Meri Kirihimete

Our Christmas wishes to you all

Sam (& Jan in the USA)

News from Nelson - December 2016

Hello everyone,

Welcome to the December edition of our family news... a fairly quiet month, which must come as a surprise to all of you :-)

It was Di M's Dad's memorial service early in the month, and my folks and I went to farewell him properly.

John has arrived back from the UK, and is staying with us until February, as the cottage in Waimea West has been rented out. Bonnie was beside herself to see him again.

Ian & Sharon came out for a weekend to go through our Nullarbor photos and videos. Ian and I spent the Saturday afternoon putting together a Momento photobook of our Nullarbor train journey in August, which I have since turned into a flipbook. This can be viewed here.

We caught up with the Cools's at our place for lunch in December, which was great. Renate always brings such GOOD cakes (though I simply admire their flawless construction now as I can't eat them - because of the no sugar, no grains thing).

Speaking of that, at this day of writing, 3 January, I am 210 days migraine free. I have also learned that even a small-ish amount of sugar will give me a headache.

Let me explain. I pretty much had a continuous headache since I was 11 until mid-May 2016. I would stop having a headache just before I got a migraine (actually, when I told the just-ex-neurologist from the Nelson Marlborough District Health Board - DHB - that, he basically told me I was imagining it. Cute).

From Angela Stanton's work (here), I am now aware that, as a migraine sufferer, I seem to have a fructose-glucose-sucrose intolerance, just a small amount will give me a headache. Justine kindly brought some Kendall Mint Cake out from the UK for me when she came in November. If I have one piece, I now find that about an hour later, I get a headache. So I salt (following the Stanton Migraine Protocol) and it goes away. I can eat a third of a piece with no ill effects at all, however.

I have been experimenting a bit with other things. I have found my limit for boysenberries. I had 12 boysenberries with plain whipped cream. About an hour later I got a headache (not a migraine). I salted to correct, and the headache went away. The next day, I tried 6 boysenberries. Got a headache an hour later. Salted. Next day, I tried 4. No reaction, so I now know I can eat 4 boysenberries a day without effect. That is my sugar tolerance... not a lot, but at least I know I can have some.

And I can still eat dark chocolate, providing it really is dark without much sugar. Mmm. Whittaker's Dark Almond...

We went up to Welly for Tina's birthday, staying at Jeremy's place. We went out to see Hartmut and Uta on the Friday night, then caught up with a load of friends - Hui-Ping, Mike & Birthe, Katherine and Craig, and Sam & Moose - at Prefab for Brunch on the Saturday morning (a GREAT place for food and coffee).

Jan & I also went to Te Papa and had a scout around at the Gallipoli exhibition.

It was great to see Jörg, Tony and Tanja who had flown in for Tina's 50th birthday party, as well as catching up with everyone else. John D did a great piece of verse about Tina, and both Jörg and Otto did speeches (Otto's was very polished for such a young man!), as well as a couple of Tina's school friends (Maryanne and LT).

Lara and I talked about fitbits, as she was keen to get one with her Christmas money. I talked about how I use mine, and how I find it useful, and where I find it not so useful. She got one for Christmas, and is now starting to use it. She is coming down later this week, so we will share how we are finding the technology works for us.

Jan had his first week with the DHB, and has enjoyed the difference. He is now enjoying the first Christmas - New Year period that he has had off in a long time. 

I got approval as a PhD candidate at Griffith, though I will have to have my proposal and a peer reviewed publication before confirmation (which will be 12 to 18 months in). It is an interesting idea, ensuring that there is already one publication out of the proposal before confirmation. Good hedging, on their behalf, and I can only see it as a benefit from my end too. An early test of ideas, rigour and method. 

Jan & I had a very quiet Christmas: we got in some boysenberries and sloughed around being lazy. watching movies and relaxing on our own. Jan also couldn't resist getting the chainsaw and the brushcutter out, and felling half a dozen pine trees ready for winter. It was Christmas Day that I learned that 12 boysenberries are too many for me.

Boxing Day we drove down to Christchurch and picked up Boo from Erik and Jackie. Boo is a retired show dog who, at seven, was needing a new home - Gr Ch Quasar Tit for Tat: or Boo, for short. While we were there, we had a BBQ at Wendy's place, with Geia and Tjibbe, so caught up with almost the whole family.

Boo seems very cruisy thus far - she and Bonnie seem to be learning to get along pretty well, but like most things, it will take time to find out how well. She is starting to get called Boosephine. Or Boozilla.

