Christmas 2013

Christmas began VERY early for us this year, with a wake-up call from Alfie at 5.30am, just TOO excited to stay in bed any longer. And 10 minutes later Molly was up too. Grrrr....! 

So we hauled them into our bed, made a cup of coffee and enjoyed watching them empty their stockings for a while. 

We have a bit of a  Christmas-morning-at-the-beach tradition in our family. Ever since we first moved to NZ we've made a point of bringing a pile of Vegemite toast, a flask of hot chocolate and a couple of presents to the beach first thing in the morning after we wake up. This year, we were there by 7.30am! (I should point out that this isn't the earliest we've ever been to the beach on Christmas morning - there was one year when we were there by 6.05am!). 

There was still a bit of a chill in the air at this early hour, so we busied ourselves hunting for starfish on the rocks and making a sandcastle..

But the temptation proved too great, and it wasn't long before we were all having a paddle!

Then it was back home for brunch...

And some present opening...

Oh the excitement of so many presents! It was bedlam for a while! So we engineered some quiet-ish time - it didn't last very long but it was enough for us to finally all finish our Santa jigsaw puzzle....We've been slowly doing it for the last few weeks.

After that we all had a Christmas nap! Ah...bliss....! Then it was Christmas cake time...

Things quickly deteriorated after that! First there was a huge family Nerf Gun fight....Alfie's owned a couple of Nerf Guns for a long while, but Santa brought some mini ones this year and Molly got a girl version of her own too, so the pace has been picked up and there've been some fairly full on Nerf battles this Christmas, including several fat lips!

And the Nerf Gun battle then morphed into a family water sprinkler session. Sorry to everyone in Wellington if you were wishing for a peaceful Christmas - we screamed a lot!

After we dried off there was more present opening. I love my new bird house - thanks kids!!

Molly and I prepared the Christmas ham for dinner...

And then it was movie time before bed. Happy Christmas everyone!

The Last Week of Term

...and school has just finished for another year!

This school year has passed by SO quickly. I still can't believe it's over. #indenial.

The last week or two at school went by in a blur of fun for both kids, full of sports and games and hikes up the mountain and play sessions at the pool and candy canes and Christmas cards and Secret Santas and visits to next year's classrooms and zero actual real work at all.


Our school has a great community and the parents are very involved, particularly in all the fun stuff - so this week I've felt like I've been up at the school more than I've been working. One day Alfie's class had a special lunch. The next day the whole school had a family picnic. Then there was a special swimming session for the parents to watch. Etc etc.

I love being able to join the kids at their school events, but it takes a toll on my workload and I've had to spend most evenings this week at the computer instead - it's not really how I want to spend my evenings at this time of year, but a glass of wine beside me always helps a bit!

Somehow, despite all the excitement and activity, both kids have managed to find unbelievable amounts of energy after school all week, and every day they've been begging me to go to the local outdoor pool. We're very lucky to have this on our doorstep - although it's unheated and completely freezing, therefore you rarely see adults in it, but the kids always have a blast!

In the middle of all this excitement, Molly had her end-of-year ballet show. This year's show was The Lion King and Molly was a water buffalo. One 3 hour dress rehearsal and 2 performances later and she was exhausted but buzzing! The show was fantastic, and we were so proud of her!

Back at home, and both kids are really appreciating our lovely backyard now we've got such long summer evenings. Alfie in particular loves kicking and throwing things around. Our poor neighbours must be getting so fed up with throwing his soccer ball back over the fence every day. His afternoons usually go something like this: he gets the toys out of the garage and starts off playing soccer. When all the balls are gone over the fence, he gets out the badminton set, and once all the "cuttleshocks" are stuck on our roof, he gets out the frisbee. And so it goes on...

As if all that wasn't enough, Molly's been staying up late each night blowing bubbles....

and sneaking strawberries off the bush!

So now we're on the first day of the school holidays. At 10.45am this morning I was enjoying a little cup of coffee after a big gardening session, while Alfie hit some more "cuttleshocks" onto the roof...

and Molly - who didn't even get out of bed until 9.40am - is STILL in her pyjamas, conked out under the tree. I think perhaps we are all in need of a rest for Christmas!

