Great Auntie Di

Di's sister's son and his wife have successfully produced a baby boy this morning, which makes Di a great aunt, and I guess me a great uncle. Huzzah! All the kids become first cousins once removed. I'm curious how they become cousins when someone removes them, but I wish they'd hurry up.

We came to the conclusion, after various spillages that coping without a table and balancing dinner on the arms of our new suite wasn't going to work. Di suggested that we buy some garden furniture which we could use in the garden once our table and chairs arrived in three weeks time. We'll need something when we star barbecuing when the summer weather reaches us - it's early spring at the moment. We'd seen a table + 4 chairs advertised in a Mitre 10 catalogue that had been poked through our letterbox or fallen out of a newspaper so we headed off to Papamoa to pay them a visit. Di was thinking that a table + 4 would do, I felt differently - there are 8 of us after all so we need at least 6 chairs, 4 would be useless really. Eventually we ended up over at the Warehouse, and decided to buy a glass topped patio table with 6 chairs. The chairs were not flat packed which together with the larger table meant that the Mirth Mobile was not going to be able to get them back chez nous.

The Shell garage in Papamoa rents out trailers for $25 for two hours, so we thought that this would be a reasonable means of getting it all home. I'd never driven with a trailer before. Going forward is no problem, but reversing is like wrestling a drunken pig. The trailer immediately takes on the persona of a supermarket trolley and goes where it damn well pleases which is not in the direction you want it to, and certainly not straight back. This makes for a very interesting time when you manage to drive round a car park and find yourself in a dead end where a 5 point turn is the only way out. The only solution is to get out and unhitch the trailer. The trip make to the Mount was uneventful, unlike the assembly of the table which it transpired had been badly manufactured and had a hole drilled in the wrong place and thus one leg is secured by one bolt, not two. It all seems to hold together OK and doesn't wobble too much.

After all this excitement we walked down to the beach and then in to town. The kids played in one of the park areas, using their mother for ballast and then we went to Burger King where we managed to score 10% discount for AA membership. Di buttered up the Burger King manager and extracted an application form from him with the intention of placing it under the unsuspecting nose of Sam, who seems to need a prod every once in a while in order to motivate her.

And finally, Freya and Imogen have latched on to the fact that the town of Whakatane is prounouced with an F, and are now repeating it ad nauseum knowing they can get away with it because the man on breakfast news says it. The novelty will wear off....