Sam and Moose came to visit while they were in Nelson, which was lovely. Gary and KB came to visit briefly, and took Jan away for a morning as their driver so they could go kayaking on the Motueka River. A great time was had by all.

We also hopped on the bike and went to Murchison to see Gary and KB for dinner at the Lazy Cow: and I invented a new game that I have dubbed "Rephrase Scrabble". When we arrived at the table, there was a wooden board with scrabble letters on it, saying "Six thirty, Karen". I grabbed it and reorganised the letters into different words, took a photo, and passed it to Jan. Each of us took a turn. It was really, really fun.

So on New Year's eve, we did the same thing when the party started to get a bit quiet (I asked people for a phrase to get us started - I got "Good as gold, eh" but I substituted 'aye' as it gave a wee bit more flexibility! My rules ;-D). We didn't have so many people here this year for our party: Stu and Anne, my folks, Glenys and Kevin, John, Nane (a young German woman who is spending 6 weeks travelling around NZ, the Cooks and Australia, and who came to stay with us over New Year), Jan, Renate, Kilian and Sarah, and a few others came for dinner and dessert: then we had a later influx of Rose Road people - Margot and Michel, with their relatives and children, and Ian M. However, we did manage to stay up until 1.30am :-)

New Year's day dawned a little cloudy, but was fine as the day progressed.

As mentioned, we have Otto and Lara arriving later this week, which will be great. Then we have lots of time for relaxing, and, in my case, thinking and writing.

Happy birthdays to Christian O, Kevin J, Andreas S, Tanja, John F, Nicki, and Tamara.

Take care, and we hope to catch up with you all this year!


Sam (& Jan)

Meri Kirihimete everyone!

Must be nearly Christmas! Meri Kirihimete, everyone! 

We hope you have a fabulous and restorative break with friends and family. Celebrate, laugh and be merry, for another year is almost upon us! 

Enjoy your time together, relax, reflect, be kind and hug. Tell stories.  Share failures and pleasures, make resolutions and wishes. Be creative, adventurous, fanciful and realistic. Critique less. Praise more. Want less. Do more. Love as much as you can.

We all have so much to be grateful for, let your thankfulness show for the universe that brings us together for this brief and wonderful moment in time :-)

Love and best wishes

Jan & Sam

(thanks to AirNZ and Ronan Keating for "Summer Wonderland", and NMIT for the image)

Christmas in the Kuwilsky-Young Household

I had bought bars of organic, fair trade dark and milk chocolate for everyone from a colleague of mine, Nic John, who is starting up his own business: Divine chocolate. I designed the wrapper, which Nic suggested could work well if cropped to a heart-shape. So I spent Christmas eve cutting and cropping our Christmas present wrapping.

Barb stayed with us over Christmas, and we had a pretty relaxing time. I started Christmas day with a walk up Christian's hill. The view was pretty good!

Barb, Mike, my folks, Tessa, Matty & baby Izzy arrived for Christmas present opening at Rose Road, with a waffle brunch. Donna was unfortunately working, so only joined us later on, at her family's new business at St Arnaud.

And of course we sang commercials. Because we can. Including the Kentucky Fried Chicken ad.

That was followed by lunner (has to be lunner as it was too late for lunch, but too early for dinner) up at Lake Rotoiti with Donna's family.

Barb brought up her game, Cards Against Humanity. We had a hilarious time playing it: pants-wettingly funny. Charlie had possibly over-indulged in some of the local hop products, with the result that his attempts at reading out the cards had us in stitches. He should have perhaps borrowed my glasses, but all-in-all it was more fun without!

Jan & I took Katie & Lily to the lake for a swim - though it was QUITE cold in the lake. The sandflies were - as usual - vicious; however, we also got introduced to the concept of a roll-on deet stick which was pretty cool. 

Below is a video of some of the happenings:



Jan & Sam

2015 Christmas Greetings

I made a Christmas video based on our year, which can be viewed below:

May the summer break be restful for you all, and give you recharge time with your friends and families


Jan & Sam

Our Christmas Video Card

Our Christmas card, showing some large events of this year, is viewable here:


Sam

News from Nelson - December 2014

Hi everyone,
In the past few weeks we have been a little less busy at work, which has been wonderful. it is the time of year where we have had several Christmas work functions to go to. Most of my work functions have been lunches, which have been a great time to catch up and talk - almost for the first time this year. Very enjoyable.

