Zoo babies

On Friday we went to the zoo and had a great time. There were babies every where - we loved seeing the meerkat, baboon and wallaby babies most. We also loved following the map to different animals and all the treats that mum brought along to ensure it was a smooth afternoon.

Family Photos

I am constantly on a quest to get a decent photo of all 5 children together. By decent, I don't even require all of them to be looking at the camera and smiling. All I need is eyes open and a neutral/normal expression. Here is a recent attempt. Sometimes I despair.

Sky Tower

Rich took a day of annual leave on Friday and led an expedition to the Sky Tower. In doing so, he allowed Grace to tick off three things on her "Things to do in the holidays" list. These included a visit to the sky tower, a ride on a boat and a long walk. Only five items left! All very achievable, thankfully.

Kids for Kids Choir

Grace performed again this year in the World Vision Kids for Kids Choir. Jane and Laura went to watch, and it was absolutely brilliant. There were 500 children in the choir and they sang a lot of old favourites. Amazing!

On a quiet afternoon

Book Week

During book week the girls had to go to school as a character from a favourite book. Grace went as Eddie, a girl from the series The Boys start the War, Jane went as Annie McCray, from Hip, Hip Hooray for Annie McCray, and Josephine went as the youngest princess from The Twelve Dancing Princesses, ie the only one with any sort of conscience or moral fibre.

Pampering

The girls do love a good session at the spa.

Dusk

J and J watching the sun go down.

Happy Birthday, Grace!

Well, hard to believe that our sunny little baby has turned into a beautiful 9 year old! She had a movie party, in which she and her friends created a movie together (yes, mum, I will get it to you!). It really was the best party we have ever hosted. Organised. Structured. Timed perfectly. Oh yeah, and Fun! As you may see, the tightly controlled aspect of the whole thing was particularly pleasing to us. This may be because it was not long after Jane's movie party, in which we invited all her friends over for a pajama party with a movie and popcorn. 40 minutes into the movie we had a horde of little people jumping on the top bunk, saying gleefully, "Let's play zombies in the dark!" Things have changed forever around here!

Drama!

Josephine has been loving going to her drama class. One of her friends has an amazingly talented mum who teaches drama and runs a class after school once a week for 6 year 1 students. Each week she gets some "homework" like learning a joke or describing a feeling or something similar. One day she came home and told us that she needed to practise miming feeding the dog. She was very adamant that she must follow the Four Rules of Mime. Only problem being she could only remember two of them. Somewhat baffled, we brainstormed as many rules of mime as we could. It was an exercise that stretched all of our capabilities. I believe her mime was considered adequate the following week. This photo was taken after the end of term clown party.

Kiwi Collage

Jane was very happy to have her collage of a Kiwi displayed with other art from local primary schools at the Albany shopping mall.

Netball

Grace had a great netball season. The Magic were a solid team and all of them played hard. Grace even scored her first goal! So exciting.

Walking and Talking

Adam is walking and running (only when going downhill so far) with great enjoyment and confidence now. He is like a little wind-up toy in that as soon as you set him down he is in motion. He has also learnt his first word: Yeah. He says it often and with much conviction and lots of nodding. Adam, are you hungry? Yeah. Adam, do you want to go outside? Yeah. Adam, would you like a bath? Yeah. Adam, do you love me? Yeah! Such an agreeable soul. We love him!

Lazy

Well, that is my only excuse for not posting anything here since July! Terrible. And so much has happened. We've had Grace's birthday and Rich's birthday, Adam has started walking, we went and stayed with Robert and Chern in Hamilton for a great weekend, all sorts of school events and Adam has started talking! Well, he says one word. But that is big news, and I have been very remiss in not recording it all here for the Grandparents. Will fix things now with the photos I have and get some more from Rich as soon as I can.

Cousins

It has been fantastic having Robert, Chern and Torin stay with us this week!

Jane

Grace at Pumphouse Theatre

Diorama

Since we moved to New Zealand three and a half years ago I have been involved in the creation of more dioramas than in all the other thirty-five and a half years of my life! Why, oh why do teachers here insist on torturing the parents of their students with their fiendishly designed demands for dioramas? This project required Charlie to depict five of the challenges that early settlers to New Zealand faced, with, economic, cultural, environmental and social challenges all represented. Charlie chose to create a cemetery in which we have Donald McDonald (a playmobil fireman morphed with a pirate to depict a settler) contemplating the graves of his family. These include Doreen, his wife who died in childbirth and his son, Darwin, who died due to poor medical care (social issues), his brother, Jim, who died in a land battle with local Maori (cultural misunderstandings over property) and brother in law, Will, who died because he was forced to learn a new trade to earn his living and found himself to be not very skilled at whaling (economic challenge). Poor Donald has laid his axe on some nearby rocks for a moment (represents the thick bush needed to be cleared for farming - environmental challenge) to wallow in his isolation and homesickness (social). A very mournful but highly effective piece of work, Charlie!

More park pics

At the park

Rich is away in Melbourne at the moment and in an effort to retain sanity we all took a walk down the bush track to the park for a play and to feed the ducks. Ted was anything but relaxed as I insisted that he sit and watch the ducks while they were being fed. This is one of the saddest photos we have of him, I think. He is really, really wishing he could be in the thick of things. It was a beautiful afternoon and we played much longer than we planned and watched the sun set over Upper Harbour.

More birthday photos

Birthday Cake

When it was time for the cake we all sang Happy Birthday, while Adam chuckled away. He loves singing and music and always claps and bobs up and down. The cake was decorated by Grace and her friend Keita, and represented a TV remote, which is Adam's favourite toy.

Our Baby is One!

What a happy year. Adam turned one on the 13th of June. Amazing to think that it was a whole year ago that we were bringing our tiny little boy home and the girls were putting him in a cardboard box. We had a great day. Robert, Chern and Torin came up to celebrate with us. We turned up the music and did some dancing with balloons.

Gayna

Our friend Gayna brightened our day by dropping over on her moped and bringing a box full of fabulous shiny and swishy dress ups. Thank you, Gayna!

Sunday afternoon

This is a typical Sunday afternoon. While Rich and I steal a nap the girls find bits and pieces from around the house and create a cubby house or some other major project. Here we see the cubby house in the background with a drum kit in the foreground, created from table and stool, Ted's bowl and a box which should be full of musical instruments. No prizes for guessing where the musical instruments were stored while their box was co-opted.

Adam

Adam continues to thrive. Hard to believe he'll be 1 in a couple of weeks! He is great at getting up stairs and onto the couch now, and eats everything - gobbles up his peas and corn. He is practicing his walking holding onto someone's hands, and loves it, even though it looks like his legs are made of spaghetti.

Mum, I touched an All Black!

The day after cross country, the Westpac helicopter flew into school and landed on the oval, bring it with it Jerome Kaino, an All Black. After a great presentation about the job that the rescuers do, Jerome handed out the certificates for cross country. Jane was thrilled to shake his hand, though she had never even heard of him before! And yes, I need a better camera!

Cross Country Competition

It was a beautiful sunny day. Josephine had a wonderful time, smiling and waving for the whole length of the oval while all other runners passed her by. Jane, on the other hand, knew that her best friend Logan would come first and was determined to come second.She was so proud and pleased when she made it! Grace had a great run too, even though she was not feeling 100%. When I hugged her after her race I could feel her heart pounding against my hip.