Catching Up?!

Its been a long time since I posted anything... I have been mad busy working and all that I haven't had much time, I haven't even replied to any emails or sent any to any one even for Christmas! I have been super slack- so sorry!

I had six days straight at work last week- 24th til 29th and also worked today 7-3.  I am doing a 10 hour shift on Thursday night from 9pm til 7am the following morning- it will be my second ever night shift!  The last one I did on no sleep the day before and then managed to sleep for four hours the next day even with 5 kids running around the house.

I worked right through Christmas day, as I work at a hospital they don't exactly get to have any holidays and close the place down for the public holidays like majority of places around the country.  We work around the clock and there is always staff in the hospital- during the night there is only one nurse and two caregivers and then the day time there is a lot more including management.

I will try and fill you in on more in the New Year at some point.

Hope you had a great Christmas and a Happy New Year.

Uni....... again.

Thought I may as well let you all know, after months of anticipation in finding out if I am going to be accepted into the the BN (Bachelor of Nursing) at Massey in Albany, today I knew they would contact me.... I received the email, but frustratingly they have only said that it will now be mid January before they let anyone know because of the inundation of applications in the last week of November-- the week that applications closed.

So with all that, I will let you know in January now if I am going to university or not basically next year.  I should find out around the same time that my NCEA results get released as well!!!

Night Shift

Last night I did my first night shift as a caregiver at work.  They put me, having never done one before- didn't know what I was doing like... Another caregiver that had only been there three weeks and then the nurse who was also relatively new.  We managed to do everything right, have a really good night, with no problems and I came out of it awake ;)

Night shifts are 11pm til 7am and as I wasn't able to sleep before going into work (I tried and failed) I was awake for 24 hours before getting sleep this morning between 8am and 2pm.

Doing night shift isn't really that bad, and in a couple weeks I am down to do another one.

High school is over forever!

Yesterday I officially like, properly, signed out and finished high school forever! I never have to go back!

Exams are over, boring classes are over, learning stuff I'm never going to need is over, everything is over... associated with high school that is!

I got given my year book, and all of the Year 13 mug shots are in it... They were photos taken over the course of the year when the prefects in charge of taking them were able to get those that needed their shots taken- majority were taken during form time and are different to our main school photos that were taken at the beginning of the year for our portrait photos and class photos.

Last Friday I also officially gained the Level 3 certificate in Early Childhood Education and Care through the gateway/ STAR program through school, done through PORSE, I just have to complete the application to get the certificate sent to me.  With this, I am the only one in the school to have ever gone on to complete this certificate during school time and so since I hadn't done it by graduation (they wanted to acknowledge it then) the careers department took a photo of my yesterday to put in the school newsletters.

I am now waiting on hearing from Massey University to find out if I have been accepted into Nursing or not, if I have then thats all well and good, if I haven't I have to figure out what next year is going to entail.

Over summer I have been given all my work shifts up until January 12th for over the christmas period where a lot of the staff are off.  I have pretty much full time work from the 20th Dec through till the 12th Jan.

My Nashi Tree!!!

I can see my Nashi Tree outside of my bedroom window, the nearly three years that we have had it planted there since we moved down to Orewa it has pretty much stayed the same... it grew one fruit partially on it last year, it got its leaves and lots them again once.....

It now looks like this!!!!!

It has established leaves that have been there for the past month at least!! It has five fruit buds! I am EXCITED!!!!

the reason that it has two different types of leaves on the different sides is because one side (the one with the smaller leaves) got grafted onto the other one when it was a tree-ling (don't know the official name) and so the tree has two different types of Nashi on it!!

By the way... a little tid bit of information you may not have known:

Ever since we lived on the farm in Wellsford 10 years ago... (time goes fast!!) I found a Nashi tree by the pond and have loved the fruit ever since!!!

No.. they are not full grown Nashi Trees..... They are plum trees... (They are also where the water use to reach when it flooded as we had a stream running through the property- bottom of photo)

Exams and Updates

About time I posted something...

I am in the middle of a 12 day break between my third exam and my last! I have been full on studying, shopping, working, sitting exams, and touring.

I have sat three of my four exams now and I think I have done pretty well in biology, not sure about english or classics.  I have social studies on Tuesday 3rd Dec, so as of 12.30pm at the latest I will have officially finished my high school exams and as of Friday 6th Dec I will have officially signed out of school and completed a whole 13 years and 6 weeks at school!!! Its pretty exciting when I type it out and think about it!