We have managed to get some jobs around the house done, particularly Warren and Jan flattening out around the house, putting down weed matting and covering it in shell. This means that there will be no great ocean of waist-high grass right up to the back door in summer; no more knotted hose-pipes tangled up in the weeds; no more hidden bark berries ready for unwary jandalled feet. I even got enthusiastic and bought a petanque set so we can enjoy the crunch underfoot outside in the lovely long summer evenings. I do need to buy one of those old hand lawn rollers though to flatten it all out (you know, those ones full of concrete ;-D). The work that Jan & Warren did is viewable here:


I have completed my Semester two marking, filing, and getting ready for moderation... just in time to start teaching summer school online (one day cross-over only). Additionally, my workload is not too bad as I have just discovered that there is a FAQ page function in NMIT Online/Moodle (I wish I had known about this three years ago!). I have been posting Q&A from my current and previous students, and asking my students to check here first before posting new questions. The FAQ page is proving to be a fantastic resource, and I think has already reduced my email load by half (despite there being 34 students enrolled).

We had a great wedding anniversary bash, with DJ & Dilani coming down for a few days. Jenny came up from Christchurch which was fabulous too. We bought ourselves an anniversary present of two sets of Katie Gold candle sticks:

Amy H did a stellar job of filming our wedding anniversary celebrations. If you haven't viewed this yet, check it out:

Oma Friedel's former neighbour, Frau Steinmann, was killed in a car accident in Germany yesterday (Saturday), which was very sad. There is an article here.

Eberhard sent us a photo of the Ulm Munster, lit up for Christmas:

Keeping it brief this time as we are about to head out to a Rose Road Christmas BBQ at the Whitten's.

We head up to Welly on 24 December for Christmas with Brigitte and John, Jeremy & Tina, Otto and Lara. John will be looking after the dogs while we are away. Lara & Otto are coming for a few days from the end of December to the beginning of January. I think Hartmut & Uta will be coming down to us at the end of January for a visit and to take in some of the Adam Chamber Music Festival.

Our next time away may well be April, heading for Sao Paulo!

Sam (& Jan)

Merry Christmas & Happy New Year

Hi all,
We would like to wish all of our friends & family a merry Christmas & a happy New Year:

More news to come in the next couple of weeks. I popped a tendon on my wrist a couple of weeks ago which has held up my writing for a while.

Have a great summer!


Jan & Sam

News from Nelson - January 2013

Hi all,
Again, things are a bit busy, so will mostly post images :-)

Camila has sadly left us, but has received a great welcome at home.

She also took a lovely photo of her journey home across the Pacific:

And had a good send-off at the airport with other exchange students

 And her host parents

And her friend Lydia

And the dogs

We hosted three other exchange students for the week before Camila left (they played pool and watched rather a lot of movies!). Kazu made us sushi, which was great, with able apprentices Camila and Timo:

We had a great New Year's eve celebration, with about 30 people here at various times. We saw the New Year in, had our chat with Andreas, Katrin & Christian and went to bed for a lovely long sleep :-)

On Christmas Day we had 13 people here for lunch and dinner. It was a very relaxed affair, with Frits' sister and her husband here from Holland, Kathleen, Amy, Camila, Andreas, Katrin & Christian and my folks. We had a very laid back and relaxed day having cooked a barbecue covering two meals, with a walk up our neighbour Christian's hill in between time. Camila and her friend Karin dressed the Christmas tree. We had a bit of a house-full with Camila, Andreas, Katrin & Christian all tucked up in bed for the night (those two small fold-out couches I bought from Nood did great duty as single beds!).
 
Magda came up for Christmas, so we were able to catch up for lunch during the break. We have also caught up with the Hofmans, and had a lovely lunch at Ellie & Greg's place along with Duncan & Kel.

Hartmut has had an accident with his wood-lathe but is OK. A piece of wood broke, but as he wears safety goggles, he was saved serious injury. A good reminder that safety equipment is worth it! 

Bonnie had an eye ulcer, but it has healed well, now; after a trip every three days to the vet, for three weeks. Phew. Fliss is getting very frail.

We hope all of you are having a good 2013 thus far, and we will catch up with you more fully as the year unfolds

All the best

Jan & Sam

News from Nelson, Christmas Day 2012

Hi all,
Sorry not to update you recently: we have been very busy. Our Christmas greetings card link is in the links box on the top right of our landing page - the map stolen shamelessly from AirNZ's Kia Ora magazine cover for December this year :-)

Justine came for four days, which was great. Amongst many other things we did, she took some photos from the top of Christian's hill, which I stitched into this panorama:

Andreas, Katrin & Christian are here from Eppingen, and we have had a lovely time together with Justine and Camila as well.

