Nearly Xmas

Hi folks.
The wotrd is coming back from the Northern Hemisphere that we have not done a blog in a while.
True!
And what could our excuse be as we are all on our summer holidays?
Fact is the less you have to do, the less you do.
Plus, the weather is great! Sorry to evryone who is struggling with snow in the UK and Europe. We have seen pics of harassed looking travellers getting stuck n Dover trying to flee blighty and being caught out by Eurostar problems, closed airports and buses not running.
Meanwhile we are having a drought here in Kaitaia. The ground is seriously dry. I have been cutting hayy with the scythe - keeps me fit- and it has been drying almosty to dust as it falls to the ground. The veggy garden requires constant irrigation to keep on producing. Getting some good crops from it mind. Tonight we had kahawai baked with home grown garlic and sorrel plus homegrown red poattaoes and sweetcorn (bought). Choice.

We spent the whole day stranded on Puketu island on the East coast. Stuart stayed home to make Star wars accessories. Paddy beat the 3hour tV and screen limit by staying over at Rubens. Eric came with us sans rod and acted as chief fish killer and gutter. We left at 5am and were fishing at daybreak at 6ish. Cool to spend so long fishing that you eventually have had enough and just watch the water and the wildlife and wait for the tide to drop enough to get back to the mainland.

The water was so calm at dawn, like a mill pond all the way out to sea. As the day warmed up a n onshore breeze developed that ended up chopping the water up. We brought home small kahawai and feasted on them. There were other fish rock cod and parore, but we threw them back.

A pair of Great black backed gulls watched us from a grassy ledge all day, calling constantly. Asd long as we were fairly stationary, they did not mind us, but if we walked about they would launch aerial assaults on us, dive bombing our heads and crying out. Puzzling behaviour as there were 2 together doing this and no sign of any nest or young. Round the other side of the island were a family of gulls complete with roly poly youngsters mewing away.

School finished for all of us a week ago, so we are in holiday mode full swing. The wake-up is stretching out later as everyone slowly unwinds. We will shortly be into breakfast happening post midday! Bring it on.

I want to load up pictures from this puter but have lost my Adobe photoshop cd that compresses the pictures to a small enough size to speed up theup and download.
Any one got any ideas on a free web based compression service or other solution?
Cheers
and heres to an update before we go back to school in February.
Stay warm you N hem peeps. How's about we swap you some of our warmth for some of your rain?