Molly had her school athletics day. She actually hates athletics, she really hates it. But even she admitted the day turned out quite fun! If we disregard the actual running races and athletic events, and focus on the water relays and the other not-really-real-athletics stuff...
The same week, the annual school discos took place. This time we had a Halloween theme. Alfie went as a red kind of machine man thing (I have no pictures, sadly - or fortunately depending on which way you look at it), while Molly was a more sophisticated witch.
With November comes fireworks - even on this side of the world! But it's slightly different over here. It doesn't get dark at this time of year until about 8.30/9pm, so the fireworks are late and all the kids get to stay up for a very exciting night.The city council usually puts on a pretty good display over the harbour, and our usual tradition is to go and watch it from the top of one of the nearby hills. We got there slightly early (along with half the suburb!) and watched a beautiful sunset first, then the fireworks. The kids thought it was the best night ever!
Meanwhile, Jake's still busy burning the candle at both ends and is currently on a mission to monopolise New Zealand's media. In the space of 10 days he's been in the newspaper twice and on live breakfast TV! All in the name of Weta...
Molly's working hard too. She does nearly 4 hours of gym a week now, and with her end of year ballet show approaching and her Christmas gymnastics display this weekend, there's been no rest! She recently went through the amazing process of designing her own gym leotard - the pattern, the fabrics, etc - boy, did a lot of thought and agonising go into the choice but she got there eventually and doesn't it look great?!
When we're not at work, school, gym, ballet, piano, soccer, tennis - or on the TV - we've all been working exceptionally hard re-decorating the house. It's taking up every spare minute.
We had some time off last Sunday and spent a wicked day at the splashpad playpark up the coast - basically just your standard kids playpark but with water spurting everywhere. SUCH a great invention and so much fun!
And when we'd finished there, we went down to the beach to collect fish in buckets and play cricket.
So life's busy. We're all working hard, but we're making time to play as well! The only people in the family who have been lazing around all the time are Bear and Ninja - who have rejected the beautiful soft cat bed we bought them and taken over our bed instead.
