So Much work and so little time! under pressure knowing we had a holiday planned!

Camping 2012- 2013

This year we took on Mum and Dads old caravan as a project!! turned out to be quite a bigger project than expected....The floor was rotten in parts so John totally gutted the old girl and re floored, re plumbed,painted and all the electrical stuff updated to safety standards!!! I made new curtains and loaded her up to go on it's first ever family holiday...this caravan had never gone far in its life...from CHCH to Akaroa to Le Bons to Akaroa and then to Le Bons for over 20 years of doing not much...so for a 1973ish caravan this really was her first Holiday.....We went to Frans on Xmas eve for the night and spent xmas day at their place with Mum and Dad and Carmen and Waz and Family and Frannie and P and family...lovely day had by all...Allie and co were in Aussie this xmas.

On Boxing day we traveled down to Geraldine and stayed at Grumpys retreat...at first glance we thought it wasn't quite the right spot for us but as we had booked felt we had better make the most of it as going anywhere else and expecting to get a booking would have been impossible! It was the old school just out of Geraldine...anyway it had great clean facilities and was safe for the kids,. We made the most of having a base there and spent our days touring around...Jade and Hayley came for 4 nights .Fran and Paula and the kids came for a day, as did Brian and Sandra, Pam and Tim and Nan and Ellie and Freya....we had absolutely crazy weather and it rained every day at some stage of the day!!! Major rain a couple of times and some mighty thunder!!! We loved heading up to Te Mona Gorge and swimming in a lovely roadside pool.All in all a great crazy weather holiday!! All fun until on the way home the wheel fell off the caravan on the Motokorara turn off!! Was very stressful as we were close to the intersection and had the caravan stuck on the road for about 2 hours...Good old John sorted it out eventually, but we did have to leave it in a paddock until the start of the week when John could go into town and get a new wheel rim...

In the land of bees and honey!!!!

WOW! John was keen to get some bees and for us to have our own honey....so he got busy reading and attended a few meetings at the bee club in the city and we haven't looked back since!...We got our first hive up and running in September and by late January have harvested our first lot of real Genuine Le Bons Bay honey ....mmmmmmm  yum. We now have 2 hives as shortly after establishing hive number 1 we received  a call from Doog Menzies saying he had a swarm in a tree at his place...Brave John in his suit climbed a ladder and knocked the swarm into a cardboard box and came home and talked them into making hive number 2 their home...so far so good, we will take honey from them next year as they had to make a home from scratch so we have left them to it and will take honey next season. Mind you we have both had a few stings but guess that is part of owning bees.