Annual Christmas Picnic lunch - in November

This year we had to be super organised to arrange our picnic get together with the 5 families as Jane and Kevin are expecting their third child early Jan; and Naomi and Mark and getting married mid Dec so we decided to do an early Nov catch up. We picked a particularly auspicious occasion - Christine and Andrea's birthday! The weather was kind and shined brightly making our picnic easy to host outside at Okahu bay. I made a cake to celebrate - a wise owl (no connection to the age of the girls of course!). The kids played well enjoying the flying fox which always had a queue outside of. Camryn, Noah and Molly are seen here playing on the mat, they were born within a month of each other. It will be fun to see them grow up together and we have kind of agreed to mark each year with photos of them. As for organising a photo of all the kiddies - well that was just too much planning for any of us to do on the day. Top shot shows the three 8-9month old kiddies with Naomi in charge! Next photo has me holding Camryn, Naomi with Noah, Christine and Tom, and Andrea and Molly. Some of the Dads - Kevin, Simon and David, with Christine cutting her cake. The cake.

Cousin Jamie's first birthday

Lisa's little boy is one! We were all invited to celebrate the occasion at Lisa's. David was unable to go having signed up for an 18k mountain goat type run along the west coast (Speights West Coaster) from Bethells beach in the midday sun! CRAZY. The rest of us arrived at a little after 1 having fed the girls in a rush (where I discovered it is impossible to speed feed a 9 month old!) to discover a glorious spread of BBQ sausies, platters of seafood, sausage rolls, lollies etc. So the girls got stuck into their second lunch acting like they hadn't only just been fed! It was a beautiful afternoon, exceptionally well organised by Lisa and a good chance to meet some of her good friends.


Isobel got a chance to improve her tennis skills and got serious with the stick and ball! Her wind up was very impressive!

Summer's arrived

We have just spent a fabulous week down in Turangi. Normally a winter destination, or one for D to go with his fishing rods this time we ventured out in early summer with all the troops.

David and I thought we would make the most of an early start to lift kids from beds into car and get on the road and underway before they truly woke up. We got up around 5am and were putting the last items in the car when two very excited little girls ran out of their rooms, both carrying their Pooh bears asking "are we going to Turangi?" This was shortly followed by squeaks coming from Camryn's room. By the time we had loaded everyone into the car everyone was wide awake and very excited about the trip. Even Alexa, who the day before was trying to convince us to "cancel" (her words) the trip so she could attend a birthday party the following weekend!

We had a great time, biking around the town every day, visiting the hot pools, taking the girls for bush walks and also getting out ourselves to do some runs. We even saw a Morepork on the bush track up to lake Rotopounamu. The girls loved the bush walk, despite the steady climb up, up and up. They kept up a game of looking for the gruffalo and running away. We even saw a tree shaped like an alligator that we had to escape. We met up with David who had run ahead and right around the lake. It took us an hour to walk up to the lake edge, so we only had a short 5 mins 'fishing' with the kids pretend fishing rods & a reward of a carob covered marshmallow mushroom (yummy!), before it was time to head back down the hill, having running races with Dad while Mum jogged gently behind carrying Camryn in the backpack. Camryn had a perpetual lean to one side to look around Mum's head and keep her eyes on her 2 big sisters.

The sun was out for most of the week and we had fun in the back yard of our rental getting out the carwash slide. Everyone had to have a go (everyone except Camryn), including a reluctant Mum. Isobel struggled with understanding how to propel yourself along. Her efforts generally ended up landing flat, but she got some help from dad. Alexa quickly worked out how to run up and jump on keeping herself sliding to the very end. She loved it!

Flying's easy

For David's birthday I bought him a trial flight. On the basis, of course, that he doesn't take it any further! Hmmmm we'll see.
We headed with the whole crew out to Ardmore - and I'm not sure who was more excited about the flight. Dad or his girls! Certainly they were skipping in their anticipation. Unfort it was too windy to go up, but the bonus was a land flight for Alexa and Bell! We will be heading out again for David's flight in November.

How many on a bike?

On a recent trip to the farm the girls got a ride with G'dad on the farm bike. Zac didn't want to miss out on the fun!