Camila's friend Karin came to stay a few times, and the girls managed to entertain themselves well in the country :-)

Will post some more news later on, but we hope you all have a fabulous family Christmas and a prosperous New Year, and hope to catch up with as many of you as we can in 2013!

Jan & Sam

News from Nelson – December 2 2011

Hi everyone,

No probs for us with the storms, but quite a few Nelson and Tasman people got stickered. Most were told they were OK or not on the 23rd, so many were allowed back in to their houses for Christmas, which was great (Kel & Dunc, Ellie & Greg). I think there is still about 40 houses which are still red stickered. Horrible for their owners, but I think the councils have been appropriately cautious. The Chch experience has provided a good assessment process, and many of the Nelson & Tasman staff have helped out in Chch so are well aware of how that process should work. Logging and land clearance was the cause of a lot of the slips :-(

I am teaching summer school, and so went from finishing one course to starting another over a weekend. I started with over 100 students, but this has whittled down to 80 as they have found the course a lot more demanding than they thought. The course runs in just under half the time as a 'normal' semester (the same learning packed into seven weeks over summer as is normally delivered in 15). My new tutorial assistant is going well, and coping with the workload, so that’s all good.

In addition, I am trying to get a head-start on my Masters study, and am finding that quite hard to get onto with everything else that is going on.

Jan’s search for an Electrical Engineer continues – no bites still. In the New Year he has some different tactics to apply, and will see if they net any results. 

The house is slowly getting finished off; Jan has been terminating all the data points in the house, and has put up some more smoke alarms. We still have to seal the back of the laundry bench, then we will nearly be at the stage where we can get our CCC. However, our builder has to come back and do a couple of fixer-uppers for us early in the New Year. Then we can have the Inspector back for a final check.

We had a lovely Christmas Eve celebration with Tina & Jeremy, Otto & Lara. They have come to stay for ten days or so, On Christmas day, my folks, my brother and my sister were all here for the first time in ages. We had a very relaxing day with a BBQ and salads (and Christmas cake, of course!), except for poor Tina, who had a cold. Uncle Norman was not well enough to make it, which was pity, and Tessa couldn’t come down as she has damaged her knee.

John has escaped and headed up north to house sit for a friend for ten days. However, in a couple of days Tanja arrives with Lars and a friend of hers, Adrian (whom we haven’t met yet). So we will have a house full! 

We have caught up with Jenny L who is at her folk’s place over Christmas, and hope to see Megan, Sam & Moose and Gary & Karen whom we think are all in Nelson for the break too.

Jan & I are up in Welly for the weekend of the 10th of Feb, and yes, it would be great to catch up with anyone who is around. We will be flying over but should be able to borrow one of Tina or Jeremy's cars so will be somewhat mobile. We have a few trips to Welly planned next year.

Also a party at our place on New Year’s eve – about 6pm onwards. BBQ, BYO. All welcome :-)

Right – I think that’s all for now, aside from wishing all the party season’s birthday people a wonderful coming year: Gareth, Christél, Wayne, Christian, and Jennie.

Catch you all again soon.

Alles liebe!

Jan Kuwilsky & Sam Young

Season's Greetings Everyone!

Hi all,
Attached is our summer greetings card to all of you. Enjoy a wonderful summer, and we hope you are all fully recharged for a fantastic 2012 :-)

xxx

Jan & Sam
(and Fliss & Coco ...& Bonnie)

News from Nelson - January 2011

Well, what a busy few weeks we have had. We are both well; Jan narrowly skirted getting a summer cold, but it didn’t quite eventuate. Jan’s work isn’t too busy, and my study has reached a stall-point as I am waiting for my next lot of materials to be sent to me, and I have completed all the on-line work available. So for the next couple of days, I guess I have to read a few books and go for some walks instead.

We are still battling the gorse in the gully, and we now have a large pile of it against our shed, drying out to burn in autumn once the fire danger is low and we can get a fire permit.

Not only do we have cars in our garage, we also have one wine rack built and full of bottles. Jan did a great job welding last weekend, and we stocked it up. That has freed up a lot of space in the cellar, though we still have one more rack to build, and then some benches and shelves down there before we are really organised. There is still some timber and a few remaining workshop items in the garage that need to go across to the shed.

Our new tandem axle trailer arrived from Briford in Christchurch just before Christmas, which was great. Jan managed to clear some space in the shed for it, so it is stored out of the rain.