I also have the last two PORSE booklets to complete to get my New Zealand's Level 3 Nanny Certificate- I am aiming to have these completed and signed off by Friday!

Next year I will hopefully be moving forward and onto tertiary education, studying a three year degree to get a Bachelor of Nursing- I will be finding this out in just under two weeks if I have officially gotten a place a Massey!!

I have been doing a few shifts caregiving as I am trying to work around my exams, studying and also other things I have to do and want to do.  Also, getting the only shifts that are really available as there is quite a lot of staff at the moment.

Last Thursday I went and toured one of the accommodation villages for Massey University, and then went late night shopping with a friend and came back to my house and wrote and card and wrapped a gift for one of our teachers- last year Taylor (friend) and I were in her class, it was her first year at Orewa and we were known as the ones that were constantly talking, laughing, giggling and so on- I also managed to continue that particular trend on this year with Danielle as I was this particular teachers class again this year! .... we decided on getting her a mug that had "little miss giggles" written on it from the "little miss" series by Roger Hargreaves.  Our teacher laughed and said, yeah, I will think of you two every time I drink from it- our aim! :)

Found This... (From My Birthday)

My Apple Crumble Birthday Candle Cake when we went out to the city... I got Mum to ask them to put a candle in it :) I got an actual cake on the Thursday which I need to get the photos off friends of it.

Graduation

On Wednesday 6th November I had my high school graduation! I have now officially done my time at high school and once my exams are over I will be free!!!  My whole year level graduated (Maybe a couple didn't?) It was a more formal occasion so majority were wearing dresses, and the guys dressed up in shirts and long pants. Here are some of the photos that Mum took.

My Graduation Dress

My friend Taylor and I

Getting my certificate :)

Graduated!! Im right over in the corner under the projector screen

18th Birthday!!

Well, yesterday, November 5th was my 18th birthday and also my last day of high school ever!!!!!!!!!

Pretty good day to end on too!
I had Lisa be the first person to sing/ say happy birthday to me, I had my last day of school, with no school work being done, playing cards in study, pranking the school/ teachers, had ALOT of fun, and got to go out to dinner.  Highlight would be my brother Daniel remembering and calling me during interval at school!!!
Here are some photos from my birthday dinner last night, in Mission Bay in the city with Mum, Wendy, Danielle and I.  I will add more picture when I have got them from Mum's phone.

I also have my graduation tonight, so I will post on that soon too, with more photos :)

More arm wrestling in Bio, for the last time ever!!

Taylor and I at lunchtime at school!

 This is where we went in Mission Bay, Auckland

Danielle and I

Mum and Wendy

Danielle and I afterwards... It was dark and freezing cold!!

One more day left!

Down to one more day of high school ever!

I had a shared lunch for my last lesson of classics, I had to say good luck and good bye to a good friend as it was my last class lesson with her forever! I mean, I will see her and all, but I don't know when.  After this lesson- English, I have to say good bye to another two.  Then I have four more lesson of high school ever! Biology, Study, Study, and Maths.  Then a practice graduation assembly for what happens, where we sit and finalizing all the details.

No more Maths or Internals ever!

Today I finished my last internal forever! And my last ever anything to do with maths forever!! So freeking exciting!  I now only have to focus for another two weeks for Biology and English, another three for Classics and another four for Social Studies..... And then never again.... Until February when university starts, but that's different to being at school as it will be working towards something that I want to do, to have a purpose to doing the work and and learning the stuff :)

Ollie.. And the dog food bag! -Video

When we buy bags of dog food or cat food for that matter we open them, EMPTY the contents into the appropriate corresponding containers and leave the bags in the lounge for the dogs to play with!  I managed to capture Ollie going right inside of the 8kg bag of dog food a couple weeks ago.  Allie does this too quite a bit, she loves the cat food ones more!

TV Habits.. Told you I would

Yeah, my tv habits are not the best.

I spend maybe two hours infront of the TV some days, none other days.  I record a lot of programs on the TV box to watch later as often I am not home to watch them.  It doesn't help that when i go away for two weeks all the programs set to record get deleted though... Parents that don't know how to work the telle...  That instance I was able to catch up online though, so it wasn't too bad.

Every night I record/ watch Home and Away which is an Australian program that aires over here mon-fri at 5.30pm, and then Shortland Street which is a New Zealand program airing also mon-fri at 7pm.

Then I also watch a couple mindless comedies or just random programs where you don't really have to follow whats going on which means you don't have to think to hard!! Ha.

