Second Week in NZ

Well we should have the camera chord by the weekend so we'll post some pic's.
The Thanksgiving dinner went really well. A turkey was going to cost $50 and Dru and I couldn't afford that so we did two chickens instead. I was in charge of the dinner and it turned out pretty well. I was actually pleasantly surprized. I think Dru was too. We had chicken, mashed potatoes, stuffing, pumpkin, corn, candied yams, rolls, two different kinds of salads, gravy, trifle, chocolate cake, ice cream. I think that was it. The chicken was good. My first time roasting. Dru seemed to really like it and my family had a blast cause it was a good excuse for a get together and feed. The girls sat and talked about girl stuff and the boys sat at the table and played risk. Dru ended up winning so that's something to be thankful for right?!
We went to Auckland this weekend to go to my mate, Stella's, wedding. It was a t a beautiful restaurant with great food and the reception was wonderful. We stayed with my other mate Kat and got to know her fiance a little better. He's a great guy and Kat still hasn't given us a date yet.
We still haven't got a calling in the ward yet. I'm pleasantly surprized. It's nice not having anything you know.
Masaru went to kindy again today and loved it. They have everything you can think of there. I've never see anything like it. It's an amazing place. No wonder he loves it. There's a sprinkler for the kids to get wet under and a huge sand pit with all the toys you can think of and sails so they don't get sunburnt. Swings, slides, ride on cars and carts, obstacle course, painting and playdough, dress ups, books, all the art supplies you can think of, mat time wee little toilets for little kids to go potty, it's just amazing. It's $1.50 and hour until Masaru turns 3 and then it's free. So that's good.
We're loving being with our family. Masaru loves hanging out with his cousins. It's like a big party for him. He has been slightly more disobedient lately and I think it's because he has uncles and aunties and grandmas and cousins to get himwhat he wants, so I"m trying to keep ontop of that.
Yuki is just perfect, and doing well. She wore an american outfit to church on Sunday. Dru thought I was mad to put it on her but we got home safley with no injuries.
Dru's job is getting better and better with every day that goes past. I personally think this is good for him to learn how to do things differently. I'm sure it'll help out his skills and knowledge or at least give him more of an appreciation for what he had and how he could do it. If nothing else it gives him good stories.
The weather has been perfect and things are great. So far so good.
I'll write again next week and hopefully post some pic's.
Love you guys
The Dru Nakaya clan

Success!!!!!

Dru got a job yesterday and his first day's work is today.
It's with a place called Concept Homes and he's hanging doors all today. It's just in Tok, so close, and they're building houses. So he needs a tool belt and a few basic tools and he's away.
He's on an hourly wage and will re negotiate after the new year. So we're pretty excited. He works about 44 hours a week, which is easy for Dru, and if you'd like you can work more. His boss, Vince seems really nice so Dru's really happy. I'll be interested to see how it went at dinner time.
He had another job offer too but they wanted him to work 6 days a week 12 hours a day. They weren't willing to offer him overtime either. Plus the boss guy was a bit of a jerk.
It was funny cause Concept Homes said they didn't have anything till the new year and then asked Dru to send his Resume. So he sent it to them and they offered him a job straight away. So they must've been impressed!!
Yuki's started sleeping through the night. So that's a plus. Masaru started kindy yesterday and loved it. He came home in completely different clothes as he got all wet cause he was playing in the water outside with the trucks.
We're going to have a Thanksgiving dinner on Thursday. So we'll see how that goes. I'll try and take some pic's. My family are excited cause it's an excuse to have a big feed.
We had to introduce ourselves at church on Sunday by giving a small talk. My brother was in charge of the talks so now I know why!!
THat's about it for now. We still need the cord for the camera but I think Shauna and Ryan are working on it.
New Zealand is 4 hours behind the next day. So right now it's 8am here in New Zealand on a Tuesday morning. So in Utah it's 12 noon on a Monday. Just for those who are thinking of calling us ever.

Football anyone?!

