Arrow.

Any day now...

Any day now I am expecting a call to say that my eldest sister, Carolyn (pictured on the right) has had her new baby girl. The due date is December the 8th (today!). Carolyn lives in Helensville (just north of Auckland) with her husband, Damon, and their son, Luca (in the middle of the photo drinking hot chocolate).

Below is a wee bonus photo. It's Marco with an emo wig on. Like, totally no one understands him.

Berneth? Kenadette?

I'm trying to work out one of those names like Bradgelina for my sister Bernadette and her fiancé Kenneth. Ken is from Ballyshannon, which is an amazing wee town in County Donegal, which is in the northeast of the Republic of Ireland. Ken met Bernie while he was living in New Zealand quite a number of years ago now. Shortly after, he moved back to Ireland. Shortly after, Bernie moved to Ireland, and they've been nerds about each-other ever since. They came back to New Zealand about a year ago and bought a house with a sweet as view of Wellington. They're getting married in March and I'm starting to wonder what I'm gonna wear to the wedding. Ken's whole family are coming over. I'm really excited because he has a really big raucous family and so do we. It's gonna be quite the occasion. Here are Bernie and Ken on the front porch of their new house.

Marco and Luca are cousins.

Marco (Left - 6 months old) and Luca (Right - nearly 3 years old) are cousins. They are also both my nephews. Marco lives in Wellington and Luca lives in Auckland so they don't see one another very often. They love each other, but they are still a bit unsure of each other. Luca is a sweet wee man and tries his hardest to be friends with Marco. Marco is still too young to really understand much, so all he can do is examine and analyse Luca. This makes Luca unsure, but he smiles anyway.


When Marco is lying on the floor I can't help but lying down next to him so I can tickle him, or kiss him on his chubby cheeks. Marco usually cycles through a whole collection of facial expressions, including: smiling, frowning, shocked, confused, annoyed etc. He's wearing his Pac-Man top. It has a matching bib too, but he's not wearing that.

The cute little Italian girl in this picture is Cecilia Martelli (my mother). It was probably taken around 1953-54, when she would have been about maybe two or three years of age. She passed away peacefully yesterday at our family home. I am currently putting together a photo-montage-thing for her funeral. I found some pretty awesome photos of her. I really like this one. She is standing outside the family house (on the farm), wearing a little dress that my Nanna Margherita (her mother) would have made for her. Nanna was as seamstress and made most of the family's clothes. "There wasn't a lot of money around in them days", Nanna said to me recently.

This picture of my Mum and her four younger siblings was probably taken around 1959. All clothes would have been tailored by my Nanna. I showed this picture to my Uncle Peter (pictured far right) recently. He laughed, and said something like "God, look at us! We look like refugees!"

A great-grandmother and great-grandson.

My Nanna Margherita holds my nephew Marco. She remarks at what a big boy he is! She tells him that he'll be a policeman when he's big and that he'll go around clobbering everyone.

"You'll go round clobbering everybody. That's what you'll be doing. Clobbering everybody", she says to him.

I can't figure out which one of them I find cutest.

Some nice quotes relating to weasels.

Hello. Lately I've been looking around for some quotes involving weasels. Here are some I've found:

"I have come up with a plan so cunning you could stick a tail on it and call it a weasel."- Blackadder (in Blackadder the Third)

"Eagles may soar, but weasels don't get sucked into jet engines." - John Benfield ( a very wise man.)

"Weaseling out of things is important to learn. It's what seperates us from the animals... except the weasel." - Matt Groening

"Every now and then when your life gets complicated and the weasels start closing in, the only cure is to load up on heinous chemicals and then drive like a bastard from Hollywood to Las Vegas... with the music at top volume and at least a pint of ether." - Hunter S. Thompson (from Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas)

As awesome as those quotes are, here's something more awesome: