As Promised

So, as I promised to keep this up to date more regularly, here I am with another post! I know, but please don't fall out of your chair, I don't want to feel responsible for any injuries!

We have had Alastairs parents staying with us this week and Glenn decided to help Alastair to get a job done. Our house is lovely but the sides have no gates or fences to stop people from walking into our back garden off the street. This makes me feel a bit vulnerable when I am home alone and so we set fixing this as a priority. When Mum and Dad were out in NZ, Dad spent some time with Al, measuring up and deciding what we would need to do the job. Unfortunately we ran out of time, what with a wedding and the beach and fun stuff like that! Based on Dad's plans and measurements, Glenn headed off to the hardware store to pick up some wood and cement and got started with the post on friday. Today (Saturday), Alastair joined in to help get the job done! Bob the builder watch out!

I took some pictures to tell the story so here they are!

A New Start

Considering it has been 1 year and 1 month since my last post, I thought I should get my act together and get back on here. So to re-launch my blog I have decided to do a summary of the past year month by month. I will try to be brief but it has been quite a year and there is a lot to tell! Here goes:

April 2009 - I am in my 3rd month of unemployment due to a lack of work visa and I am busy planning a trip back to the UK to

sort it out at the end of August. On the 5th a dashing young man catches my eye at church, by the end of April we are a couple, have spent a very intense 5 days together and we have parted ways at

the airport as he waves me off to England! We will be apart for 10.5 weeks.

May 2009 - Back in Milton Keynes and celebrating my nieces 3rd

birthday and my mums 50th birthday in May. Really enjoying family time and Alastair and I Skype daily, he's definitely a keeper. I tell my family and friends all about him and we start

planning when he can come over to meet them. I also

get granted my permanent residency visa for NZ - no more visa worries! :)

June 2009 Still in the UK, we celebrate fathers day and Sally's birthday, it was great to be around for so many occasions. I prepare for my return to Wellington and dread the goodbyes with family. Al is now in the USA with his barbershop chorus to compete in the internationals.

I get back to Wellington and back to work with conference.

July 2009 - Alastair returns to NZ and we enjoy spending lots of time together. I suddenly find I'm so busy socialising with my

new man that my attendance at the gym is suffering :)

August 2009 - Life is super! Al and I decide to buy a

house!

September 2009 - Alastair gets baptised and proposes, I say yes. We have lots of fun telling friends and family that we are getting married. We have lots of conversations about when that will be, will it be march 2010 or earlier or later? England? NZ? Both? So many questions! We come up with a radical plan to extend our November trip to England and get

married on 19th December. Plans madly get underway!

October 2009 - We get the keys to the house. Preparations continue for the wedding with so much to do and the

addition of getting Al a special visa to enable him to marry me in England.

My whole life is revolving around the weddings!

November 2009 - Work is busy with our second biggest event taking place up the coast, I leave that event early to fly to England! Alastair meets my family for the first time and we have a couple of weeks of time to get to know everyone. We go to

Lincoln Cathedral and then London.

December 2009 - We watch my niece in her first ever school christmas performance. We have an early christmas day on 6th. We get married on the 19th! 2 days later we fly back to NZ for a Holmes family christmas and then flew off to Tonga for our honeymoon.

January 2010 - Enjoyed a tongan new year! We then had to establish what reality meant for us day to day whilst also preparing for our NZ wedding.

At the end of the month, Jenny, Simon, Gracie, Jess, Mum and Dad arrived in time for our NZ Wedding.

February 2010 - We had our NZ wedding - a fabulous day! Spent time with family and then sank back into reality!

March 2010 - Went part time at work due to funding issues.

So as you can see, it has been a fantastic, crazy and busy year. So now you are up to date I will try and keep up with this a bit more regularly!

The latest edition to the Hodge family!

The other week, I had the opportunity of heading south to meet little Gideon Richard Hodge. My amazing friend Lizzy gave birth to him on 8th January and her and Tim are getting used to the new life of being parents!

It was great to be able to meet Gideon. He is gorgeous and I had a lovely few days with them all.

The New Flat

Shortly after Sally, Craig and Oakley left, it was time to move flats! With James in our flat and Viv from next door getting married we either needed 2 new flatmates or a new four bedroom house to move to. The second option was the one we went for in the end. We found a brand new 4 bedroom, 3 storey town house to rent. When we looked round, we loved it, applied and got it! We moved in on 19th Feb and after some plumbing issues we are settling in well. I thought i would put on a few pics on here for you all to see.

The Tocknells in Wellington

February saw a visit to Wellington from my little sister, Craig and Oakley! It was lovely seeing them all. Oakley was just over 3 months old when I left so it was lovely to see him now he's 16 months!

We had lots of fun together exploring Wellington. We also made a trip to the south island for a day. It was a long day but lots and lots of fun!

I looked after Oakley for a day and we had lots of fun chasing birds at the beach which seems to be one of his favorite things to do.

It was great catching up with Sally and Craig and having lots of fun together.

Christmas Festivities

I felt as christmassy as.... I'm too confused even to explain how un christmassy I was! The sun was out, everyone was having bbq's and eating strawberries! Yet the bbq's were christmas bbq's! I was very disorganised at buying my christmas presents as in my brain I had months and months to get it all done, it can only be June afterall!

