Going Bush

Well Neil has had a very adventurous and energetic couple of weeks. He left early on a Monday morning with our very Kiwi friend, Ed, heading to a true Kiwi experience shooting, fishing and tramping. They had a three hour drive across 4WD only 'road' to get to the middle of nowhere (actually Lake Sumner) where they then had to finish the journey by boat across the lake to their accomodation. This consisted of a boatshed which had the facility for lighting & cooking but no toilet! I ask you - I mean I love my food and being able to see at night is important but not having to use a shovel is definitely higher on my list of priorities. The weather was absolutely shocking (the second excellent reason why Matthew and I stayed home) but they had great time and the fishing was far more successful than the shooting - I'm looking forward to tasting the trout.

The night before Neil went away, Matthew was up several times so I think Neil left slightly anxious that he'd come back to completely wrecked wife. However Matthew seemed to get whatever it was out of his system and we had a great couple of days, including flitting around getting organised for the arrival of family (more of that in the next installment), a reassuring first trip to the doctors for Matthew (he had quite a disturbing rattle on his chest which he was totally not bothered about, it was just his parents he thought it didn't sound quite right. Needless to say he's fine and it's cleared up now) and an awesome time with our youth at their small group. The strangest thing was not being able to share it with Neil at the time; he was out of mobile phone range and it was interesting to realise how much we're used to at least being in touch by text.