And the countdown to Christmas begins...

Christmas has actually started now...!

Molly kicked things off last week. She's a member of the school choir, and every year they go and perform Christmas carols at the local church. This year she doesn't have a school concert (that's something only the "juniors" do - ie years 1 and 2) so a few of us mums snuck into the church choir concert instead as an alternative.

"Aotearoa Christmas...mmmmmm......under the Pohutakawa tree.....celebrations in the sun...la la la"

And also last week Alfie was in his school Christmas concert.....it was just too cute!

"Jingle Bells, Jingle Bells, Jingle all the way, Christmas in New Zealand on a sunny summers day, Hey!"

Last weekend we went to Wellington's annual Santa Parade - what fun! Afterwards we sang Christmas songs with Santa in the park and Alfie got to meet a Storm Trooper!

And we've just put the Christmas tree up at home.

Mind you, it very nearly didn't happen, as our old stand had been left behind when we moved house and our new stand didn't fit the tree we owned. Those of you who know Jake well might want to sit down before you read the next part in case you faint....

.....Jake did some DIY and made the stand work!!!

So we now have a tree which stands up - you just can't breathe on it in case it falls over.

Does anyone else have to hold themselves back after their children have finished decorating the tree? I always really want to rearrange everything! But I've managed to restrain myself so far, and we have kept this year's tree in a true child's style - complete with all the bare patches and crumpled home-made favourites!

When Does Christmas Start For You?

It's interesting how the Christmas season begins at different times of the year, depending on where you live.

I do remember in the UK that all the shops were full of Christmas decorations and playing Christmas songs from Sep/Oct onwards. The TV and newspapers were showing Christmas adverts for months before the event itself. The radio stations were continuously playing the same Christmas songs over and over for weeks before. People kept telling me that they'd finished their Christmas shopping in early November.

Or maybe it just felt like that? Either way, I know it started way to early and I was already bored of it all by December!

Strangely, when we lived in the Falkland Islands it went completely the other way and felt like Christmas didn't begin until Christmas Eve! (Or was it just me who felt this way?)

In NZ Christmas usually begins around about the beginning of December, and I quite like it this way. I haven't really been exposed to much commercial Christmas stuff yet, apart from a few pieces of junk mail this week. My normal radio station's still playing One Direction, Pitbull and Katy Perry. There's a poster up the road telling us to come and sing carols on our picnic blanket on the 15th of December. Alfie's got his school Christmas concert this week. But other than that, not that many signs of festivity yet....

So life continues for us as normal, ie an endless round of work, school, playdates, sporting activities, coffee, wine, more coffee, more wine, etc etc!

Jake's just back from doing the Lake Taupo Cycle Challenge - a 160km circumnavigation of Lake Taupo in the central North Island. After months of hard training he was stoked to complete it in 5 hours 18 mins and said it was a beautiful ride - but he also says he won't be doing it again!!

Meanwhile Molly is trying to follow in her Daddy's footsteps, and has signed up for the Weetbix Try-athlon in March! So we've been doing a bit of training at weekends...(she tends to give up after about 50m so I fear she's got a very long way to go until she's ready!)

She's also decided that she wants to walk up Mt Kau Kau, our local mountain, every Sunday (?). She's been up two weekends running so far - so now I have a lovely little hiking buddy. Long may this enthusiasm continue!

And at this time of year we've got lovely long, warm evenings and we've been enjoying some beautiful sunsets in our back garden. Next we need to finally buy some outdoor furniture so we can sit and enjoy instead of stand - but we're getting there, so watch this space...!

We're just starting to get a little bit into the Christmas spirit now as well. I wrote and posted most of my international cards this week, and the kids left letters to Santa by the chimney the other night.

At this time of year, all schoolkids are always exhausted (End-of-Year-itis) and Alfie & Molly are no exception, so we're trying to do a few more relaxing after-school activities in the lead up to the end of term. We've got the Christmas jigsaw puzzle out and it's been engrossing the kids most afternoons...

Of course, relaxing afternoons don't always go to plan and today the jigsaw puzzle activities deteriorated suddenly into a massive water fight!

Followed by complete hysteria...

