Time is racing

I cannot believe it is one week to christmas! I haven't even posted the NZ presents, so they're not going to get there in time (sorry, relatives!) and I am deeply disorganised with everything else. I think I might be in denial ... hopefully my husband has got the catering under control, and the kids' presents, because I don't even have a list yet. And I am the queen of lists.

So this is the time of year we wave off our more interesting friends to their overseas postings. Normally we welcome some back too, but not this year ... and no plans to visit anyone in 2014! How dull. So we had a farewell bbq Saturday night - the boys set the table for me.



Not quite what I had envisaged, but worked well. And those are plastic forks - which I normally try to avoid - but the dishwasher broke last Wednesday and was pronounced dead on Friday by the nice dishwasher man. We could have spent a few days researching options and deciding on the best one and comparing prices and bargaining a deal ... or we could have rung the nearest store in a panic and ordered the machine that the dishwasher man recommended in a desperate attempt to get it installed before Christmas. Don't judge.



And in other excitement - just before two dozen people arrived to sit in the back garden on Saturday we discovered a bee swarm in an upturned pot! Thousands of the little blighters, so we called Phil the bee man who came and put out a hive for them to get used to, and he'll come and get it when they've settled down a bit. He reckoned they must have been there a week because of the comb they'd started. The white stuff is comb - the brown stuff is bees. Very cool, although I did take that photo from the safety of the other side of the window. Angry, angry, bees.