A Sunny Winter

It may be the middle of winter here, but that doesn't stop us from enjoying the outdoors (and the indoors too!). We're lucky to have fairly mild winters here - often the mornings are pretty chilly but daytime temperatures usually get up to double digits and often well into the teens with plenty of warm sunshine. 

This suits us just fine. It means we can still get out and about and do all the things we love to do, and then once the sun disappears over the mountains and the temperature drops we can come home and cozy up for the evening. 

So there's been plenty of larking around at the beach over the last few weekends! 

We've discovered some new walking tracks recently too. The tracks at Butterfly Creek over in the Hutt Valley kept us occupied for most of the day last Sunday. The kids have got to a stage now where they don't need bribery to keep them walking; instead they ran ahead, collected sticks, squealed a lot and jumped in as much mud as possible. Bags of energy and lots of fun!

Back at home, we've been enjoying the sun trap in our garden that makes it possible to be outside in t-shirts (or less if you're Alfie!) even at this time of year. Jake & I often try to enjoy a peaceful cup of tea with the newspaper on a Saturday afternoon, but the worldwide Loom Band craze has hit Wellington too, and we've ended up reading nothing and making bands with the kids more than once or twice!

Thanks to the good weather, we're eating lunch outside most weekends at the moment. Now the kids are older they like to make it for us sometimes (yikes!) - their specialty is beans on toast and scrambled eggs. Long may this continue! (and I might throw a few recipe books their way too!) 

The garden table has been used at night recently too! Thanks to a big focus at school each year, Matariki (Maori New Year) has become a significant time of the year for our children. As a result, celebrating it is becoming a bit of a family tradition for all of us. Last year we went to a school celebration; this year we skipped it (bad parenting?) and baked cookies together instead, then ate them outside with warm milk while the kids taught me about the stars. They certainly knew their stuff - thanks for the lesson, kids!

But the difference for us in winter is that most evenings we are cozied up indoors. Evening life has changed for us enormously over the last few months, as Molly has clearly entered the next phase of sleephood. For a while this completely stumped us and we struggled every evening to force her to fall asleep at the same time as Alfie. Cue lots of frustration from all parties.

When the penny finally dropped, life became much easier!

Her bedtime has now shifted back by about an hour and a half compared to this time last year. We've finally got into a nice routine of putting Alfie to bed, and then we enjoy lovely chats, sometimes TV, but more often some reading time with Molly before we snuggle up in some of our own favourite places in the house.