The one hour weekly shows I watch are Grey's Anatomy (finally caught up on during the last school holidays!!!), Private practice (I haven't yet started watching this season thats been on for a couple months... they are waiting for me...) and when we did have Sky TV I would constantly have Air Crash Investigation on as I have a love for planes and just the mechanics and stories behind it all.  Doesn't scare me off flying either!!

I have a love for documentaries too but we don't exactly get that many any more because we only have freeview and not sky which means that we have the basic TV programs you can get here.

On December 1st the whole country will be digital and that means that you must have a box which you get the TV channels through, for most people (everywhere but Auckland/Northland) are digital already.  Its been in process of happening for the last 2 years or so.

I miss the sky, but I managed to get Mum to buy the freeview box that recorded 2 channels at once while you can watch another.  If we didn't have it, we would be paying a ton in internet usage as I would be streaming it through tvnzondemand or the TV3 one...

How do you write so much about TV your wondering? I have no idea what the answer is to that apart from the fact I like waffling and thats how I managed to pass a Bio test I just did a couple days ago... add in the right term in the right context and waffle your life away... and then pass, more than the pass rate threshold too!! LOL.

Caregiving and School

As you know, I started my caregiving orientation at the end on September.. And it is now nearing the end of October!!

I completed orientation last weekend and Sunday night and last night I did my first official shifts by myself.  They actually went pretty well, I worked Sunday 3-9- originally I was doing 7-1 but Mum wanted to swap shifts with me so that she could go to a baby shower.  In the end it worked out perfectly as I got asked to baby sit on the saturday night.  After work on sunday I got home and started on the finishing of my classics internal which I finished by 1am, and then as I was packing my bag for school I realized that I had also got an english internal due the next morning at 9am too! So I had to quickly finish that off and print it before going to bed.  I ended up watching Fridays episode of Home and Away before going to bed a 2am.

I went to school on 4-5 hours of sleep, and then had to go to work 3-11 that afternoon too! So after finishing all my internals for this week (I only have ONE more due forever- which is done as a test over three class periods) having very little sleep Sunday night, and then being up until 12.30am this morning, I will get to go home after school tonight and blob out and watch the episodes of tv programs that I have missed over the last five days!

On the topic of school... I have exactly two weeks and one day until I'm finished!!!!

More on my tv habits one day... soon :)

Back to school for my last 17 days ever...

Tomorrow will mark the beginning of my last term of high school ever! I have 17 days left, Monday to Friday for the next two weeks, then Tuesday to Friday the third week as that Monday is a public holiday and then I have Monday 4th Nov, Tuesday (my 18th), then Wednesday which is going to be my last day ever! I am not even sure if it is a full or just a half day as we have graduation/ prize giving that evening.  I will then be on study leave from the 6th November where I have four exams over the course of the following month.

Biology on the 12th, English on the 14th, then a weeks gap with classics on the 22th, and Social Studies on the 3rd December.  Then school will really be over and I will have the next three months off where I will be working before starting university at the end of February.

Back on the bike

And so today, it marked the day of my first time back riding my bike- I had no pain in my knee it was so good! I haven't ridden my bike since at least May (when I had the surgery) and so to be back on it as the warmer weather is showing now, getting warmer leading up to summer!

On the way we stopped for lunch, then we saw the damage from the recent storm that passed through which happened to be at its strongest when it is high tide, on a king tide so the sea levels were rather high and took out a lot of the built up sand around the coast, you can see evidence of this all along the Orewa Beach stretch of the coast which is a good few kilometers long (five I think).  There is barriers all up along the beach front and the grass just goes straight down and all the tree roots are showing- that is all that is holding the beach front.  There is still a lot of debris on the beach as well.

I don't have pictures of the South end of the beach where the damage is a lot worse as the height of the sand/grass walls are a lot higher!!!

Even old steps were uncovered... 

This use to be covered in sand...

Saw this mailbox too- very cool!

We then went and got ice-creams...

And Allie got licks too- her treat :-)

Accommodation at Uni

As many of you may know, I have been completing a bazillion of application forms and having to send in and sort things out for university.  Today I went and handed in my application for Nursing at Massey University, and when I got back home I found an email from Massey saying that I have been offered a place at the Massey University Albany Campus accommodation which is very very exciting!

I don't think I will find out whether I have a place in the nursing program or not until mid January when school exam results come out.  I potentially could be offered a place which would be dependant on my results though in December.

New job... (another)

Its official!!

I have a new job!  Caregiving.

