How much stuff can you fit in a Mazda Familia?

I feel today has been productive but really we haven't done a lot. The locals came over to cut down a dead tree a few days ago so this morning Marty got stuck into chopping the very dead wood to pieces. I managed to pile up most of it in the wood shed but there is still a bit more to do.
The weather warning again is not looking great so we decided to take the boys out for a ride down Snee rd. They were surprisingly eager to head out - very different from the battles we had trying to get them down Spedding and Trig Rd - and loved the new scenery. Dino was a little bit too excited by it all an wanted to gallop the whole way which at times proved difficult but by the time we turned back they were pretty knackered so were quite happy to plod.

We had a few errands in town to attend to so we got the boys tucked up and back in the paddock and headed off to Dannevirke. Mitre 10 is our new home away from home. We stocked up on all sorts of bits and pieces, including some gun staples which Marty has just found out don't fit the staple gun. Gutted.

I needed to find some sort of rectangular metal ring to fix Dino's cover. Mitre 10 was no help so we went to the guy who just has lots of 'stuff' in a shed and found a few things that might do the trick. We will find out tomorrow if they work.

Then began our freebie foraging. We've been looking for pallets to help build the nesting house of the chicken coop. I've ordered 5 from RD1 which are being delivered on Thursday along with a bag of horse feed but we needed more anyway. I scampered off to The Warehouse to try and nab some of theirs and Marty wandered over to Beaurepaires to source some free tyres for the worm farm. We loaded up the car with our findings and headed off to the supermarket.

An extortionate amount of money later we were back on the road to Takapau. We'd also managed to pick up 6 'Marcy' and one 'Ivory' raspberry plants (I'm very excited about the Ivory - yellow rasperries!) and somehow had found room to fit 5 tyres, 4 pallets of various sizes and enough food and wine to sink a ship into the little Mazda. It really is true that you can fit anything in there. We proved that with the two 4 metre flowering cherry trees that we lugged back with us on our last trip to the viking city.

The boys were happy to see us return because, of course, it meant food. Marty scared them mid-meal by picking me up and spinning me around upside down. Took a while to calm Dino down but Brother was far too interested in the food to be scared for too long.

Anyway, bedtime now. I hope we don't wake up to flooding.