ANZAC Day

There are three and a half days each year when it’s illegal for the shops to open in New Zealand (with the exception of what’s considered to be essential public services such as petrol stations, dairies and souvenir shops): Christmas Day, Good Friday, Easter Sunday, and up until 1pm on Anzac Day.

If a shop is caught trading on one of these days it can be fined $1000. A few shops flout the law as they forecast the profits will be more than the fines. But the majority stay closed, and on these days the nation focuses on more important things.

Today was Anzac Day, a public holiday marked every year in both Australia and New Zealand in memory of those who fought at Gallipoli in WW1.

Unfortunately when you’re self-employed the number of hours necessary to complete your projects doesn’t reduce when there’s a public holiday, so I spent the morning working today while Jake went running up the mountain and the kids got stuck into a very complicated looking craft project that involved a cardboard box, a massive amount of sticky tape and two toy trains.

In the afternoon though, we focused on more important things and went pottering about on the beach at Plimmerton. Molly and Alfie went hunting for crabs, built a house in the sand, collected dune flowers, did running races and went scootering while I sat on the beach and tried to read my very good book (Marzipan andMagnolias).

But the peace and quiet just wasn't meant to happen for me today. The kids pestered me so much to join in the races that I put the book down after 20 minutes of reading the same sentence over and over again, gave in and ran my socks off with them! 

Living in Wellington

As a capital city, Wellington is one of those rare and special finds.

As the government administrative centre and the capital of New Zealand, it’s got a fabulous range of culture and facilities, including an excellent public transport system which is arguably the best in New Zealand.

But the population is less than half a million and the city’s geographical size is small, so commuting times and driving distances are pleasantly short. People know each other, or know of each other, so it feels like a proper community – something which is uncommon in many other capitals. It’s said that the “six degrees of separation” theory doesn’t hold true here, as it’s only two degrees of separation in Wellington.

Most importantly for Jake and I, Wellington has got both the mountains and the sea. We’ve always been beach people – not sunbathing-type beach people, but running & walking & surfing & beach-cafe-ing and just generally being by the beach.

Since we moved here, we’ve also discovered that we are mountain people as well. It would be very unusual for a week to pass by without both of us having gone for a run (Jake) or a walk (me) at least once in the mountains. And often more than once. (The pictures on this post were taken on my Sunday morning walk a couple of days ago). 

The kids of course love both places too. The beach offers great opportunities for collecting shells and driftwood, while the mountains offer great opportunities for collecting leaves and bugs. They’re not so keen on walking up the mountain though, so given the choice they’ll always opt for the beach.

Someone I know once said Wellington is “beautiful and intelligent” – it sure is.

But one thing which Wellington is failing to impress us with is its housing market.

According to a recent study by Massey University, houses in Wellington became 14% more affordable in the past year. Meanwhile in Auckland prices are hitting record highs. So you’d think we’d be counting ourselves lucky that we’re in the right place at the right time.

But since the wedding we have viewed 19 potential homes (and before Christmas we’d already viewed about a dozen), and we are yet to put in an offer on anything.

Our budget has been pushed up, our wish list has had things crossed off it, and we have found ourselves compromising and compromising until we’re now happily considering houses with 1940’s decor, cracked chimneys, no heating appliances, ancient kitchens and no space for the rellies to come and stay. Yet we still haven’t found anything.

Come on Wellington – please show us something soon!!!

Chickenpox Round Two

Chickenpox has struck in our household again.

On our last day at Himatangi Beach Molly started complaining about what we thought was a very bad insect bite on her leg, and on the day after we got home she broke out in very many spots. A nice present from her brother.  

The medical profession may claim this is an old wives tale, but to all those mum friends who told me the 2^nd sibling always gets a worse dose than the 1^st sibling – you were so right.

Molly’s got it a hundred times worse than Alfie did. She didn’t sleep a wink for the first 48 hours, and I found myself on the phone to the doctor’s surgery several times a day for the first few days, asking for advice and monitoring potentially infected spots etc.

It’s kind of ruined all our plans for the school holidays and poor Alfie has been going a little bit stir crazy this time as it’s the second week he’s had to suffer in isolation (and not even for himself this time!).

While Alfie got bored of staying at home, Molly was completely beside herself with itchiness for several days. All we could do is put her in the bath with lots of Pinetarsol for the majority of the day, and keep rubbing cream into her, giving her Pamol and antihistamines. Big thanks to everyone who provided her with DVDs, creams and phone calls! 

