Mint, Makara & Mothers Day

This has been a lovely, albeit chilly weekend together with GeeGee. Saturday morning dawned bright and clear, which was a bit of a surprise after the deluge of rain we experienced on Friday. We headed off to the supermarket a little later than usual, and then decided to try our luck at the Maranui Surf Cafe for brunch. It would appear that half of Wellington had the same idea judging by the queue for a table, so we decided a bracing walk on Lyall beach would work up a good appetite, and in the end went to Mint Cafe at the retail park as it was a whole lot less crowded.



In the afternoon, our friends Tracey & Dayne popped in for a coffee and catch up, and then Noah & GeeGee watched Madagascar 2 whilst Mark and I tried to do a spot of troubleshooting on our main computer which has started running decidedly slow of late. Then after Noah was safely tucked up in bed, Mark and I went out to Damian Broadley's surprise 40th party, which Tracy his wife had done a sterling job of arranging without Damian being any the wiser.

I was greeted this morning by the sound of two sets of not so quiet footsteps coming up the stairs to give me a Mothers Day card and some Favourites chocolates...mmm...a lovely way to be greeted! After Mark turned his hand at making some delicious white chocolate, lemon and poppyseed biscuits we headed off to Makara Beach for a drive. The drive there is reasonably windy and travels through some quaint countryside, it really is like stepping back in time 50 years to see some of the houses and it feels like you could be hours from civilisation rather than just 10kms by car. It was brisk at the beach, and there were plenty of showers out to sea. We had fun watching the waves crashing on the shore and the noise of the waves dragging the pebbles over and over under the surf was quite incredible. Noah tried to emulate Daddy throwing pebbles in the water, whilst I stood a wee way back out of harm's way with the camera, as not all the pebbles ended up exactly where they were meant to!

Then it was home for coffees, biscuits and a spot of lunch. Whilst Noah napped, Mark headed out for a mountain bike ride (brave man in this chilly weather!), I think the sight of all the road cyclists on the road to Makara had inspired him to get out amongst it.

I'm hoping for a slightly less manic week ahead. The Integration team (me and 3 other senior managers) are right in the thick of trying to assist staff in negotiations around new employment agreements with as part of the imminent sale of M-co. My situation is further complicated as I'm going on leave in four month's time and our NZ legislation states that if you haven't worked for a company for six months, you're not eligible for 14 weeks governmental paid leave, let alone any extended leave (as I'm planning nine months off altogether). So there's a few little things to work through to ensure we as a family won't be any worse off before I agree to sign up, and there are other staff with their own individual circumstances who have their own challenges to work through too. But we'll get there!!

Once all the employment matters are resolved, it's then full steam ahead with physically relocating our 20 staff down the other end of the CBD, which is scheduled to happen before the end of June, only 6 weeks away! I've no doubt that the next few weeks are going to be reasonably full-on, but will just to have to take every day as it comes with a positive outlook and remember to keep asking for God's grace to keep it all in perspective!