Wellington's Best Playparks

I was planning to have a lazy start to the weekend this morning but having already been up for over 3 hours (and it’s still only 9am), the kids are getting restless and have come up with a grand plan for a “Playpark Tour”. Apparently we’re scheduling 84 of them in today.

Our whole family have invested a considerable amount of time at Wellington’s playparks over the last 18 months, so I thought I would put together a list of our favourites.

Wellington has 104 playparks so children are definitely very well catered for here! Most of them are pretty excellent, which makes choosing a top five list very difficult indeed and we have certainly left some good ones off this list.

But, in no particular order, here are our personal, all-time family favourites:

1.      Khandallah Park 

The flying fox here is a huge hit for our kids, as is the very long slide (which is frequently covered in bird poo, leading to very dirty bottoms and legs). The muddy stream is another drawcard and has also been responsible for many extra hours of laundry.

2.   Waitangi Park 

Also known as the “science park” in our family, on account of its water play area which allows for endless hours of “experiments”. Also, for some strange reason, every single time we go to Waitangi Park, we always bump into someone we know. The kids think it’s a guaranteed source of finding friends.

3.       Karori Park 

Mysteriously, it always turns out to be sunny when we go to Karori Park. It doesn’t matter what the weather’s like when we set out – by the time we reach Karori Park it’s cricket weather. We love this one for its 1km circuit path – it’s the best place to take bikes and scooters.

4.       Nairnville Park

A year ago Molly was stung by a bee here and it took us a wee while to get her back again as she was convinced the bee would still be sitting on the dandelion waiting for her. The long tunnel slide here is brilliant, as is the helicopter shaped climbing frame. So long as it’s not a windy day, this is an awesome spot.

5.       Frank Kitts Park

You just can’t beat ambling around Wellington waterfront on a sunny weekend, and we always end up spending a while at Frank Kitts Park. The kids can’t get enough of the big lighthouse slide, and are clever enough to have worked out that there’s always an ice cream van nearby too! 

Having finished this post, I better go and get my gear ready for our "Tour" now! 

September...

September in Wellington has been full of sunshine – and also some serious heavy rain, hail and gale force winds! But we’ve had a great month of playing outside whatever the weather.

We've had lots of very cool visitors this month from all corners of the world - Kevin, Hayden, Mark, Dan, Mark again, Tracey, Anton, Leigh-Anne, Debs - it's been brilliant to see you all! 

Other than that Alfie and I continue to enjoy our days off together, doing swimming and gymnastics, catching up with friends, exploring and playing and making things. 

We're on a mission to visit a new and/or different playpark every week at the moment and we're doing quite well. I'm happy so long as the sun's out and I have a flask of coffee and Alfie's happy so long as there's something to climb, something to hang upside down from, and something to jump off. 

This month however, we’ve often had to wearily plod through our days very slowly due to Alfie’s ongoing battles with eczema and nightmares which have been keeping us all up alot at night.

The eczema has involved countless trips to the doctor, a bucket load of creams and steroids, antibiotics (three doses in the last month), and we still can’t clear it up. 

On the plus side, we have turned a corner with the taniwha & monster nightmares by making our very own dream catcher. It took us an entire day to shop for the parts and put it all together, but Alfie came up with the fabulous idea of putting a plastic eye in the middle (to look out for the bad dreams) and 4 small round mirrors inside so that when the bad dreams are caught, they see themselves and get scared and run away (!).

Now we've come out the other side of winter, Molly and Alfie are both spending most of their after school hours in the garden, blowing bubbles, playing on the swings, collecting bugs and leaves, and perfecting their swing tennis techniques. The house we live in is great because I have a perfect view from the kitchen window while I cook dinner - and it's not far to run when I have to break up yet another fight over who broke the swing tennis rules! 

Molly’s school have been really busy this month studying film/drama. Every single class has made a short movie (Molly’s class did “Snow White and the 15 Dwarfs”) complete with casting, storyboards, acting and editing, and culminating with a movie premiere in town. A real cinema was hired, they all dressed up and walked up the red carpet and the movies were shown on the big screen. Lots of fun and excitement all round.

Meanwhile Jake has spent over 50% of this month on various holidays, oops sorry I mean business trips around the country, and we are all missing him a lot. 

Other than that, we're very focussed now on house hunting in every spare minute we get, and have been encouraged by all the new listings suddenly appearing now it's Spring. We have our eye on one in particular - but unfortunately we know that a few other people do as well! Still, there are lots of very lovely properties coming up at the moment so we are hoping we'll have some good news soon.  