But she is finally on the mend and past the contagious stage, so now we’re going to try to make up for lost time for the last few days of the holidays. 

My Beautiful Children

The other day the kids were playing in the garden after dinner while I was cleaning up the kitchen. All of a sudden I saw them run inside and downstairs to their bedrooms, and a short while later they re-emerged wearing their wedding outfits and shot back out into the garden again!

I resisted the very strong urge to tell them not to wear their beautiful clothes out in the garden as they were sure to get dirty, ripped, snagged, or worse, and instead I grabbed the camera and got some beautiful shots of them playing.

If I had PhotoShop or knew how to edit digital pictures properly I would airbrush Alfie’s chicken pox spots out.

And the pen marks on Molly's face.

But never-the-less I think they look absolutely gorgeous in these pictures!

(And the wedding clothes survived!) 

Easter in New Zealand

One of the benefits of being able to read two newspapers from cover to cover over the weekend is that I now have full knowledge of New Zealand’s easter egg marketplace.

Kiwis spend $28 million on Easter products each year. That’s over $6 a head! It's actually much less money per head than most other countries I've lived in, but it still feels like a lot of money to spend on a single day's worth of chocolate! The nation's favourites are crème eggs and marshmallow eggs, and also eggs filled with Kiwi classics such as pineapple lumps and Jaffas.

Our children both got a few little foil-wrapped eggs, marshmallow eggs (although Alfie disliked his) and a hollow chocolate bunny. Plus a set of pens and some Easter bunny colouring pictures.

We had so much fun watching them hunting in the garden for everything. Their squeals of delight when they found the eggs were brilliant! Then taking them down to the beach to share their loot while we sat on a piece of driftwood as the sun was still rising. What a great start to the day!

But I have a real problem with Easter. Firstly, it’s extremely complicated to explain to a 6 and 4 year old how it relates to a holy man who died more than 2000 years ago – and then rose again! - and why we all celebrate this event by eating chocolate.

To make matters worse, our children still remember the Easter Bilby from last year. Why, they want to know, doesn’t the Easter Bunny deliver to all countries?

However, I do feel lucky that we live in New Zealand, because Easter always coincides with feijoa season. It’s a little painful to have to part with cash this year for our feijoas when I know we have a whole row of feijoa trees back in our Auckland garden which will be supplying massive quantities of fruit.

But never-the-less, feijoas are one of the absolute best things about this time of year and are one of the reasons why Jake and I actually ate less chocolate over the Easter weekend than we ordinarily would do on a normal weekend. Those who know us well may be shocked, but rest assured - we will make up for it soon, as the feijoa season is always short. 

Himatangi Beach

I thought the editor’s letter in this weekend’s Sunday Star Times summed things up well:

“With any luck, you’re reading this at least an hour later than usual. You’ve had a long sleep in at a bach with a bay window that looks out to the ocean. The house smells of cinnamon. And somebody else is making the coffee.”

We too followed the tradition of so many Kiwis and booked a bach for the Easter weekend up at Himatangi Beach. We took it in turns to have sleep ins. We drank lots of tea and coffee and wine and we ate cupcakes and good cheese.

Our window didn’t look out to the ocean though, on account of the fact that Himatangi has these massive great big tall sand dunes running up the length of it, blocking the view from many of the houses – but there are stunning views if you walk up to the top of the dunes.

We kicked back and well and truly relaxed for a few days. Alfie took up residence in the hammock while Molly the artist worked her way through a number of “Learn to Draw” books.

Jake and I read both the Saturday and Sunday newspapers, and went running on the beach every day. (Then came home and opened a bottle of Pinot Gris!)

We all spent hours and hours on the beach itself every day, mostly making copious numbers of sandcastles. 

It’s an unusual beach – it’s actually a public road, so theoretically we were letting our kids play on the equivalent of a 6 lane highway. But strangely it all kind of works ok - people, cars, 4WDs, motorbikes and quad bikes all seemed to co-exist quite peacefully on the sand.

We also spent a bit of time at the beach club, the tennis courts, and of course the requisite playpark where Alfie managed a bit of an accident on the flying fox and has consequently returned home with a giant fat lip.

Anyway, we really quite liked Himatangi – it's a very typical Kiwi summer settlement but it also has such a unique character and was a little bit quirky, eg our next door neighbour had a pet reindeer!

I'm pretty sure we'll be back at some point.