Molly's Summer

This summer Molly too has been spending every spare minute in the garden. Mostly pottering about collecting flowers, looking for fairies, helping Alfie terrorise the snails, playing on the swings and blowing bubbles.

With school and after-school activities becoming increasingly full-on, she has developed the appetite of an elephant, demanding porridge, Sultana Bran, toast AND a boiled egg each morning for breakfast. I’m having to get up extra early to fit it all in and it’s quite amazing how someone so very small can eat quite so much! 

Year 2 at school continues to be a big source of happiness for her (phew!) and her personal highlights at the moment are singing in the school choir (only because 50% of the tunes they practise are by her current idol Bruno Mars) and bringing home the class bear last week.

Back at home, like all good women, she’s learnt to multi-task – chef’s outfit on, cupcake mixture prepared and into the oven, over to the art table to design some dresses while they bake, then back to the kitchen ,etc etc.

Alfie's Summer

We have had a pretty crap summer in NZ this year. Lower temperatures than usual and lots of rain. But although the media have discussed the poor weather constantly, we didn’t really care too much and have managed to have a lot of fun anyway. Hey – we didn’t have to deal with tennis & school in temps of 45 degrees, or trying to sleep in temps of 42 degrees..... or getting to work in a foot of snow.... so for us it’s been great just to have everything in the middle, nice and easy!

We’ve spent a lot of time on the beach, which is one of Alfie’s favourite past-times. He loves collecting bits and pieces in his buckets, paddling, swimming, and looking for sea creatures.

He’s also spent a lot of time collecting wildlife in the garden. He spent most of last week making an elaborate home for his pet snail, with walls of bricks and a bed of leaves – all great stuff until he then accidentally trod on and squashed the snail – cue lots of tears “Oh noooooo.....I’ve killed him Mummy!”

He also found a dead mouse stuck in the rubber matting which we have under the swing. There’s a pattern emerging here.... let’s hope he never wants to become a vet.

He’s also been to sign up for the local rugby team. Training doesn’t start until later in the year but he already has a Wallabies rugby shirt, and his team beanie and his gum shield and wears them most of the time. The consequence is he gets rather hot under his hat and we don’t understand a word he says, but you can’t fault his enthusiasm.

 Unfortunately Alfie spent the 10 days following our wedding with Slap Cheek virus, and has been a very miserable boy. He’s spent his time playing Snakes & Ladders with Grandad, watching DVDs and moaning and groaning a lot....but he’s on the mend now and we are once more sending warnings out to the wildlife of Wellington – watch out, Alfie’s about!  

Birthday Season

In amongst all the chaos of the last few weeks, we had two other very important events to celebrate and it would be very wrong of us not to mention them on our blog.

First, Molly turned six. SIX! Not a tiny little girl anymore. We celebrated on the day with a big family barbeque (it’s not often we have all the grandparents plus an uncle in town!) and she had a disco party last weekend for her schoolfriends too.

Next, Alfie turned four. FOUR! Definitely not a tiny little boy anymore! He too got a family barbeque, but unfortunately we are very bad parents and haven’t yet organised a friends party for him. We are completely partied out! And he hasn’t asked yet....

Next on the list is my birthday in a couple of weeks time. It's a big one this year. I'm going to be 30 (again). Ha ha! 

In the meantime I have resolved not to make any more cakes whatsoever until next February. It's become a little bit ridiculous lately!

The Hughes-Downing Wedding Story

It’s been a whole week now so it’s definitely about time we posted about our wedding. What a day! Actually - what a weekend!

Because we held the wedding at a private beach house which we’d booked for the weekend, it meant everybody could come and go as they pleased and stay as long as they wanted, so the event  ended up more like a 3 day party (rather than just a ceremony).

Exactly the way we wanted it, it was just great!

It would be impossible to write the whole story here, but just a few of our favourite moments and memories were...

Friday night’s big game of touch rugby on the lawn – it was quite a fantastic sight to see all the boys and men running around so much and it realised  Andy D’s dream of playing rugby with his son!

Alfie surfing with all his grandparents – and the looks on their faces the first time he caught a wave! Because he’s so little, his lack of weight made him go at the speed of light. Sheer panic for the grandparents, sheer joy for Alfie! Even more funny when he fell off and came up smiling!!

Jake and I taking a sneaky midnight spa bath with Mark, Sam and Darren on Friday night. Go the spa bath!

Jake getting up at 2.30am when he heard the rain, and heaving all our hired furniture inside from the garden because he was nervous about whether the tables were waterproof or not.

Being able to hang out on the beach and swim in the sea just an hour or two before the ceremony (rather than the traditional chaos of being caught up in the stress of flower arrangements, hairdressers, make-up artists, etc). It meant I went into the ceremony with chipped nail polish and sticking out hair on one side and I’m still not sure if I should have spent a little bit more time on my appearance, but it was worth it for me!

My Mum & Dad’s efforts at holding me up while I attempted to walk out in my killer heels.

Our Wellington friends Dave and Andrew’s Mihi, which began the wedding ceremony.

The poem about “Love” which Molly made up and read out (I noticed there were a few teary eyes at this point!)

The sound advice given in Jenny’s reading (eg “Jake – remember to flush”).

