new views

What a week! Firstly, we had visitors last weekend of Michael's cousin from Adelaide, Marion, and her partner, Ray, staying with us. We were the first stop on their 3 month trip around the world. It was nice to meet them and they were very easy house guests. Then on Tuesday we moved house! We had lived in Papamoa for 18 months and were quite happy with the house but the landlord decided to put the property on the market so we decided to move out before we were actually given notice. It seems that the landlord is one of a growing number of New Zealanders who are feeling the bite of the high mortgage interest rates after enjoying a 3 or 5 years of low fixed rates and realising that they just can't afford to pay it.
We found a nice little town house back in Mount Maunganui 2 minutes from the beach, 3 minutes commute to work and 3 minutes from the main street shops. The actual move was quite tiring but pretty painless with the help of a man with a van and Norman and Linda. This is our 4th move since living in New Zealand so we are well practised. This house is smaller than the one we were in but as we don't hoard 'stuff' any more this wasn't a problem. The majority of boxes belonged to Georgia - packing up the Barbie emporium took days! Anyway, we're all sorted now - nice and cosy and homely and it is great to be able to go out for a meal at night just along the street.
Now just to finish off the week we have Easter weekend which is one of the busiest times for us in the pizza shop. Saturday night and tonight were like Christmas time all over again! But it has been a brilliant week weather wise which brings out the crowds.