..Even more Mangawhai!

We've been here for quite a while!

We spent 3 full days scrubbing the house with various harmful substances, turning it a glorious pink colour which we then painted over on Thursday. By Friday you could barely tell it was ever red - we'll attach pictoral evidence of this! Tuesday night I made homemade lemonade with Josh which was hard work - a full bag of home grown lemons turned up for us to squeeze and zest! On Wednesday evening we went to Chris' life group which was a good laugh as ever, and on Thursday night enjoyed another spa. The last coat of paint went on on Friday, followed by a spot of tent errecting and lawn mowing before Youth Group, which was great fun.

Suprisingly the Perkinsons had managed to line up another job for us, painting Char and Phill's fence on Saturday (Char didnt hear about the red incident until after she'd agreed!) so we went home with them after youth with 'just a quick' stop at the Chambers to watch cricket on their Sky. We met their turtle called Gladstone (after an english cricketer who Phill thinks looks like a turtle..he is slightly cricket mad) and enjoyed Billy's official 'comfiest night of the trip so far'. In the morning Char showed us how to work their amazing milkshake maker before setting off to work (Phill had a cricket match!). I spent the next 5 or 6 hours convincing Billy to keep painting rather than go make another milkshake. Fence painting went relatively smoothly, though we were glad there were no more ladders involved. Char returned at lunchtime, suprised to find Billy had cut down one of her trees, though apparently Phill always cuts things down without asking her! In the evening we made tasty homemade pizzas, watched a film and ate popcorn. We booked tickets to a Hurricanes vs Chiefs rugby match in Wellington which we're looking forward too.

Today we went to Church with Char and Phill and came back to the Perkinsons where we'll be staying until Thursday when we'll get a lift back down to Auckland (fingers crossed!). We've booked a surf lesson for tommorow which is exciting, though i'm already convinced i'll be awful!

The attached pictures are : The repaired house, the view, the weta bug we found one teatime, me doing some work (honest!), Billy riding the Perkinsons horse called Black, Billy enjoying his second Bennetts ice cream (though not of the day he'd like to add)

Lots of love,

Rosie and Billy

xxx