• The stated goal: Complete, clean family tree, as far back as feasible.
• Status: Achieved 

The big picture goal here is obviously to ensure my kids have a great understanding of where they come from. I was thinking this might come up in 20 years but Ada has already started asking questions like "who started our family ?" and "where does our family come from ?".

I doubt most are interested in the minute detail so here is just a short update for anyone who's interested in ancestry research. 

• I've been using Myheritage.com to build out our family tree. I went as far as a I could go on my own using existing family records etc. If anyone is super interested you can see my tree site here (family members - feel free to join and edit). 
• I eventually hit a brick wall on some branches of the tree and the shear size of the tree was becoming difficult to manage properly, so I decided to get some help. I used Upwork to find a freelancer ancestry guru to help me out for a few hours. I found Martha in Fayetteville, Arkansas, USA and she's been great. Over the last few weeks Martha has been able to ferret out archives and official registries that I had no clue on how to access.
• The result is a complete tree i.e all ancestry branches complete, going back 7 generations from the kids - generally to the late 1700's. However parts of the tree go much further - for example back to the original Maori landing waka in New Zealand or to our farming ancestors in 16th century Scotland. We have nearly 2500 people in the tree and we've upload some fantastic original sources - letters, burial records, marriage and death certificates etc. 

I think job done for now :)