged 5-13 attend class. not surprising (for this is the same trend as for adults) the boys out number the girls...only 4 girls this term! serena and i went to their end of term projects. they were very creative and informative about shipwrecks across nz. at the end they did a skit on weather and preformed a rap about bullying :)

cooking...errr drinking with serena

on this episode serena creates a red white and blue shooter :)
(what a thoughtful canadian!)

outing with kate and brett

kate and brett had some visitors so we went out on brett's boat. brett is one of the main fisherman on the island and gave us a tiki tour of the mussel and salmon farm. one of brett's friends went for a quick paua dive and came back with a handful they feasted on later that night.
the day ended with 3 dolphins playing in our wake!








this is at the salmon farm. we watched them feed the salmon. aggressive little dudes!

package from mama lew

got a lovely care package with some cool (and very random) tee shirts that i gave to my friends on the island....as well as yum candies, make up and toweals