Edible Garden

There's such great excitement in our household at the moment, because this is the time of year when the garden comes alive. From Alfie's perspective this is good news as it means there's lots of food which is nearly ready to eat!

When we first moved into this house, we thought we'd inherited a very dull backyard....the front garden is full of native plants and is very lovely indeed, the side of the house is packed full of big Camelia trees and rose bushes - but the back garden was just green, green, green.

Green lawn. Green trees.  Green plants. A tiny bit of white here and there (mostly in the form of zillions of daisies all over the lawn, which seem to come up within 30 minutes of mowing it). But not much other colour.

So for quite some time now, my To Do List has included pulling out some of the green stuff and re-planting it with some colour and some natives - but it's quite a long way down the To Do List (coming well after Get A New Roof Because The Existing One Leaks - but that's another story!).

On the plus side, we did inherit a fabulous herb garden full of thyme, rosemary, mint, (dead) basil and sage. I use the mint, the thyme and rosemary all the time - but does anybody know what on earth to do with sage??

A couple of months ago, I planted out some lettuce, spring onions, silverbeet and strawberries in some old car tyres, and we now have a plentiful supply of salad which usually covers our needs for at least half the week. Molly often grabs a piece of lettuce to eat as she walks past and even Alfie understands that lettuce from the garden is precious and is to be eaten and appreciated without complaint!

The strawberries are the biggest source of excitement in the family though. We have two little strawberry patches in the garden, one at the top and one at the bottom (I wasn't sure where would get the most sun so I tested both), and now they're starting to turn red, both kids are bursting with excitement. I am predicting some serious arguments in the not-too-distant future about who gets there first. That's if the birds don't beat them to it (I must buy some netting this weekend).

We've got a huge mound of rhubarb just outside the kitchen, but despite being raised as a child on copious amounts of rhubarb I actually have no idea what to do with it. How do you know when it's ready to pick? What do you actually do with it (apart from crumbles and stewing it with sugar)? If anyone can shed any light on the Mystery of Rhubarb, please feel free to comment below, as I'd hate for it all to go to waste - thanks!

Meanwhile my little lemon tree isn't doing too well! I was about to give up and pull it up, but this week new green leaves and shoots have started to appear so I'm going to hold out for a bit longer, give it a bit of TLC and see what happens...

Finally, the pear tree. This pear tree was the subject of many conversations between us and the previous owners who considered it to be one of the key selling points of the house. Apparently it is going to be raining pears in our garden come the Summer. So far we have two teeny little ones growing, so we're watching and waiting with baited breath...

November....

How on earth we've got to the end of November already I shall never know...!

It's been a funny sort of month. Not only did Alfie break his arm, but Jake caught a really bad gastro bug at the start which totally wiped him out for a week or so, and then he managed to pass it onto both children as well. Nice one Jake!

So as well as his broken arm, Alfie also spent a couple of days with his head in a bucket ....and then just as he recovered, our tiny daughter suffered from the same bug - and as usual with Molly she seemed to have it ten times worse than Alfie. She's all skin and bones at the best of times so after the 10th round of vomiting we did have to call the nurse for advice, and it's taken her a lot longer to recover than the others.

So for at least half of the month most of the family have basically been in bed and/or sleeping things off, which means the month's been a bit of a write-off really!

It's only been over the last few days that things have got back on track, so although everyone has lower-than-usual energy levels, we've been trying to make up for lost time!

We had a brilliant bush dinner after gym practice the other night....Alfie & I cooked while Molly did gym and put the dinner into old takeaway containers and brought it with us when we collected Molly. We had a fabulous dinner in the nearby park, followed by lots of climbing trees and collecting "stuff", and when I looked at my watch and saw it was already 7.15pm (on a school night!) I struggled to get them back home as they were having SO much fun! Unfortunately it's now expected that every gym night we are doing a bush dinner....

Last week I had an old friend from Auckland come and visit for a few days, and we had a really relaxing weekend. Her and I had a Mums Day Out on Saturday and took a fun walk around the waterfront, sat on the beach reading and paddling for a while, and had a glass of wine and bowl of chips at a restaurant deck over the water. We also watched a little blue penguin playing around on the harbour front, and a stingray swimming in the lagoon while we had coffee. Bliss.