Just a little fun on a lazy Sunday afternoon. Bjorn and Myles watching his favorite team, the Washington Redskins, play their biggest rivals the Dallas Cowboys. Myles was watching in all his "Redskins duds" courtesy of our friends Monica and Keshi.

(just a side note, not a big surprise, the Redskins lost again)

Myles, Myles, Myles

Here are a few pictures of Myles. He has changed a ton in the last month. I can't believe how fat he has gotten. Just thought you might like to see a few pictures. Enjoy!

"What is that smell" she asks...

Well it all started when mom arrived after Myles was born. " What is that smell coming from under the sink" she asked. I said that I didn't know, but when it gets warm outside it gets worse. Well the sink continued to stink on and off over the next month so when the landlord was here one day I asked him to smell under my sink and tell me what he thought. He did and he said that it smelled like mold. I told him that I didn't think it was mold because I haven't seen any mold under the sink. He said it could be food stuck in the sagging line under the house. He then called a plumber to come and take a look. Well he( Coco) came and snaked the sink. He didn't think that it really needed it, but he wanted to make sure it wasn't plugged a little. He then said let me take a look under the house. He came back to the door with a huge grin on his face. "I think I know what the problem is" he said. "You have a huge pool of water and sludge under there". "I don't do that kind of thing, but I will call the boss and let him know what is going on."

I don't hear from anyone for a few days when I get a call from the plumber. He wants to come over and take a look. He came, he looked, and said "we are going to have to get a clean up crew to come and drain the pool, dig out all the crap, and sanitize the dirt and dry it all out." So I'm thinking this will happen sometime in the next week. I am getting ready to head out the door to the dentist office when I get a call from the landlord. "Hi, you guys need to move out of the house for a few days." "We need to get the soil treated and when they start clearing it out the smell could get really bad and toxic." This is about 5 pm mind you and we need to be out of the house by 9am in the morning. So I head to the dentist where I make a child swap with Bjorn on his way home from work. I get home from the dentist at about 7pm and have to find a place for us to move to, pack up all our things we will need for the next two to three days, and find boarding for Yoda. Bjorn can't help me at all because he has brought work home for a trail that he was in the middle of. I guess there really isn't ever a good time to move out of the house. This was our "home away from home"
We are now back and things are back to normal for the most part. We have two giant fans on the back of the house to blow air under the house. Then one on the front of the house to suck air out from under the house. The only problem is that the fans are really loud. Especially for the neighbor Linda, her house is only 10 feet away from the really loud fan. It isn't so bad inside the house.
P.S. Bjorn got a guilty verdict on his case. It was about a boyfriend who found a guy to go to his girlfriends mothers home and shoot her. Well he did and the little nine year old girl who opened the door saw the whole thing. Her mother was shot once in the head just under the right eye. Really sad story. Now her 21 year old sister is trying to adopt her and the five year old little brother. She also has a baby of her own with the boyfriend who set this whole thing up in the first place. Talk about twisted...

OOPS!!

