Winter, laundry, fruit trees, all sorts of stuff

 Kia Ora! Look at me, working so hard on getting my blog caught up! Aren't you just so proud of me? You should be, especially if you knew of the other craziness going on in my life right now (spoiler alert: we have to find a new place to live 3 months sooner than we thought we would). Anyways, back to getting caught up.

It's July now! And winter is in full force as you can clearly tell in this picture I took on one of my walks.

I gotta say, winter in New Zealand is not too shabby. Though it does rain a lot. I love the rain, so for the most part I don't mind that it rains a lot. However, we do not own a dryer. 

Side story: Before the family joined Brad and I saw that the house he rented for us didn't have a dryer I was like, Honey, you've got to get us a dryer bought. We cannot not have dryer. It's unfathomable. Well, he made do and put off my requests for a dryer, figuring we'd take care of it when I arrived. One of the first purchases we made was of a portable clothes line. 

I realize it's kind of hard to tell the details, with all the clothes on it, but here it is.

Before I continue talking about not having a dryer, let's zoom out a little bit and take a look at James. Now, this position isn't too crazy, but this son of mine sits in all sorts of crazy, pretzel-like positions. He even sleeps in odd positions. In fact, I need to find it, but we have a picture of him sitting similar to this, but holding the scriptures with his feet while we are doing family scripture reading. I'll do my best to find it and post it for you in another post.

Anyways, back to the clothesline story... Our house has an outdoor clothesline, but again, with all the rain that happens we can't often use it. This one is nice because if it's sunny outside we can fairly easily take it out that sliding glass door you see and if it starts to rain we can quickly bring it back inside. This happens quite frequently, usually accompanied with me shouting out about the rain and making a mad dash outside. 

We quickly discovered, however, that we needed a second portable clothesline. Every one has an assigned laundry day and if you take your time getting it going, things may not be dry by the next morning, but you have to relinquish the clothesline to whomever's laundry day is next. It has taken a little bit, but for the most part my kids now know they need to start their laundry first thing in the morning. Wait, second thing - they have also learned they can't start their laundry until after everyone has showered (otherwise there's lots of yelling coming from the bathroom as the water temperature changes from icy cold to burning hot over and over). I have discovered that I can start our whites in the evening, as long as they are on the clothesline before I go to bed they are pretty much always dry in the morning (kept inside). Which makes it a little easier to get all mine & Brad's laundry done in one 24 hours period. 

When there is a sunny day, oh man, we make haste and try to get sheets and towels washed. I love the rain, but I love a good sunny day when my laundry gets done before bedtime! After a few weeks, I realized that we actually get by pretty well without a dryer. Yes, there are nights when my pajamas are not dry in time for bed and yes, there have been days when the towels didn't get dry before someone needed to use theirs for a shower, but for the most part, it's worked out. Though it is getting old, often having a clothesline or two in our living room, but now that it's warming up that is happening less and less often. Also, we did buy a used dehumidifier and that has helped a fair bit when we have to dry clothes inside. And, when we got our first power and gas bill, I was doubly glad we didn't have dryer because I about fell over when I saw how expensive it was! So, for now we have no plans to get a dryer and I am just fine with that. As long as I have some good clotheslines!

Our stake had an adult ball that Brad and I attended. We got all dressed up and had a nice night out. This is the first time Brad and I have attended a dance since high school! Crazy, right?! They had a live band, and while I didn't like most the songs (or even know many) they played, I still enjoyed being with my husband. There was also a dinner and it was pretty tasty and beautifully set up. There was a seafood chowder that was, oh my, so delicious. I'm still trying to find the recipe for it...

Mandaring oranges off our very own (well, our landlord's) tree in the yard. We also have a lemon tree and I think it's just awesome to have fruit trees like these! 

One thing we started doing upon this move is having the kids be more involved in dinner. We try to regularly have them pick a dinner and then help make that dinner. Autumn chose chicken burritos. However, you can't really find tortillas here very easily, so we tried making them. We even found a tortilla press at an op shop, but discovered it didn't work as well as we had hoped. We didn't have a rolling pin, so we tried rolling them out with a glass. It kinda worked. Our first batch turned out very oddly shaped, but tasty. We've since made them several times (and have purchased a rolling pin) and are getting better and better at them! 

One of our first attempts at a tortilla.

I will probably do a post all about grocery prices, but here's a little insight. $17.50 for a rotisserie chicken. And these are very small chickens, not big ones like you get back at Costco.

I brought one box of kitchen items, so I had to be pretty picky about what I brought for the kitchen. I didn't bring any of my mixing bowls. I really miss them. I have since bought some, but am still on the lookout for a nice, big mixing bowl (when we make cookies or anything that gets mixed, the dough just flies everywhere, my current bowls are too small). Anyways, we bought a salad mix but had no bowls, so we used my cake pan that I did bring to mix it up. It worked, but wasn't ideal!

My awesome water bottle making an appearance.

While shopping at Briscoe's I came across the beautiful dishes that made me think of my mother-in-law, so this picture is just for her!

With love from New Zealand,
Lyndsay