A very special corner of Wellington

And THIS is why Wellington is such a lovely capital city.

Makara Beach. Where else in the world could you find somewhere quite so special, and so rural and remote right in the heart of a capital city? 

Makara Beach is a tiny suburb in a rugged and wild patch of Wellington, right on the shore of the Tasman Sea. 


It's not a long drive to get there, but literally within 5 or 10 minutes of leaving our house you feel about as far away from a big city as it's possible to feel. 


The drive winds through farmland and valleys, with fields of cows, horses, ducks and of course the lovely native pukekos...until eventually you get to the very end of the road and see this:


Just stunning!


There's a spectacular 6km walking track at Makara which takes you up and over the clifftops, past an old Maori pa site and some old WWII gun emplacements. 


However, after a late night on Saturday night we were all feeling quite sleepy (and full of colds) yesterday so we decided to take it easy. 


A sunny day spent rock-pooling down by the sea was just what the doctor ordered!  We wandered around the shoreline, clambered up and down rocks and boulders, collected crabs and water snails, pebbles and paua shells in our buckets and took turns snoozing in the sun. 

And when we'd finished, we went for hot chocolates & ice creams at the local cafe, the perfect way to end a day at the beach! 

Winter Sun

July has been ticking along rather nicely here in Wellington, with a blast of what could almost be described as summer weather in the middle of winter to keep us going. We’ve had plenty of sunshine, and even a few afternoons where no jackets have been required!

We all love being outdoors, and the sunshine has allowed the kids plenty of playpark time, me plenty of mountain & walking time and Jake plenty of cycling & running time (although still probably not as much as he’d like!)

I’ll never tire of the views around our suburb – even just walking around the streets it’s breathtaking, and it’s even better from the nearby mountains. I went for a hike early this morning hoping to see snow on the South Island mountain tops in the distance, but there was none. Just blue and  green as far as the eye could see. 

In the meantime, Molly has been a very busy performer this month. The school choir (which she's in) did a performance at Assembly last week (they performed Kiwi classic "Six Months in a Leaky Boat", very cute). And next week her class are doing a singing assembly too so she will be performing again - although this time there are no Kiwi classics and I suspect a Bruno Mars track might be making an appearance but we'll see. Not only that but she's still in the Kapa Haka group and practises with them every Thursday - and if that's not enough, ballet has stepped up a notch as she'll be taking her Grade 1 soon, so there's lots of Hungarian Folk Dancing and barre-ing and chasse-ing going on too. It's no wonder her eyes shut as soon as her head hits the pillow these days! 

Another visit to Himatangi Beach

This post is dedicated to a certain member of the family back in England who, on hearing that we had spent the last few days relaxing up at Himatangi Beach, declared that it sounded exceedingly boring.

Here I will prove him wrong!

Himatangi is a very small village of about 450 houses (about 60% are permanent homes and 40% are baches, or holiday homes). It's about 2 hours drive north from Wellington, up the west coast - just a bit further north from where we got married.

Going there is like a proper blast from the past – there’s no flashy houses, boutique clothes stores and sophisticated coffee bars. Instead most of the properties are basic 1970’s baches and there’s no shops except a dairy*.

In fact, in general, there’s not much of the modern world at all and it’s really quite refreshing. There are no distractions and you make your own entertainment.

So, what do people do at Himatangi Beach? Well, I can't speak for everyone, but this is what we did:

- The beach is very long and at this time of year it’s wild and covered in masses of driftwood. So on the first day we built a teepee out of driftwood. This became our daytime base for the rest of our holiday, and we kept returning to it and adding bits, like a path and a pretend campfire outside.

- The beach was also the perfect spot for lots games of tag and stuck in the mud, long walks and runs. (Other people ride quad bikes or horses on it, or go fishing),

- The dairy sells great thickshakes, coffee and freshly baked scones - perfect for when you need something to pick you up after too many games of tag!

- The kids' playpark is BRILLIANT, especially considering the small size of the village. As well as all the usual stuff, there's a skateboard park (Alfie was lethal on his scooter!), plenty of trees to climb and a BMX track that had Jake pining for his younger days.

- Then there's the Cossie Club (Cosmopolitan Fishing & Boating Club), which is open for dinner 3 evenings a week and is a great place to take the family when you want a break from the cooking and cleaning up. The beef stroganoff was yum - and cheaper than I could have made it myself - and the sofa area with Kids' TV means the adults get to enjoy a couple of beers in peace & quiet.

- Victa the Reindeer. We were delighted to find him still living in his garden on Himatangi Street. He just loves to be fed your food scraps and he gave us endless hours of entertainment after every meal!

- Finally, because it's winter, we also just hung out a lot at the cosy bach we'd rented, sometimes reading books in front of the wood burning stove, sometimes playing rugby or cricket in the huge garden, and sometimes drinking wine in front of a DVD.

So, all in all, a classic Kiwi winter bach holiday (and definitely not boring!).

*In New Zealand, the "dairy" is a small corner store, a little bit like the convenience store in the UK or an American milk bar. It stocks basics like milk and bread, as well as newspapers, ice creams & milkshakes.

Adventures in the City - woolly mammoths, pies and five dollar notes

It’s week 2 of the school holidays and I think I’ve well and truly worn the kids out already.

We started off on Monday with a big trip into the city, as I had discount vouchers for Reading Cinema on Courtenay Place. It was Alfie’s first time at the movies – I’ve never been sure in the past whether he’d be able to sit still long enough or be quiet for long enough. But he’s been extremely hyped up about today for ages, and had been telling everyone in sight that he was going to see Ice Age 4 on Monday.

