Today was St Heliers School End of Year Achievement Assembly. St Heliers is a primary and intermediate school catering for children up to year 8 (13 years of age). We chose the school on the basis of a meeting with the spectacularly impressive Craig McCarthney who had recently joined. St Heliers is a decile 6 school. Continue reading
Children
Sky Tower 10th Birthday
Sky Tower as seen from the living room of the house that came second in our shortlist.
The sky tower is 10 today (03/08/07 )so we headed into to town to take advantage of ‘children free’ and $5 (£2) for adults deal to enter the Sky tower At 328m high it is the tallest man-made structure in the Southern Hemisphere. The tower is part of the SkyCity casino and hotel complex. Continue reading
Industrial-Scale Netball
Netball grading at Howick Pakarangua netball centre
New Zealand regularly leads the World Netball rankings despite coming up against countries with far bigger populations to draw from. Netball is serious stuff in Auckland and today Ellie competed in her first Netball match. It is the start of the season so she has a series of games to grade the team she is so that it can be put into the most appropriate league. The grading takes place at the Howick Pakarangua Netball centre a short drive from St Heliers. Continue reading
First Day at School
Cari and Ellie in the St Heliers school uniform complete with sun hats
Ellie and Cari started at St Heliers school this week and Meg started across the road from the school in the kindergarten.
St Heliers school is a primary and intermediate school which means pupils attend from Year 1 to Year 8 (5 – 13 years old) before heading to secondary school. We chose the school (which in turn led to our choice of suburb and house) based on the impression left by the awesome headmaster Mr Craig McCartney. What an impressive bloke, clearly in control of the place, displaying incredible empathy with the children and parents and on a mission to deliver excellence.
Gillian Flies Home
So far Ruth and children experience of New Zealand has been an exciting holiday. Gillian, Ruth’s mother has been there to help out and the last two weeks have been spend exploring the area mine in with shopping for things that you need when you move into a new house (but on steroids given we’ve arrived with only the cases we brought not he plane).
Things are about to move up a gear as Ruth’s mother Gillian heads back to Wales.
We had a ‘last supper’ in a restaurant in mission bay on Friday evening a ‘last supper’ for Gillian who was flying back the next day.
The Arrival
L-R Meg (4), Ellie (8) and Cari (7 years old) at Mount Eden, Auckland.
So here we go. The moment of truth, its Friday and my wife (Ruth) and my daughters (Ellie, Cari and Meg) arrive. How will the react to New Zealand? I arrive at the Aukland airport at 08.35 to discover the plane had arrived 30 mins early. The processing time for arrivals is about 45 mins with 15 minutes of me arriving they arrived narrowly avoiding the doomsday scenario of them arriving and me not being there ! Continue reading
NewZealandly 