Well turns out, after unpacking everything, that we forgot our USB port for the camera so we can put pictures onto the computer!!
There's always something right? So we're going down to the camera shop today to see if they have another one for us. If not then we'll have to tell Shauna and see if she can send it to us.
So I took a couple of pic's on the plane so once we get that sorted I'll post them.
So we get to the Salt Lake airport and go up to the counter for Delta and the guy there takes one look at all our luggage and says "I hope you're ready to pay!".
I was thinking "Great we've got one of those guys."
Dru stated that he thought we'd be ok and started to put the bags on the scale.
Boom first bag dead on 50 pounds. The guy couldn't believe it. Out of the 6 bags, two were dead on 50 and the rest were around 53. He wouldn't let it slide either so Dru had to do some rearranging for the bags to all get on. We ended up leaving the stove top and the shaving cream, toothpaste etc. Nothing that we can't get in NZ. They also let us take Masaru's car seat, which we're so pleased about.
NZ's car seats are crap. They don't have a buckle around the kids chest, so when we were here in Jan we discoverd that Masaru could get out of the seat!! I was driving at the time and looked in my rearview mirror and there was Masaru just hanging out, standing up in the back seat. I almost crashed the car and screamed at him to get into his seat. Lol. I can laugh at it now but I wasn't laughing at the time.
So the SLC to SFO flight was good. We were on the very back seat and had both sides. Masaru flipped from one side to the other and both the kids were pretty good.
Then we got to SFO and just had enough time to walk from that plane to the International Terminal.
The San Fransico airport was dead to the world with hardly anyone around, so it was peaceful and realxing.
So that's great because Masaru decided to throw a huge meltdown fit right there and then. We basically had to drag him through security and onto the plane. The lady in security said to me "So how are you doing today?" I took one look at her and said "Not good."
So she got Masaru some stickers and he stuck them on the bottoms of his shoes and stopped crying for a second. So that was nice.
Anyway the Air NewZealand flight was the best we've been on. The plane was clean and new. The cot we got for Yuki was clean and suade. Our seats were wider and seemed to go back a little more. The attendants were at our beck and call. The flight wasn't full by a long shot so Masaru could lie down and sleep while Dru went to a seat behind me. The food was the best we've had on a plane. The movies were on demand so you could watch what you wanted when you wanted and pause when one of the kids needed something.
It was a nice fight. Yuki couldn't have been better. She ate 3 times and slept basically the rest of the time. She was amazing!!
Masaru slept about 60% of the time and the rest of the time was watching movies, eating or playing around. I'm glad he got his fit out at the airport, because one in the plane would've been disasterous.
We landed and were the first flight in for the day. So there were no lines and plenty of relaxed people.
However we discovered they lost our carseat and one of our bags. It was the bag with Dru's climbing gear and paintball guns in it!! One expensive bag!!
So my poor brother, Haydn, was waiting for us forever. Luckily one of the volunteer guys went out and told him the story and we'd be out once they had sorted out our bag and carseat.
I asked them what we were going to do without a carseat as we had to travel to Tok. with my child. One lady said "Well the Warehouse opens at 9am you could buy one"
Well I almost had a fit and stated "Why should I buy a carseat, when I have one and you guys lost it? You need to provide me with a carseat for my son!"
This guy was nice and probably understood that we had just gotten off a 13 hour flight and were tired and my patience was wearing thin. I just wanted to be gone! So they gave us a loaner carseat and we were off. However we still had to get through security and we had beef jerky to show them.
Turns out even though the beef jerky is ok for americans to eat and produce it's not good enough for NZ since the beef had a 20% chance of coming from Brazil and Uruguay. So they THREW IT OUT!!!
That's the last time we're bringing jerky through for my brother. I'm sick of them throwing our jerky out.
Anyway we FINALLY got through and Masaru decided to throw another huge, meltdown, fit right at the head of security where you put your big bags through.
This was the first time my brother, Haydn, had met Masaru and was laughing at this welcome.
I assured him Masaru wasn't like this all the time and he really was a good kid!!
We were off on the road though and eventually made it, with a couple of stops, to Tokoroa.
We've unpacked most of our stuff and are working on Dru's job situation, which looks promising.
Today's goals are to open a bank account and get some more coat hangers.
Love you guys
Dru, Milz, Masaru and Yuki

And then there were two!

OK, so now that Dru and Melissa have moved across the "pond" there are really only two of us who will be writing on this blog. Dru says he is going to continue to post, and I have my fingers crossed, but who knows if that will really happen. With Leslie so busy with school and the kids that leaves your truly to fill in the gaps. This could be a really interesting 6 months for our blog. Hope you all like seeing pictures of Myles and Yoda. You are going to get really sick of us. I wish I had Angie's talent at blogging, I don't so you will all just have to suffer.

Here are a few pictures of Myles in the last two weeks. He is getting really chunky! He has also started to smile and see better. He and Bjorn exchanged smiles for a few min. this afternoon. I can't believe how fast he is changing. Gone are the days of my "sleepy little bear", now I have a "roaring lion" each afternoon. It's all good though, I love it!Here is Myles after a bath. He likes his bath now that he can get into the tub all the way. None of that sponge bath crap!Lorie came for a visit last week. It was great to see her and she thinks Myles is beautiful.