We have had lots of visitors – in the past week we have had Kathleen & Frits and John F for an overnight; Megs, Will & Emily along with Noreen & Paul and Max & Karen on New Year’s Day for brunch; Hui-Ping, Ella & Nikus a couple of days ago; Kent C & his wee boy Cameron. Kathleen & I played tennis at the Moutere Rec Centre courts, which was great fun. 

The Chamber of Commerce Christmas function was entertaining at the upgraded Theatre Royal – the restoration team have done a wonderful job of the theatre, including recreating the original wallpaper. The AUT graduation party, NMIT’s graduation and the Business School's farewell get together all went off well. The Roses Road Christmas Party & our family pseudo-Christmas lunch went off well, but we ran out of steam for the Neudorf Road Neighbourhood Party (at Glenys & Kevin's) & put in our apologies instead. We caught up with Glenys & Kevin a couple of nights later & caught up with their news first-hand anyway.

Our Wellington trip went well – read the entry immediately before this one to catch up on that info. Unfortunately we missed seeing Guy & Sonya, but hopefully next time; and also didn’t manage to catch up with Sam & Moose or Gary & Karen on this side of the Cook Strait either.

We have Bon dog here for a couple of months while John F is off on tour. Fliss & Coco are thoroughly enjoying having their partner in crime back.

John, Brigitte and Tanja are coming down to visit us for a few days next week, and I have a few brochures for them to decide what they would like to see while they are here.

We have a barbecue on January 15^th from 3pm if any of you are about Upper Moutere & looking for a party :-)

Right, I think that's it. All the very, very best for January, and we look forward to catching up with you all sometime this year.

Take care

Jan Kuwilsky & Sam Young

Christmas in Wellington

Jan & I had a lovely time in Wellington - the company and the weather were both fabulous.

We had Weinachten (Xmas Eve) with Jeremy, Tina, Brigitte, John, Tanja, Otto and Lara at the Nelson's in Karori. Everyone had made so much delicious food, it was terribly tempting to eat until we popped! A great night, and everyone was very good about us boring them with our German photos :-) 

We had a lovely, low-key Christmas day, starting with a wonderful brunch with Hartmut & Uta. We peacefully drove home the slow way down Stokes Valley & through Hutt City, with Jan giving me a tour of places he used to go, and where his friends lived. We had a walk along the Petone waterfront. Very relaxing and peaceful. Then we caught up with some friends at the Intercontinental Hotel & had a light meal for dinner there, which was perfect.

We were asked to do some extra activities (eg going to the European painting exhibition at Te Papa, and, while I would have loved to have gone, it would take another three hours and would have cut down on our time with friends & family), which after some discussion on various ideas, we declined all extras. 

On Boxing Day we went to see Doug & Morv who were preparing for their Boxing Day BBQ, before heading back to Karori to Tina's Boxing Day BBQ. Tina had along some people we already knew, and some we didn't. Hui-Ping came, and then some other friends unexpectedly arrived to pick her up - Ella & Alenas with their son Nikus - whom Jan & I hadn't seen for several years as they had been in the US, and we had a good and unexpected catch up. 

So we had a lovely, low pressure Christmas, thanks to learning to say "no"! And we left our camera at home, but hopefully we will get some photos off the others. 

More news next week :-)

News from Nelson - December 2010

Well, what a busy few weeks we have had. We are both well, but Jan has tweaked his back again (the same type of injury as when he came to Germany), playing underwater hockey. He has been going to an osteopath who seems to be straightening him again. I have been studying flat out, and Jan has also been trying to pull his team into shape at work :-)

And speaking of Jan's work, check out the "Changes at the Top" section on the bottom of the front page of the latest company newsletter:

  

In the evenings, despite his back, Jan has been cutting gorse from the top of the gully, and I have been trying to pitchfork it up beside the house in a big pile to dry out, so we can burn it in autumn (not alongside the house though!). A colleague at NMIT reckons we would go well with Boer goats on the property, as they actually enjoy eating gorse. I am not so sure; a friend of mine years ago got about 50 scrub goats on his property - 700 acres being re-broken in from scrub - and all the goats ate was grass and the odd thistle head :-)

We have our cars in the garage, and the pilgrimage of workshop items continues across to the shed. We picked up some posts so that we can do the retaining walls around our water tanks, and then back fill them. That will mean we can have a clothes line at last (never thought I would get excited about a clothes line!). And, after borrowing our builder's trailer for the umpteenth time, we have just ordered the same tandem axle trailer from Briford in Christchurch which should arrive up here just before Christmas.

