Monday, February 20, 2006

down the sounds

in the wind
Katelyn-catch of the day
10 snapper
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more pics

valley basketball team at sports camp
Denise and Marcos in the Abel Tasman
me at Bark Bay
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pics from the pro tour

Courtney spikes in the womens final at Mount Maunganui
Shannon (NZ) and Laura (Germany)
Courtney and Tracy (USA)
Night session at ASB tennis Centre, Stanley St, Auckland
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Another great week of summer!

I had Monday and Tuesday off last week. Monday dinner was at Redwood Downs with John and Sara Barrett from the UK-Dads cousins. Tuesday I took 2 Paraguayans (Marcos and Denise) up the Abel Tasman. We went by boat to Ohi stopping by the seal colony. It rained and was pretty rough! We ate lunch in the shelter and were treated to a moari wiri or challenge. Then we walked the 90 mins back to Bark Bay and got rather wet. It was still very nice walking thru the native bush with a light rain falling. At Bark Bay the boat picked us up again and took us back to Kaiteriteri. Then off to soccer training!! yep soccer training is in full force and in a months time we are off to Gisborne for a 3 day invitation tournament with some of NZ's top teams. Will be a great experience! Wednesday night and 190 students from Nelson Girls College arrived for their leadership camp. This is pretty big for us so it made for a very busy 2 days.
Friday night was touch finals night. We lost our semifinal tho so no final for us this year. Straight after that we headed for the sounds. Katelyn and Josh came with me, we stopped for KFC and left Nelson. Caught up to Tim and Lisa halfway down and sped up to pass them. Just my luck as a cop came towards us just after I had passed. So I got another speeding ticket which puts my demerit points at 90! (You lose your licence at 100!!) So I can see I really need to go overseas real soon! Tim was lucky tho cause if I hadnt passed him he probably would have got the ticket. Saturday was perfect weather and we took the boat out to Te Mahia with the tube. We relaxed on the beach and I drove for Jerry to ride and then Tim drove for me riding. He threw me around pretty fast and was awesome fun! I managed to make it roll right over and stay on. Back to watch the cricket and have afternoon naps. Then some played in the water again, Katelyn and I rode the 4 wheeler and hunted banana passionfruit before a BBQ dinner. Watched rugby and cricket some more and ate a lot of icecream! Watched Anna and the King movie before bed. I slept in my open tent under a clear starry sky--so nice! Sunday I made pancake and french toast for breakfast and then we took the 2 small dinghys out for a fish. I caught a kawhai and a seagull and then we tied up on a mussel farm. We were about to go home when Lisa caught a decent sized snapper! Then Katelyn caught 1 and soon we had caught 10 of them. Katelyn caught 4, Lisa 3 and josh and mike 3 between them. I had one on my line but it got off and poor Timmy got nothing! He did work hard baiting everyones lines and working the burley. Back home for lunch at about 3pm and Tim and I fileted the fish. Packed up and left about 5pm. Such a great relaxing weekend. Back to work today and its still real hot here. plenty of swimming to be had and icecream and berries to eat!! A short week this week as Friday morning I'm off to Christchurch for the cricket on Saturday. Yeah!

Monday, February 06, 2006

Sports Camp 06 & pro tour

Its been an ultra busy month since I wrote on here last in the middle of the pro tour. I flew back to Auckland and got a shuttle down to Tauranga for the weekend tournament there and then back to Auckland where I stayed with Sharon Broadbent which was fun (shes a real cool cousin!). We spent 3 days preparing the ASB Tennis Centre for the NZ open and then 3 days running it. It was such a blast and I refereed a lot as well and got on TV!! Since I got back 2 weeks ago I have not stopped working on sports camp. Very late nights for 2 weeks is catching up with me and right now I am very worn out!! We just finished camp tonight-not sure how many people we had exactly but 8 teams competed in about 11 different sports and Annesbrook won overall. I also played a few games for Valley and we won the touch final in a real close game.
About 7 people responded to the message that Matty G brought to us. He talked about fear and how perfect love casts out fear. Jeff Bucknam had talked the night before about winning and why do we care so much? Even tho I was so busy I had a great weekend and wish we ran a camp like this every month! Now I have 2 days off so think I will sleep for most of that! Plenty of pics to come on here soon tho!