Jake and I have also been having a little bit of fun with the Dinovember idea this month. Many nights - and sometimes during the day while the kids are at school too - Alfie's dinosaurs have been getting up to a lot of mischief in the house. They've emptied all the jigsaw puzzles all over the kitchen table, they've dressed up in all Barbie's clothes, they've had a messy tea party and they've done some drawing. I think tonight they may be planning on getting all the toilet rolls out of the bathroom cupboard...;) !

It's been a while...!

For many reasons, I stopped writing this blog earlier in the year.

But after being nagged/hassled/begged by a number of friends and family members it looks like the blog is back in business again, so here we go...!

It would be impossible to catch up on everything that's happened since July, but it's been a fun few months. Here's a bit of a summary.

First off, we've settled in to the new house now, and we love living here! The whole place desperately needs a lick of paint (as the previous owners favoured magnolia and terracotta and other 1970's trends), and we'd like to knock a few walls down and move things around a bit, but for now we are more than contented to live in it for a while, see all the seasons out, and then make our decisions.

In July/August we headed off to the UK for a month - our first visit back in 5 years! And although both kids had been before, they were really too young to remember anything back then, so for them it was their first real, memorable visit. As well as getting the chance to spend some special times with their Great Granny, they also got to see where all their other rellies live, visit some real castles and palaces, travel on the Tube, and see squirrels, deer, traffic jams and other classic English sights (!).

Since we got home again, Molly's spent a very busy few months with all her hobbies and activities. She's had gym competitions (3 golds!), a ballet exam (she passed with Merit!), piano concerts, choir performances and other events taking up a lot of her schedule. Gymnastics continues to be her number one love, but at the moment she's very busy in dance rehearsals, about to perform in the musical "The Lion King". She is a wildebeest (?) but seems to be more than happy with this role as she gets to wear glittery horns and a tutu. And as we all know, the outfit is the most important thing.

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Alfie continues to be a sports-mad little boy. As well as tennis and swimming, he's just finished his second rugby season...

He's now taken up soccer for the summer and has been doing really really well so far....until he broke his arm last week (falling off the monkey bars at school).

As for the grown ups in the family.....Jake continues to train hard with his running, biking and swimming, and living in Wellington has been fantastic for him as we have the mountains and the ocean on our doorstep. I am still a bit of a Zumba addict and although I don't always get to go as often as I like (life gets in the way!), rarely a week goes past without at least one or two classes. Work is good - for both of us - with lots going on to keep us both busy.

And that just about sums things up. More to come soon...!

Sydney

People who know us well would probably agree that we've all been in desperate need of a break lately. The combined effects of moving house, catching viruses, and two parents working full time over the last couple of months has all taken its toll and quite frankly we were buggered!

So we've just spent a few days in Sydney and it was just what we needed...

The 4 days were spent pretty much just relaxing and sleeping and enjoying not *having* to do anything. We had the added bonus that our very lovely friends who we met back in the Falkland Islands joined us there - they now live a few hours drive away from Sydney (BRILLIANT to see you again Johnson family!!).

Sydney is an awesome city, and is one of my favourite places. I've spent a lot of time there over the years and have a lot of good memories - I lived and worked there back in 95/96 as a backpacker, I visited for work in '98, I went on a luxury weekend in 2004.....but I'd never been back since we had kids.

And I can now confirm that it's not quite the same experience!

But it was absolutely brilliant in different ways. Manly Beach became our base - it's the perfect location for a family as you have the beach on your doorstep and public transport to see the sights is mostly possible by ferry. In fact, the ferry rides were one of our highlights and we spent a great deal of time on them, day and night, just cruising around the harbour getting to places...
 

The kids' highlight was going on the cable car to Taronga Zoo...

We played a lot on Manly Beach. Our kids were fascinated by the golden sand as we don't get yellow sand back home....and we also put the volleyball nets to good use! 

On the second day we had fish n chips at Watsons Bay and watched a beautiful sunset over the harbour...and I reminisced about doing exactly the same thing as a twenty-something during my backpacking era!

What a great trip! See you again next time Sydney!