Lovely Sunday - First bbq

Lovely walk with Totty to the park, high tide and fun with the lapping water again.

Went out to a garden centre in Bethlehem, I have been before but first time for Jon. Lovely coffee and bakewell tart. They had a scarecrow competition for children and the scarecrows were very good. Saw some lovely 'gummies' - wellies and a lovely rocking chair.

We then went on to Te Puna Quarry where we walk Totty quite a lot. The have their annual fete and I can't believe it is the second one we have been to!!! Lots of stalls selling crafts and food and a beautiful day to make it go well. Our car was parked at the bottom of three and the queue for the shuttle bus was long so we walked to the top.

After a look around the stalls we went to make a tile to go on the path that is being extended. Jon has always shown the girls his drawing of Huckleberry Hound and so we decided that he should draw it on the tile which he did and it looked really good with our names and the year - our little bit to the history of NZ.

By now Jon was feeling hungry and off we went to see what we fancied for lunch. We decided on the 'mean burger' which was, now wait for this, a roll that had been fryed on the outside with sliced steak, fried onions, beetroot and a fried egg!! It was huge! The love of beetroot is well known down here and it is in a lot of dishes and comes along in a lot of sandwiches. We like beetroot so it was fine. We took our lunch to the picnic area and found a seat with a lovely view and sat and enjoyed it. I couldn't finish mine and needed a few wet wipes at the end of it!!! We then sat and enjoyed the music and the sunshine for a little while before walking back to the lower stalls and found one selling gourmet ice cream!!!! I had raspberry and white chocolate and Jon had strawberry and it was soooo good.

We decided, after all we had eaten, that we should 'walk' back to the car park to burn off some of the calories but I feat it will take more than that.

Back home we sat and read the papers and just enjoyed the sunshine. I finally used the meat, I had taken out of the freezer yesterday, to make a casserole. We will have that tomorrow as we decided on a BBQ today as the weather was so nice. We bought a Teflon sheet to go on the BBQ a few months ago and this was the first time to use it.

We took the dog out for a walk and then came back and Jon did the BBQ and the sheet works very well and so easy to clean. Dinner, chicken and lamb chops was very nice followed by meringue and berries with grated chocolate and just a little cream. I really must cut down tomorrow!!

A few bursts of fireworks this evening but not too many, hopefully that will be it.

Jane called while we were watching TV to say some of her presents had arrived and she liked them and we had a nice chat with her for about an hour.

WEATHER

Beautiful clear skies and sunshine 21 degrees