The complete and utter seriousness with which Alfie took his ring bearing duties – including the pretend-lost-ring joke our celebrant had practised with him. Absolutely priceless!

Jake’s decision to replace my beautiful Ash Hilton wedding ring with the battered up shell which he used to propose to me on Sea Lion Island back in 2007. I did assume for a moment that Alfie really had lost the rings, but luckily the correct ring was brought out fairly quickly after Jake’s ‘joke’.

My mum’s amazing wedding cake – and its Pied Piper effect! All of a sudden 17 children appeared at our sides begging for icing flowers, and poof – almost the entire cake disappeared before I could blink!

Walking into the swimming pool room to find 17 kids and several adults all jumping in after eating their wedding cake!

Not so great was when Hayden (aged 6) ran straight through a glass window as dinner was being served and we had to call the ambulance and window-repair man.... but luckily he was ok and hey, all good weddings need a little drama!

Other great stuff included a fun game of croquet on the lawn with my lovely friends and a fun game of table tennis with my little boy.

And dancing with all the kids to the band as the sun went down over Kapiti Island. A stunning sunset, a shared tambourine, and some great tunes.  

I could go on for pages here, but I think you’ve probably all got the picture by now....

Thank you everyone for coming and making the weekend so special for us....and for all those who couldn’t but sent messages and presents – we are stoked, we have a bloody good bunch of friends!!

Watch out, the Hugheses are about!

My family arrived in Wellington a few days ago from the UK – the first time in NZ for my brother and the first real chance to get to know Wellington properly for my parents (they had a brief visit once before but don’t remember much).

Molly and Alfie are super hyped up and have a lot of excitement and energy at the moment. Grandad was exhausted within half an hour of arriving here! They are also mega excited about having Uncle Philip here (“because he’s a little bit naughty Mum”) so he’s not getting much rest time either.

So, in amongst rushing around collecting our rings, nail polish and other last minute bits & pieces for the wedding, we managed to spend the weekend in a fairly leisurely way – we even managed some daytime beers! We showed the family some of our favourite south coast beaches and one of our favourite cafes on Sunday, and we took them to the Waitangi Day celebrations yesterday.

Waitangi Day is a public holiday and a pretty important event in NZ, so there were celebrations going on everywhere. We chose to go down to the waterfront where we watched a ceremonial waka (Maori canoe) and then the kids went wild and scootered around a lot, we had a few beers & lemonades in the sun, and then we watched a few bands, storytellers, cultural performances etc.

Hopefully my family are enjoying their time here, although it’s not been without mishaps so far. Mum and Dad have managed to get lost every time they’ve gone out in their car so far, Dad and Philip have both managed to get sunburnt (despite a complete lack of sun/summer), and one member of the family (who shall not be named here!) had to leave the Waitangi celebrations for a while because the music was too loud for him! 

Year 2

It was a big relief all round today.

Molly went back to school – her first day in Year 2. For the last few days she’s been a complete bag of nerves, not sleeping at night, snapping at everybody like a teenager, telling us she didn't want to go back to school, and occasionally confiding that she had butterflies in her tummy.

But her new teacher was a HUGE hit and when Alfie and I arrived to collect her at 3pm she told us she didn’t want to come home and wanted to stay at school because it was so much fun and the teacher kept smiling and winking at her (?).

Meanwhile, Alfie spent the day doing very odd things around the house like tying all his soft toys to the swing and practising the haka wearing nothing but his sister’s jewellery. His gymnastics classes started back today as well and he has a new coach this term – a man with no hair, who is apparently the coolest coach ever.

So we have a happy boy and a happy girl. 

An Update

It’s the last day of school holidays today. I never knew that six and a half weeks could go so quickly.

Jake and I have been extremely busy over the last few weeks, so it’s been mostly up to Molly and Alfie to show Nana Jenny the sights of Wellington. We did manage to take her to see a live band performing at Aotea Lagoon one evening and we ate fish & chips while we watched an interesting mix of Burmese and American Wellingtonians (!) playing Country & Western. They did manage to get us up dancing a little and the kids hyped up before bedtime.

The kids have spent the last couple of weeks having great adventures with Nana Jenny while I’ve been at work – swimming in the sea, walking up mountains, playing on the beach, going to the park, plus a whole load of bizarre new garden game inventions which include car tyres, ropes, basketballs, much of my Tupperware and caterpillars (?)

We also managed to fit in an awesome weekend away recently, over at Riversdale Beach. Some friends of ours have a family bach there which they invited us to, so we managed to kick back and relax for a bit. The fact that we were 4 adults plus 5 kids all aged under 7 meant it was noisy, but they mostly entertained themselves – meaning us adults could sit in the sun, open a few beers, and actually hold a conversation (most of the time).

Meanwhile, Jake and his running buddy attempted their first official mountain/off-road race last weekend. As they now regularly do 3 hour runs in the mountains around Wellington they’d assumed this one would be a piece of cake.....however they’d completely under-estimated how challenging the terrain would be – I hear they were scrambling up rock faces and had to walk at some points. They eventually completed the 24 kms in 4 hours and 21 minutes. They hobbled back home looking quite a bit worse than usual and Jake is still not fully recovered 4 days later. Still – they are already preparing for the next one!