The uniform... (with black pants/ skirt)

I started caregiving orientation Monday just gone.  After a day of that with Wendy who actually also lives with us I got stuck back cleaning as one of the main cleaners are on holiday and they had no other back up for it- I have been cleaning at the hospital since the end of last year.  Next week I am suppose to be doing the rest of my orientation as a caregiver and then I will be working in the weekends and between exams until I am officially on summer break after all my exams are over and done with and I don't have to go back to high school ever!!!

Pavement Art!!

Yesterday at school we had house pavement art where each of the five school house groups had a team of seniors and a team of middle schoolers who came up with a pasifika design that they then had to fit into a 1.5m x 1.5m box drawn out on the year 7&8 side courts.

My house is Batten which is blue :-)

Batten seniors ended up coming second and Batten middle school came fourth.

Here are some photos which sort of illustrates how our hour we had panned out:

The start of it... thats a lot of blue!!!

Colouring, blending, and making the chalk colour stand out more..

Doing the finishing touches while the judges were walking around..

The finished product from the senior team- As it says in the chalk names underneath: Keanu and Gary were the designers and drew the design onto the courts and Myself, Jade, Courtney, and Dani coloured it in- with help from Keanu and Gary of course- as they are the artists :-)

Other houses working on their designs- two senior teams and a middle school team in the far corner by the path...

Four of the middle school teams- it was lunch time so there was a lot of people floating around looking at all of them as well as quite a few teachers.

The middle school Batten teams nearly finished design..

Near the end of it some of the (mainly middle school) teams were finding sheets etc. to hold up over their designs as it started to rain... We managed to find boards to protect ours from the side where it was starting to rain and also from the strong winds that was blowing the chalk dust all over it- mixing the colours!!

I plan on taking more pictures of the finished designs at somepoint today if I remember as because it rained quite heavily overnight, this morning when I walked past them on the way to form class they actually looked kinda cool!

International Festival

Last week on Thursday we had the International Festival at school which occurred over Form period right through until lunch time which meant for those year 13s not involved we had very small classes and a very cruzy day!
Each year level had a particular time to come over for it, it was mainly a food festival as they had the dances the day before- Wednesday.
My year group got lumped with the year 12s and I happened to have a study period then anyhow and so I was helping out with the Amnesty International stand as one of the senior leaders/ supervisors as a senior had to be on the stands along with the juniors.

The stand which I was supervising on for one period...

From the second level of the block...

From ground level...

Leavers Jumper

Friday 13th we got given our leavers jumpers! Well, those that bought them.  Very exciting as now we have them, it sort of says that we are closer to the end of high school!! There is only 7 weeks until the end of the school year before we go into study leave for a month whilst we sit our final exams for the year, and for our high school life.
November 6th 2013 is my last day of year 13 in school- learning (supposedly) I think we have a half day as we have prize giving at 7pm that evening.

FRONT

BACK

These are not the best photos as they were taken by my iPad, but also right at the end of lunch time and the bell was about to go.

S'more cake anyone?

I spent this afternoon at home with a friend baking, we made s'more cake... you know:

Marshmellows cooked over an open fire, Squished in between graham crackers with chocolate in it too...

But this version was a cake, it was crushed up biscuits in cake like mixture, with chocolate chips and marshmellow mix spread in between the two layers of cake with the marshmellow mix all over the outside of the cake coating it.  We put the rest of the crushed biscuits from the cake mix all over the outside of it, but the recipe did say to put the chocolate chips on the top instead.. we did both :)

Danielle mixing the cookie, and evaporated milk in with the rest of the mixture.

Allie decided that she wanted to be under the cake when we were putting cookie all over it... she ended up covered!!!

The clean up crew- Allie and Ollie

Danielle has taken the cake home with her, to put in her fridge as we don't have enough space and she is going to bring it to school with her so that at interval everyone can devour it.

Update: It got devoured all right.. it actually tasted quite good too, to be honest!

Cutting the cake.. Out on the bench in the freezing wind!

The masterpeice S'more cake!!!!!

Skyping with JUDY!!

I have had a really awesome evening skyping Judy!  All the way over in Germany, and I, well, as always, in little old New Zealand.

We don't talk over skype to often as having to juggle the time differences and school and activities and all but when we do get to skype it is awesome being able to catch up in real time person!!

I first met Judy at school, as she was an international student and hung out with our group of friends at break times, we have since remained close when she left and still talk and write to each other on a regular basis :)

Making connections across the world is so awesome! I now want to go over the Germany, I even have a place to stay ;-)

Well... Mocks went a miss this year...

You know how I said I would be at school yesterday, and that I would be sitting my mocks then...

