Dave is extremely very useful

A domestic rather than sporting triumph this week!  As you know, Dave is good at that triathlon business when he's not busy being excellent at work, and he can also provide a comfortable location for bedtime milk-drinking as far as Harriet's concerned.

But that's not all.

Happy anniversary to us!

No, not this one:

A brace of birthdays

Reuben and Harriet have just celebrated their 8th and 2nd birthdays respectively.  We've just about cleared up the shredded wrapping paper and I've stopped finding hundreds and thousands dotted around the kitchen, so here are some pictures from the celebrations.

Tilly is a novelist

Our Tilly is a very creative girl.  Just recently she got busy with the paper and sellotape and made her own book.  And as a blank book is clearly in need of a story, she sat down and wrote one.  Ladies and gentlemen, we present:

Help we need a title!  If you can't think of a title for your book, then this is what you call it.  Genius.

Reuben is a chip off the old block

I'm afraid this latest video of Semple Burdekin antics has been hanging around for over a month,

What we have been eating recently 2

Number 2 in a very occasional series… I took the photos for this blog post and started writing it in September 2013.  But then - gaargh! - I lost the recipe and only discovered one that was as good as the original yesterday.  It's been tested and approved by Reuben and Tilly, so here you go:

Ruth Burdekin came to stay with us recently for a few days and brought some awesome cookie cutters with her, plus the cookie dough.  Cue a baking session with plenty of child appeal:

What's so good about these biscuits then?  Prepare to marvel at...

Only in NZ? Parliament discusses the colour of the PM's pubic hair!

Well. Since moving here, we've occasionally raised eyebrows at some of the stuff that comes out of the mouths of our elected representatives.  There was the time, for example, when Prime Minister John Key supposedly referred to David Beckham as 'thick as bat sh*t'.  'Don't think they'd say that in Westminster', we mutter.

Yesterday, it was John Key himself who was under discussion - or rather, the colour of the Prime Minister's hair and the all-important question: is it completely natural?  No it isn't, said opposition politician Winston Peters, who wanted to know: 'Why don't the curtains match the carpet?'

Apparently he was referring to an apparent difference in shade between the hair on the top of the PM's head and his sideburns, but that's not how it was understood in Parliament.  You can read the full story here.