I had a chat with our as yet un-met painter/decorator neighbour Rob on Friday about fencing our eastern boundary, which he was really co-operative about. Our boundary has a really weird shape along that side, and he too is keen to determine exactly where his place ends & ours begins. Since clearing, seeding and putting up the industrial unit, he has been renting the place out. He had some good tenants in there for a year - Shane who plastered our house - but he & his wife have moved on and the place is empty at the mo.

John H is out here today cutting our building off-cuts into lengths for burning, separating cedar for storage. It is a big pile that Jan & I only just managed to make a tiny dent in, so it is great that John is out here for the day getting it done. Jan worries about all these jobs, so it made sense to get someone in to tackle the ones that keep getting put off. I got a load of cartons from the supermarket to store the bits in to use as firewood, but we aim to get a few apple pails instead, and buy a tractor with a forklift attachment so we can just truck a pail of firewood around to the western deck for the winter. We can strap a tarp over it & be sorted.

I have been being TradeMe queen again this past week, selling off some unearthed items from the garage as we have been clearing out. We have the big treated pine beams on to sell, as we need to empty a whole bay in the shed to fit our new trailer into... gee, that's not going to be easy! I have been ferrying some of Jan's timber which has been stored in the cellar over to the shed so we have some room in the cellar for the wine rack to be built... man, we are definitely getting to a crisis of space.

At least we can get the cars in the garage now. That makes all sorts of things a lot easier - like unpacking the car of the week's groceries onto a flat, clean surface for a start!

Flissy had a lovely time at the neighbour's the other day. Lyn Redden has rented his house out again, and his tenants had a BBQ and dumped the leftovers in an open pit. Fliss and Coco went up there and gorged themselves - Flissy in particular. Jan was horrified that she was so full she was sick, and hurled up a whole sausage without a mark on it. Ah, dogs.

We have Kathleen & Frits' old piano installed now. The piano movers had no trouble finding the place, and said that the map I emailed them was the best set of instructions they had ever had. Nothing like an engineer and a management consultant to get instructions right, eh. So the piano is here, sounding quite sour in places, but there is no point in getting it tuned until it acclimatises...

Jan & I have joined the local tennis club, and have a key to go & play at the lovely new Moutere Rec Centre courts. I am looking forward to having a good bash about over the summer (and I have very little skill, but lots of enthusiasm).

Our last power bill wasn't (ha ha). We got a $10 credit, even netting off the supply charge, which was good. 

We caught up with Karen Batten a couple of weekends ago for lunch in town, and then after a fab Chamber recital at the Chanel Arts Centre in Motueka (which we nearly missed, because we didn't book tickets, thinking door sales would be fine, and they were fully booked out! We were VERY lucky the organisers put some extra seats in). She was playing with Martin & Victoria Jaenecke (violin & viola) Konstanze Artmann (violin) and Paul Mitchell on cello. I hadn't heard an alto flute solo before, and, as it was a piece of Andean music, it was really haunting. Just lovely. The near miss on getting seats for that event gave us a huge spur to get on with booking our Adam festival tickets (next Feb here in Nelson).

We have a week of Christmas functions again - having already had the NSO one, the Career Practitioners one, the Rotary one, the NMIT one and the last Founders meeting of the year. Coming up this week we have the Chamber of Commerce, the AUT graduation party, NMIT graduation, a farewell get together for the Business School's Programme Leader, the Roses Road Christmas Party, the Neudorf Road Neighbourhood Party (at Glenys & Kevin's Mudcastle - always a blast), our family pseudo-Christmas lunch... we were also supposed to have fitted a BBQ with Gary & Nick and a BBQ with Kevin, Sandra & Tiff in there too, but have run out of days. 

Then we are up in Wellington for three days. It will be good to have a few catch ups in the North Island. We have already raided the Nelson Market for edible treats to share. If any of you are travelling around the Nelson Tasman way, give us a call; we are aiming to have a summer at home. John, Brigitte and Tanja are coming down to see us mid-January for a week, otherwise we have an empty spare room and a caravan. Please feel free to come & visit/stay.

Speaking of staying, we will have Bon dog coming for a couple of long stints while John F is off on tour next year. Fliss & Coco will love that.

Right, I think that's it. All the very, very best for Christmas, and we look forward to catching up with you all in 2011 :-) 

Take care and alles liebe!

Jan Kuwilsky & Sam Young