The new addition to the family, Lily is a Labrador/Huntaway cross. cute as pie and well behaved but having started out as an outside only dog the softies in the family have surreptiously wangled her a pass to the inside!!

the final leg, after five hours only another 8kms to the car park that is at the end of the road you can see on the flat at the bottom..

Olie holds court at one of the stops!

descending from Tongariro towards the Emerald Lakes where we had afternoon tea next to the sulphurous pools. mmmmm

looking across North Crater to Red Crater with Ngarahoe overlooking and Ruapehu in the distant. Not a bad view?

..oh and Alex forced me to take him out of school for the day too!

Briar at morning tea with Ngarahoe in the background

The snake forms at the beginning of the day, managed to finish the day with the same numbers we started with!

Next stop Olivers school summer camp to Mission Bay on Lake Taupo. Five days away form the family doing loads of dull stuff: Water skiing, high wires, paintball, archery, slug guns...abnd a day ling tramp over the Tongariro crossing. I joined them for the day and had a great time, neat to spend time doing this sort of thing with the kids and watching them interact with their peers, teachers and other adults.

NZ won the tournament and awarded all the attentive members of the crowd with a winners Haka.

End of day one we headed off for a slap up meal at Martin Bosleys' Yacht Club. A scruffy, little back street number that was awarded "restaurant of the Year " award by Cuisine magazine 2007! ( http://www.martin-bosley.com/ )Six Gordon Ramsays turning up obviously put the wind up the chef but he performed fairly well under pressure, not sure whether they will let us back in again. How would Sarah and Lino cope? So this is a little snap of us just after we signed a plate for Martin(Marty to his friends!) which now adorns his kitchen wall, and just before we were advised of the exit routes!!

Great weekend of the usual silliness, normal array of funny, silly, bizarre and surreal costumes but found ourselves sitting behind the same group of nuns that we sat next to four years ago. Just as irreverent as before!.............

..and once we got rid of the Woods(!) it was time for a short week at work and then down to Wellington for the NZ round of the International Sevens. Costumes this year were obligatory (three line whip from me!) so we cobled together a set of chefs whites and printed some F-word t-shirts and went as Gordon Ramsay!