The Day We Met The All Blacks

There aren’t many people out there who haven’t already heard all about the amazing weekend we’ve just had with the All Blacks. But it’s got to go down on this blog anyway!

Last week, I entered an online competition with Air New Zealand. I wasn’t really expecting to win – but on Wednesday afternoon I got a phone call from a lovely guy at Air NZ who began to tell me the good news while I was trying to restrain Alfie, who was attempting to eat the entire food cupboard right before his dinner.

The Air NZ man was very patient with me, even though my conversation jumped backwards and forwards between him and Alfie, but he basically told me we’d be going to the rugby on Saturday and meeting the All Blacks on Sunday!

Our prize started off on Saturday night with four tickets to the All Blacks v Argentina game at the Westpac Stadium. It was the kids’ first time at the rugby and quite a poignant game for us (considering Alfie’s place of birth).

We managed to persuade him out of his favourite Argentina soccer shirt for the night (disclaimer: he is too young to understand the politics and only likes it because he likes the yellow sun on their flag) and into a lot of warm, waterproof layers. 

New Zealand's spring weather is renowned for being quite  unpredictable: for the last couple of weeks we’ve been basking in sunshine, but all of a sudden this weekend a violent storm came crashing in with winds of up to 140kph and torrential rain. Not the best weather for the players to give their best, but Air NZ came up with brilliant seats for us and we were some of the lucky ones under cover, protected from the worst of it.

However a surprise power cut half way through the game put the stadium into darkness for a few minutes, and had Alfie completely spooked and wanting to go home.

Meanwhile Molly surprised us by fully embracing the game, chanting “All Blacks clap clap clap...” at the top of her voice, enthusiastically joining in the Mexican waves, and giving out an almighty scream when Cory Jane scored a try (my ears are still ringing).

Anyway, after a very late night and a bit of a lie-in the next morning we got ready to go and meet the team! 

Excitement would be an understatement! The kids spent AGES choosing a pretty dress for Molly to wear and then spiking Alfie’s hair up so that it matched Richie McCaw’s! (They used up so much hair gel that it's still not all out, 3 showers and one swimming lesson later!)

When we were finally introduced to the team, I had to try extremely hard not to become like the man in the Mastercard advert and I forced myself to act dignified and restrained when I shook hands with Dan Carter and Richie! (I think I managed ok, but my heart nearly stopped!) 

We then got on the plane and flew down to Dunedin with the team! After a very shy start, Molly and Alfie took a great shining to Israel Dagg and Ben Smith and regaled them with tales of gymnastics and school and DS games and Barbie dolls and other such important stuff.  

Anyway, a huge thank you to Air NZ and the All Blacks. You've given two children some amazing memories (and for me and Jake too!). We had a great time at the game, and you guys were awesome on Sunday as well. Can we do it again soon please?! 

You Know You Have Young Children In The House When...

• The laundry basket is constantly overflowing. The washing machine is on every day. The job is never finished.
  
• Your best, most expensive, high heeled shoes only come out when your daughter has friends round and they decide to play dress-ups with them.
  
• You realise you haven’t worn nice clothes or high heels for several years (with the exception of our wedding last February).In fact you pretty much live in trainers or gum boots now, and it’s a truly exciting day when the ballet flats or boots come out of the wardrobe.
  
• The same goes for handbags. I used to have heaps of pretty handbags. Now I carry a humungous sack like thing filled with spare clothes, water bottles, snacks, more snacks, tissues, toys, a toilet roll, etc, etc. 
•  Your kitchen cupboards are full of fruit roll-ups, little boxes of raisins and kid-sized packs of crackers & cheese dip, six different bottles of food colouring, and a truckload of different varieties of cake decorations and sprinkles. I never had this stuff BK (before kids), and can think of plenty of better things I’d prefer to fill the cupboards up with!
• Your toothpaste tube has a permanently congealed, sticky blob of toothpaste at the top. 
• You realise you are probably playing a key role in keeping New Zealand’s dairy farmers in business (we go through 6 litres of milk and who knows how much cheese and yoghurt each week). 
• The kitchen floor is NEVER clean, despite sweeping and mopping several times a day.
•  If you want a relaxing bath you have to clear a trillion toys, water bottles, bubble makers, funnels, etc out of the way first. 
• You can’t remember the last time you went to the toilet on your own. 

This is what real life is like in our household. But it's worth it of course, because they are gorgeous!!!