Untitled Document

Good morning!

Hope you are all having a great weekend! Three more weeks until we are back home!!!! Four more weeks until Christmas! Hope most of you have your shopping underway!

This first picture made me laugh and laugh. It's just across the street from the Auckland City Library, I just needed to share it.

This Santa kind of freaks us out. It's on the corner of Queen Street and Victoria (I think) Whitcouls is a book store akin to Indigo. Borders is the huge (and a little more expensive) bookshop with a great selection, but I think I like Whitcouls more. Anyway, Santa winks and wiggles his finger. Catherine (girl from work) was saying she just loves that Santa. Admittedly, I look forward to seeing it while I walk down the main downtown drag . . .

A week or two ago, we went to the Brazillian Barbeque restaurant called WildFire with Alfredo and Melizza. It was a little pricey, but we got the cheaper deal. It was a lot of fun and the food was pretty good.

This weekend on Saturday was my work Christmas party. Three centres got the special invite to the Mecca Stonehouse in Mission Bay. SWANK! There is a tummy bug going around my centre (106 Remuera) so less than half the girls came :( I hope I don't get it!!!!! Anyway, if you want some names, it goes Lee, Catherine, Lynn, April, Carmelita, Ally. Lee has actually moved on to the Patey Street centre a week or so ago. . .but she can count for our Christmas group.

I work most closely with Catherine (in front) and Lynn (in the middle). Lynn is the head ECE. She's from South Africa and is very sweet. Catherine is leaving Bear Park at the end of the year. She wants to work closer to home (on the North Shore). She's already working in the Moreporks room and now Lynn and I have a new girl working with us. (I told you all we have massive staff turnovers where I'm at . . . three months and I'm working with a whole new team)

Sue is the lady who hired me and put this shindig together. She's great! High enthusiasm - super sweet - and a business woman. She didn't want me to take her picture so she's shooing me in this shot.

We all got a beautiful little gift bag which included a fabulous waterproof travel mat, body lotion (mine's orange and jasmine) and candles. I took a picture of the menu and food for Patrick's benefit, I don't know that too many other people would be interested, but it started out with an entree platter (calamari, smoked salmon, venison, spring rolls etc) then I ordered the goat cheese salad and had the watermelon sorbet for dessert. There were three wines to choose from.

We were right on the beach front, it was super swank and very absolutely one hundred percent lovely. You know your company cares about you when it gives you something like this around the holidays! Sue's the absolute best! She owns these centres, she started out teaching and then owning her first centre in Saint Heliers. She's going to be conglomerating two or three of the centres in a mega centre if all of the plans go through. I got to sit at a round table meeting on what we'd like to see in the new centre. It's pretty exciting stuff.

Yesterday we drove north again. We didn't make it to the northernmost tip, but we did finally see Whangarei and got as far as Russell. We got there just before five pm. No one, absolutely no one was open for dinner until six - and with the long drive home awaiting us, we were forced to bid adieu. It was pretty spectacular though. We keep getting side tracked on our way north, but we find some pretty interesting or beautiful things, so it's all good.

Much love, missing you millions!

Mom April

prev | index | next