Back on the ladder

Today we became property owners once again. We completed, or settled as it's known here, on the house we've been living in for nearly three years!

It's not often you get to test drive a house before you live in it. And while it's not perfect, it ticks a vast number of boxes for us.

But it also marks the longest we've lived at the same address for. I think the previous record was held by our house in Derby, where we lived for 2 years and 8 months. We've been here 3 months longer than that already and have more to come.

So instead of paying off someone else's mortgage with rent, we're now paying off our own. Hello big debt once again. It was nice without you for a while!

Aftermath of last week's storm

Just in case you were wondering what more of our Southern Coast looked like after last week's storm, here's a video that was taken, mainly on Friday.

It starts off in Owhiro Bay, literally at the bottom of our hill. It travels around to Island Bay (you can make out the island in the background before he stops to look at the sea). The video ends up by the airport in Lyall Bay.
We have since been round the coast road and you wouldn't even know this had happened. Nice work Wellington Council - and all the volunteers who helped out.

Yet another view of where we live

As Ian is in the UK, and Annalie is spending this birthday solo, she decided to treat herself.

The local school had its annual fair on, and one of the things on offer was a helicopter ride around the suburb. What a good idea! She managed to convince our friends Jo and Toby to go too, which was interesting as Toby had never been in a helicopter before!

It was only a short flight, but it provided some new views of our lovely neighbourhood, and beyond, that we don't normally get the chance to see.

 

 

Our street is the one that goes up the hill on the right in the photo above.

This is a great view of the Airport and Miramar peninsula.

A great idea and a fab thing to do on a birthday :)

A room with a view

Our friends Jo and Toby rather like our house. They live a bit further down our street and have a smaller house with no garage and a more dated interior.

However, it's swings and roundabouts. We rather like the view from their house! Especially as the sun is setting.

That's the South Island nicely silhouetted by the way.

Our little suburb makes the "coolest" list

For those of you who would like a little bit more of an unbiased overview of the suburb we live in, check out this little feature on Island Bay, in our local paper. We rather like it anyway.

It's our cool little suburb in the coolest little capital in the world ;-)

Another view of home

Here's some more views from Ian's recent trek to the top of the hill opposite our house.

In this photo, the field in the bottom left is Tawatawa, one of our local dog walking reserves just two minutes' walk from our house. You can see a track cut into the hill just above it. That's our short track for walking Maddy.

You can just about make out the harbour entrance in the distance of this photo. That's how high up this hill is!

This is looking out over our house, the reserve, Owhiro Bay, Island Bay and numerous other suburbs, up towards the harbour. You can even see Somes Island (the old quarantine base) in the middle of the harbour.

Now here's one from a little bike ride up the coast with Scott. Some of you may recognise Kapiti Island. This was taken from the top of Paekakariki Hill Road.