So the day comes and we finally walk into the dark theatre and within 3 steps Alfie stops in his tracks and says “Mum I’m scared”. I cajole him in to his seat and all the way through the movie he repeats “I’m scared, can we go home now” approximately every 2 minutes. Hats off to him though – he still managed to stay in his chair for the whole film.

(Molly and I enjoyed it though – it’s a great movie!)

Afterwards, we went to meet Jake for lunch, where Alfie suddenly completely forgot how scared he’d been and proudly boasted to Dad how he’d been to see Ice Age 4.

Whenever we meet Jake from work for lunch we always go to a cheap local pie cafe. For some reason it’s Molly’s favourite lunch venue (apart from sushi). And Jake and I don’t mind it either - they may be completely and utterly unhealthy, but you can’t beat New Zealand pies. So we hung out in the armchairs eating and chatting for a while. And this is where things went wrong...

While we were sitting there, Jake gave the kids some holiday spending money, $5 each. This is more than our children have ever been given to spend in their lives (usually it’s the occasional $2 to go to the dollar shop with!) and in hindsight it was a bit overwhelming for our Molly!

Alfie spent his money quickly, choosing a rocket ship folder to put all his artwork in. Molly however appears to take after her father when it comes to making decisions.

We spent the next 2 hours walking up and down Lambton Quay and visiting the same 3 jewellery/accessories shops over and over again. I never want to see any more clip on earrings, friendship necklaces, hair bands, etc in my life!

Molly absolutely could not decide what she wanted to buy. Poor Alfie was dragging his feet up and down the road, and only broke down after the 4^th time at Equip “Mum, why does Molly want to go in here AGAIN??”

Once I’d fed and watered him, and calmed him down, Molly then had a meltdown and there were tears everywhere as she poured her heart out about how she couldn’t choose what to buy and didn’t want to go home without spending her money from dad.

Alfie acted great as big brother and quickly draped his arm around her, saying “It’s ok, Moll-Woll, I’ll help you choose”, wiping her tears away – so sweet!

But it was clear that we’d over-done our time in the city, so I steered us towards the train station for the ride home – and Molly STILL has that blessed $5 in her purse! 

What an awesome weekend!

Wellington sure put the weather on for us this weekend, and it’s been a little piece of what the doctor ordered for all of us!

We spent most of yesterday up at Lindale Farm on the Kapiti Coast, feeding all their animals. Molly, Alfie and I were super excited and squealed every time an animal slobbered all over our hands (me and Molly), stuck its tongue out to grab food (me, Alfie and Molly) or ate our arm instead of the food (Alfie).

Meanwhile Jake acted as the grown up among us and remained cool, calm and collected as the chaos and noise grew louder and louder.

Once we’d cuddled and fed a collection of lambs, sheep, rabbits, piglets, cows, donkeys, goats, llamas, rats and other assorted animals (some of which we weren’t even sure what they were!), we grabbed a Japanese curry from a nearby foodstall and sat in the sun and watched some Taiko drummers performing outside. If you’ve never seen this ancient Japanese drumming before, then look out for it – we were all transfixed and it’s AMAZING!

After several hours we made our way back home for the last of Molly’s school holiday swimming lessons. 

Our little superstar made us SO proud when she graduated from her current level after just one week (it normally takes a lot longer at this level). She picked it up so quickly, and I’m sure it’s partly because we did it during the holidays when she had more brain space available, rather than after school. She was very proud too, and insisted on a photo outside the swim school with her ribbon and prize lolly!

This morning we took Alfie to yet another birthday party and then Jake, Molly and I had some very special time together. It's not often it's just the three of us these days, and when it is Molly keeps us so entertained by her constant chatter and observations on life. We enjoyed a lovely relaxing time out at Ohariu Valley, looking at horses and watching eels in the stream.

I also managed to squeeze in a beautiful walk this weekend. Just me and my iPod. I just went up and down the streets in our suburb this time (rather than my usual mountain hikes), watching the sun set and the sailing boats in the harbour. We do live in a very beautiful place. 

Winter School Holidays

Well, it's the winter holidays again and we're well into the swing of things! Last year we all spent the winter holidays in bed with a serious case of the flu, so it's been great to be able to enjoy our time together this year.

We did get off to a shaky start when on Day 2 there was a magnitude 7 earthquake not far from Wellington – it hit us just as I was going to bed and consequently I hardly got any sleep that night and Day 3 was a bit of a write off for me! The quake was quite deep but it was still the scariest and largest one I’ve been in so far and not something I enjoyed at all. Our house was ok and luckily there’s not been any real damage to anything (just reports of things like tea bags and painkillers falling off the supermarket shelves, and I do know of at least one father who was clutching at his flat screen TV set while he watched the cricket during the shaking rather than looking after his kids, but at least the TV was ok!)

Anyway, after a super hectic Term 2 at school, we decided to keep this week fairly simple and relaxing, but we’re on Day 4 now and we’ve packed a lot in already...

We've barbequed our lunch in Otari-Wilton bush, then explored a bit - and got very muddy! I love how Australia and NZ have free gas barbeques in their reserves and public parks. We used to do it in Australia all the time and it was great to reinstate the tradition here.

Molly’s been on a school holiday swimming programme so she’s been at the pool every afternoon learning how to stick her bottom up and down (the beginnings of butterfly stroke apparently!)

We’ve been to see a show by BJ Bear (yes unfortunately that really is his name, but the kids LOVED him).

We’ve been to several playparks (of course!) and for fluffies at our favourite local cafe.

We’ve had friends over for playdates.

We’ve had long arts & crafts sessions at home with playdough, beads, scissors, pens, etc (not all at once!).

We've baked - we made alien cupcakes! 

Looking forward to the rest of the holidays now!