Never happend.  I ended back at the doctors yesterday for more prednisone, change in antibiotics and another medical certificate for school.  I am not suppose to be going to school until Thursday but I want to go tomorrow as long as I am not nauseous still or anything like that.

I got a phone call from school telling me I wasn't allowed to sit my mocks anymore because I have also missed the two catch up days because of being sick, as the answers are going up on the schools Ultranet and I guess seems everyone is getting their papers back too.

I hate being sick...

Last Thursday I went to bed not feeling to good only to wake up on Friday with the flu which went on through the weekend until Monday, I still have a touch of it a week and a half later.

Having that flu was not nice, and looking after children while having the flu was not the best either, but I had some awesome help from Toni who was also with me looking after the kiddies :)  On Monday I went to my mock exam and to the doctors afterwards where I ended up getting a medical certificate to give to the school saying that I wasn't well enough to do the rest of my exams and so I ended up having the whole of last week off without going to my exams only to have to sit them when I go back next week.

I got prescribed with prednisone and antibiotics, my asthma has also been playing up this week and that is another reason why I have not been well enough to attend my exams.

I will be back at school tomorrow where I will be expected to sit my exams over a couple of days I am guessing, I will be seeing who ever it is that deals with missed exams tomorrow morning during my study period.

We will see what happens there :)

Allie and Traffic Crossings

This video- again taken back in January (last summer) is of Allie crossing at the lights.  As soon as she hears the noise they make for pedestrians to cross now she is off, she knows exactly what it means and when she is allowed to cross!!  So cute!

Walks with Allie last summer

Summer is just over 3 months away!!! So exciting, more swimming and late night walks!
Oh, and the WARMTH!!

Here is a couple of videos of Allie at the beach last summer- she would have been 7 or 8 weeks pregnant (nearly due to pop) that is why she was able to have the leash let go- we were able to easily catch her if need be!!

Chocolate Lasagne!!

On Tuesday (6th) night I got tagged in a post on Facebook that had the recipe and picture of a chocolate lasagne! It just made my day, looked so so so so good!!! I commented on it asking to make it for dessert the following night as I was up at Warkworth where the person that tagged me in lives and they said I could!! So I got the eldest, Toni, to help me (she's older than me) and after school we went out to the supermarket to buy all the ingredients and got back to start making it after the dinner prep had been done and dinner (roast sheep and veges) was put into the oven.

In the making:

This is how the chocolate lasagne turned out- finished half eaten product :) !!

It tasted very very yummy!

I got a text from one of the parents two nights later saying that the kids thought it was even better those couple of days later- always the way!!

Knee Check Up

**On a side note, on Monday I had another appointment with my knee surgeon and my knee is on the way to recovery, I am back to normal running and working without problems bending up and down.  I have another appointment on Monday 4th November this year (the day before my 18th!!) for the 6 month (I think actually only 5 months) check up.  It will still take about 18 months for us to know the outcome of the operation if it had actually worked how we hope or not, as there was only a 60% chance that it would, but doing it wont have made it worse.

Editing to add photos from the trip to the city:

This is the Gillies Ave off-ramp, a lot of traffic for 3 in the afternoon!

The rainy crappy weather... the "merge-like-a-zip" lights are already on... Didn't think they went on until 4pm.  

Haha, the Chelsea Sugar truck- its got sugar mountains on it :)

Mock Exams

I have five mock exams coming up in the near future.. well in little over a week away. They are starting on Friday next week, and finish the following Friday.

This is my exam schedule for the mocks- my real end of year exams are a lot more spaced out with some being up to a week apart! These are all within the one week:

Social Studies- Monday (pm)
English- Tuesday (pm)
Biology- Wednesday (am)
Maths- Wednesday (pm)
Classics- Thursday (pm)

I am very happy that my exams are all very well placed in the week.  They are still subject to change, but by now I don't think they will change.

School Report

Well, school reports are out now, it is the last ever high school report that I am ever going to get!  I am extremely happy with it, and I think that it may be the best report that I have ever had! Especially compared to my Term 1 interim report at the beginning of this year, I have come along way over the course of this year, and I am heading to be finishing high school on a good note :)  Very very happy!

POSTCARDS!!!!

So happy to get home from school today to find a postcard from Judy sitting waiting for me on my bed, along with a DVD I ordered from TradeMe for English.

Excited!  Thank you Judy, I miss you!! :)

NorthSea July 2013 

I got another post card in May from Aunty Anna- Thank you so much!! :)

I love getting mail! Especially letters and postcards! Better than bills ;)

This one was sent from El Camino in Spain!