Christchurch Pettys in October 2013

Jessica, Seth, William

At the start of the month I was in Wellington for the NZAMT conference. (New Zealand Association of Mathematics Teachers). I travelled up to Wellington very early in the morning with Shane, and when we got to the Wellington airport we found his suitcase, along with most of our display materials had been left in Christchurch. Fortunately we still had some materials, and the bag was delievered to us in a couple of hours, after the next flight came in from Christchurch. We had a stand, and told people about our resources. I also went to some of the seminars, and gave two seminars. In the evening was a dinner, a quiz night and a drinks night. I got to try out my skills as a salesperson, and enjoyed it far more than I would have thought. We made a few sales, and it is all about lifting our exposure. I have some more conferences to go to, so we are hoping to make inroads in those.


I wasn’t that excited about being in Wellington, as it is on a fault-line and the buildings are deadly. There was even a small earthquake when we were there. The accommodation was pretty basic, but fine. I’m not keen on a sticky bathroom floor, but I survived. One day when we are making lots of money, maybe we’ll stay in nicer accommodation. It was hard to sleep as my brain was going flat out as well. The bathrooms were communal. One morning I decided I would dry my hair in the bathroom after my shower, so that the noise of the drier wouldn’t disturb my neighbours. Possibly because I was carrying other things, I forgot to take my towel. So I got to the end of the shower and realised I had nothing to dry myself on. I ended up putting my dressing gown on my wet body, and dripped back to my room.

The conference ended about lunchtime on Friday, so we packed up our gear and headed into town. Rather than lug our luggage round we rang up my friend, Craig and left it at his office in town. He was catching a slightly earlier flight to Christchurch, so was even able to take us to the airport.

When I got home, Nan was already here, come to visit for Seth’s blessing. It was so nice to have her here again – like old times. Jonathan was pretty excited too, and William. Seth has been given a Welsh second name, Llywelyn, in honour of Nan and her heritage. I appreciated her tolerance of my rants about women and their place in the church.


The next day my nephew, Simon, and his wife, Celia visited and I cooked for them, and William and Jessica, and of course Nan too. This would be an average sized meal for the Melbourne Pettys, but was an event for me. It all went well. We were dealing with a wide variety of food allergies (William, Jessica, Celia and me) and fussinesses (Jonathan), so it was a bit of a challenge.


The next day was Seth’s blessing, which was ably performed by William.


Mark forgot to put the photos of Seth in last month, so he’d better put them in now. He is nice little baby and growing well. I’d forgotten how demanding they are. Jessica and William seem to be doing fine on broken sleep.

My computer had proved troublesome, so hadn’t gone away with me to Wellington, and then started acting up badly – so off to the repair shop, who said it was terminal. So we had to buy another one. Mark and I both have Windows 8 machines now! I found it frustrating to the point of tears trying to get it to function at first, and happily the old one had a final burst of health that allowed me to write my blog and catch up on email.


I had been running up to 10km at a time in preparation for a 10km run in a few weeks, but suddenly my muscles started hurting really badly. I still haven’t worked out what it is, but I suspect it is related to cramps, as I lose a lot of salts when I exercise. It did put me off though, which is a shame as I do lots of good thinking on my runs. I cancelled the run, and arranged to go on a rogaine instead with Mark up Castle Hill.


Nan did some wonderful work clearing part of our garden. I left it to sprout weeds, and then raked them over to kill them. I am now allowing a second crop of weeds, which I will then kill, and plant vegetable seeds. It’s an interesting exercise. I have been doing 30 minutes each day of gardening, and it is surprising how much I can get done in the time.


A highlight for me was driving up to Parnassus to collect Nan from her walk. It was a beautiful day, and I love being up in that part of the world. I wish the drive to Timaru was as magnificent and varied. That two-hour drive to Timaru has to be one of the most boring stretches of road in New Zealand and we get to do it about five times a year when we visit for church! The people who had walked with Rosemary were amazed at her ability and fitness. Rosemary is probably the record holder as the oldest person to walk the track. I often boast about her exploits, and hope to be able to keep up one day.

It was conference video weekend, which I totally love. I really, really love sitting at home with my family and my knitting, listening to the words of our leaders and the amazing music of the Mormon Tabernacle Choir. I just loved their “Divine Redeemer” on Sunday morning. My favourite talks were President Uchtdorf (of course) saying that all were welcome in the church, and Elder Timothy Dyches talking about healing – “Wilt thou be made whole?”. I also especially liked the talk by the Australian, Elder Terence Vinson about drawing closer to God.


I had an “Ensign” experience, when I felt I should ring my friend to see how she is, and found she was finding it all a bit much. So we went for a walk along the beach and had a great chat and I cooked dinner for her and we both felt a lot better.


In my work I have been finishing off materials, and working on contacting schools and setting up Professional development session throughout the country to raise my profile. It is important for the teachers to trust me and my materials.


Mark and I went on the rogaine up at Castle Hill, which was wonderful, even though my legs seized up on the last hour. I’m trying magnesium to see if that helps. The weather was perfect, and the scenery breathtaking. I feel so blessed to live in such a beautiful country, and to have the opportunity and fitness to be able to enjoy it.

I went in my official capacity to the Single Adult sacrament meeting. I’m glad I did as I really enjoyed being with them, and the lunch was superb – a hot cooked ham. The same day we went to a school marae for the tangi for the son of a woman we know from church. It was a good experience to be there, even though we were culturally a bit out of our depth. The man had been coming back to church in Melbourne and had recently baptised his daughter. Actually - I think they might be in Nathan’s stake – he was in Greensborough, I think, and his name is Colin Campbell. He was killed in a bike/car accident. His wife was about to get baptised. (I chatted to his mother a couple of weeks later, and Shirley is going ahead with her baptism. She has been really well supported by her ward.)


I was asked to run a workshop about junkfood (repeated 6 times) on the Saturday and teach the Laurels on the Sunday at a South Island Youth Conference. I took Alhana Clendon with me on the Saturday and Harmony Horan on the Sunday. I enjoyed the experience, and the youth were having a great time. It was a life changing experience for many of them, as we heard in testimony meeting the following Sunday.


One evening we watched “Finding Nemo”. Jonathan heard the opening theme and came out to tell us that we had watched it ten years before at the cinema on 22 September 2003. I was doubtful and had a look in my journal, and he was correct. He really has an amazing brain.


The business is slowly ramping up. Fortunately we now have a contract to do some consulting, as well as the statistics materials. We were contacted by a publishing company in the UK who are interested in collaborating on making some videos. So things are happening.


See you all next month
Nicola, on behalf of Mark, Jonathan, William, Jessica and Seth