Conor & Ildica's Place

Christmas 2011

Mon, 09 Jan 2012 13:11:37 +1200

Two weeks of action-packed adventure up at The Doug @ Castle Hill with Granny & Grandad Boyd. Highlights included a few bike trips along the Hogs Back Track, plus an overnight camp along the track with the kids, a great walk up the Bealey Valley at Arthurs Pass, and a family trip through the Cave Stream cave with a range of ages from (nearly) 7 to (nearly) 75! Our next door neighbour Stephen also kindly took me up for a tandem paraglide from the Mt Cheeseman Ski Area (unfortunately it would appear I’d partaken of too much Christmas food to be able to fly all the way back to the village – plus I was a bit nervous at times!)

Floor-tiling progress

Tue, 22 Nov 2011 15:06:04 +1200

We've now got pretty much all the floor tiles laid downstairs, with only really the pantry, control room & a couple of other miscellaneous tiles to do. After that, should just be a question of grouting and sealing the tiles. Great progress, with kind loan of almost all the required tiling equipment from Diana Adams, and help on the ground (literally!) from David Baird.

The wet tile-cutter does make quite a mess!

The Gateway to Castle Hill

Mon, 14 Nov 2011 09:12:22 +1200

Inbetween floor-tiling sessions, I took a quick jaunt up the Starvation Gully route above Porters Pass to Trig 'M' in the Korowai/Torlesse Conservation Area. There are great views over Lake Lyndon into the Castle Hill Basin, along the Lake Lyndon Road towards the Rakaia river, and back down Coach Stream towards Springfield.

Brighton Fireworks

Mon, 07 Nov 2011 12:52:43 +1200

We took the kids over to New Brighton to watch the Nov 5th Firework display, which was indeed spectacular. It’s a very popular event, but most people seemed to want to hang around at the back of the beach, which was perfect for the few photographers around who headed down to where the wet sand left by the outgoing tide was tailor-made for good reflections without the camera/photographer getting too wet!

Always enjoyable watching my council rates contributions going up in smoke...

Full gallery here.

Hororata Highland Games & the Trimble ‘Tug of War’ team

Mon, 07 Nov 2011 09:20:51 +1200

The village of Hororata across the Canterbury Plains was holding it's inaugural Highland Games this weekend to raise funds for the community there to recover from the "Darfield" earthquake in September 2010. Trimble got a last minute call from MoreFM to enter a team in the Tug of War competition but, after getting through the heats unbeaten, our team went out with a small whimper in the semi-finals. Great day out, with plenty to see and do, including Highland dancing, pipe bands, fairground rides, etc.

Kudos to Cam, Geoff, Ildica, Jason, Jonathan, Mark, Michael, Neil, Norman, Pat & Steve! And Pat’s Highland dancing girls, Isla & Mhairi.

Full gallery here.

Bealey Spur

Tue, 25 Oct 2011 14:29:18 +1200

Great spring walk up Bealey Spur with the Maddigans & Monique from Castle Hill.

Diary of a Demo

Fri, 07 Oct 2011 13:07:28 +1200

Over the last month, Nikau Construction have been demolishing the shell of Trimble's Building One here in Christchurch which was gutted by fire back in May. It's been fascinating to watch, although a little unnerving when it's often difficult to distinguish one of our (fortunately diminishing!) aftershocks from a heavy piece of concrete crumbling to the ground just outside. It may well take about 18 months before it's replacement is complete.

Full gallery here.

Ohau Retro-style

Tue, 06 Sep 2011 15:02:44 +1200

Our neighbours, Paul & Amanda, at Castle Hill invited us to join them down at Lake Ohau for an extended 40th birthday gathering with a retro-theme, and the retro-style competition both on and off the slopes was hard to beat. Fantastic calm blue-sky day on the Saturday for a barbeque on the slopes with the mother-of-all-barbeques arriving on it’s own wheels. It’s getting harder and harder to keep up with Evie on the slopes, and Conor, Ildica & Evie all had some (mostly successful) attempts at the snowboard box jump! Ohau Ski Field is an awesome location, would love to go back sometime when it’s got more snow.

Winter Fun with Auntie Boo

Mon, 22 Aug 2011 12:32:45 +1200

With around 40cm of snow falling in Castle Hill village the week Ildica's sister came to visit, what better time to head up to get a weekend's skiing in? After a -11^o start on Saturday morning, cloudless, calm, blue-sky days couldn't have been better. Porters was still looking bare in places, but still a lot of fun. And some great exploring round the village in the snow as well.

Winter holidays

Sun, 24 Jul 2011 21:19:58 +1200

After turning up to The Doug to find water cascading through the downstairs light fittings (due to more crappy plumbing work), the first week of the school holidays turned out to be blessed by great weather and a reasonable amount of snow. Got the house dried out within 48 hours (thanks to Tony from Enviroclean, who claimed his industrial wet-vac could "suck a sailor off your sister"), and settled the kids into 5 mornings of ski school at Porters where by the end of the week, we are now almost struggling to keep up with Evie on all the pistes there. Just in time for the latter half of the week, Granny & Grandad had sent over some funky helmet covers from Headztrong which the kids loved.

Winter is here (finally!)

Mon, 11 Jul 2011 22:40:16 +1200

While the forecast was pretty rough for this weekend (apart from the hope that that meant some snow might arrive!), we took a punt and went up for the weekend, and while Saturday was pretty miserable, Sunday dawned pretty nice, and the kids were rapt to find about 6-8cm of snow carpeting the village.

Olympia Invitational Gym Competition

Mon, 04 Jul 2011 22:12:00 +1200

Evie competed in the Olympia Invitational event here in Christchurch, against three older, more experienced girls in Stage II. She performed well, although still rusty in places due to lack of practice in such a disrupted year. She’s still loving her gymnastics.

More fitout progress and the aftermath of a blizzard

Sun, 03 Jul 2011 22:33:00 +1200

Amidst some icy blasts and 5 power cuts (probably due to lightning strikes somewhere else), we kept on keepin' on in terms of working on the myriad of outstanding tasks.

South Christchurch Schools Music Festival

Fri, 01 Jul 2011 17:41:06 +1200

Evie's a member of the St Martins School Choir which this week took part in the South Christchurch Schools Music Festival along with a number of other schools.

Practising with a Canon 7D

Thu, 30 Jun 2011 16:54:09 +1200

One of my colleagues at work, Greg, was kind enough to lend me his Canon 7D for Evie's next gym competition this weekend, so I took it along to her gym club for a practice last night. These are taken at ISO3200, which is about 4 times faster than the maximum ISO I would take with my old Canon 350D. It really is gloomy in the school hall in which they practice, but these came out pretty well - the high ISO capabilities and accurate auto-focus of the 7D really are a step up from my 350D. Still, I hope there's more light in the gymnasium at Villa Maria this weekend for the competition and that I can get some reasonable shots...