The festivities continued despite my denial though and I got swept along very confused by it all. For lifegroup we got together with the group we split from at the beginning of the year and had a bbq (of course - it's christmas!!!) and did secret santa. It was a really fun evening and during secret santa you got to swap presents (well steal), it was a new and fun way of swapping $5 presents which were never going to be something you always wanted! I had a chocolate fondu set for a while - brilliant, but it got taken in the last few rounds so I ended up with a water gun - still pretty good! :-) I've really enjoyed lifegroup this year and I look forward to the year ahead.

My flat and the flat next door got together for our christmas get together, where we did secret santa, had a lovely meal and then went out for Carols by Candlelight in the basin reserve cricket ground. It was definitely an experience to remember, sat in the middle of the cricket pitch, in summer, singing carols, with santa circling in a helicopter overhead! Crazy!
It was a lovely time with flatmates and friends though.

We also had a work bbq and an office trip out for lunch which were both fun times with collegues. The bbq was also time to say goodbye to James who's off to Canada to study for a year and Karen who's moving on from TSCF.

For christmas itself I have headed down south to spend Christmas with Tim and Lizzy Hodge in Lincoln. I used to work with Lizzy in Gloucester and I have known them for about 5 years and so it has been lovely spending Christmas with them as they are the closest thing to family I have in NZ. Christmas day itself, felt more christmassy then I thought it would as it was overcast and pretty chilly at a cool 19 degrees! I did a full english roast although I forgot the cocktail sausages wrapped in bacon. We watched the queens speech and the vicar of dibley and we even had the fire going for a while!

I got up at 6am on Boxing day to have a webchat with the family in the UK. It was true chaos but lovely to be part of their day. I got to see Jessica walking around and Oakley looking so smart and handsome and Gracie getting to that age of being really excited by what is going on. They are all growing up so fast.

The weather has been fantastic since christmas day and so we have spent a couple of days at the beach. Today is a chill out day at home although I am currently melting in the garden.

My Poor left foot!

Firstly, I broke my left big toe a month ago on my return from Hong Kong and endured a very swollen foot for a few days which was a bit of a pain as I had to wear my jandals (flip flops) in the rain! It has slowly been healing but is still a bit sore on occasion but I thought the drama was over until going away to SLC conference and getting bitten on my left ankle. At first it was just very itchy like any old mosquito bite but it became more and more swollen, hard, hot and itchy! Once back in Wellington I decided to visit the pharmacy (my first port of all nowadays as the doctor costs $58) who informed me that it was quite likely to be a spider bite and probably from a white tail! The biggest thing to look out for was throbbing pain as that indicated a deep rooted infection which would kill all the flesh! Yuck!!!! I was back in my jandals with a very swollen foot. I am back to normal now and did not get an infection - phew! It was all quite exciting really! I'm quite proud of my spider bite which mum didn't quite understand! :o)

The pictures are not from the most swollen day but give you a pretty good idea of what my foot looked like! If you don't like feet then look away now!

SLC 2008

Here are the motley crew from SLC 2008 (most of them anyway!). From the 17th - 23rd November I was at my second student conference of the year with TSCF. I am still learning my way with being involved in organising these events but by God's grace things ran smoothly!

It was a great opportunity for me to build on relationships I had made with students at mid year conference in June and also to meet lots of new students. It was a very tiring week full of har work but also lots of fun as I worked with collegues I don't often get to work with and students who I rarely get to mix with.

I tried to do my work while students were in their sessions and seminars which enabled me to spend some of the free time in the afternoons with students, playing sport, dancing and generally getting to know them better. It was an exciting end to the week when one of the students gave his life to Christ. What a privilage it was to witness the power of God in his life.

I had been told that historically SLC has always had bad weather so I was prepared with lots of warm clothes but as it turned out, we had amazing weather every day and I now know that sun block is an essential addition to the first aid kit!

I am enjoying some time off this week, recovering from the hours put in during the conference but I am very thankful of the job I have.

Hong Kong

After a really good deal on some flights, I took the opportunity to go and see one of my best friends Abi in Hong Kong. Abi moved to HK a couple of months to volunteer for an organisation called Mothers Choice. She works in the nursery of the orphanage looking after 24 babies.

I had such a fantastic time and really enjoyed the chance to chill out and see another new country! It was also fantastic catching up with Abi and spending some quality time with her and her friends.

Hong Kong is a stunning place to visit with so much to see. I was really struck by the smog when I first arrived, it is certainly a contrast to New Zealand air! The humidity was also a big part of being in HK, but to the locals, compared to the summer it was actually quite a dry heat! There were also some interesting smells as I explored HK.

We have such a lot of internation al students in New Zealand, the majority of which are Asian (Chinese, Japanese, Malaysian etc) so it was great for me to visit an Asian country and understand more of the Asian culture.

The public transport in HK is fantastic and makes it very easy to get around whether by MTR (underground trains), bus, taxi, tram or walking - I did sooooo much walking.

Hong Kong has so many beautiful beaches, vibrant street markets, great shopping, and fantastic people. It was good fun being around so many people, coming from NZ with a total population of 4 million, I think I shared an MTR ride with about 4 million people during rush hour!!!!! ;o)