The Rugby World Cup 2011

I think it’s fair to say that New Zealand is completely consumed with rugby mania at the moment.

Every time I leave the house I see All Blacks flags on cars and on garden gates. Every time I open the newspaper or switch on the radio or TV they are talking about rugby.

Even Molly’s school is obsessed – she’s been in constant rehearsals for a “Big Event” performance in a couple of weeks time, and this week she had to prepare a short talk for the class on her choice of any team in the Rugby World Cup (she went in dressed in her old school uniform yesterday, carrying a plastic wallaby and a toy snake - no prizes for guessing which team she chose to talk about).

Also yesterday, Alfie’s pre-school decided to paint each child’s face with the flag of a country who’s playing in the RWC. Not really fully understanding his background, the teachers randomly chose Argentina for Alfie. This was clearly an incredibly unfortunate choice for our little Falklands-born boy, although he is still too young to appreciate what it means and is unwilling to let it be washed off. Bath time soon though....!

Anyway, I have no idea on how to avoid the RWC phenomenon, and so to hell with it – if you can’t beat them...

With Jake up in Auckland for the opening game last night, the kids and I ordered pizza, got our flags out and settled down to watch the match.

Molly quickly got into the spirit of things, picking up on the rules and the scoring system faster than I ever did (I still struggle with the difference between kicks), shouting and cheering “come on boys” every time the ABs had the ball, and developing a complete beyond-her-years infatuation with Dan Carter.

Meanwhile the little rugby fanatic of the house who has recently started playing rugby every day at pre-school and chanting the haka at every possible opportunity actually fell asleep before the national anthems even began...

Jake's adventures with trees and the Welsh rugby team

Well what a great weekend! 

I (Jake) did a massive run on Saturday morning and most of it was up hill, we then spent the rest of the morning around some friends house, sitting in the sun and drinking coffee while Andrew (my running partner) and I recovered. 

In the afternoon we were doing some jobs in the Northern Suburbs and decided to get some fish and chips and sit on the cliffs watching the fishing boats come in – a little bit nippy but great end to the day.

On Sunday I decided to walk the talk and took the kids tree planting as part of the Living Legends event. The kids loved it and were really helpful, they planted (only the nice looking plants – per Molly's instructions), collected the rubbish, ate the sweets handed out to them and Alfie under Dad’s instructions very very nearly ate a worm.

We then stayed after the trees (2,500 of them) were planted to have a sausage sizzle with my work colleagues.

I then managed to squeeze in the first bit of the RWC 2011 events by taking the kids to the Welsh training sessions – Molly couldn’t work out why Wales were playing against Wales – I did say that was probably the only game Wales would win ;-)

Spring has sprung!

We’ve had a tough week, in and out of the doctors with viruses and eczema flare ups so we were delighted this afternoon when spring began quite suddenly!

We’ve got sunshine, we've got flowers everywhere in our garden, beer in the fridge and happy kids who are really enjoying the fact that they can potter around in the garden after school.

It’s especially great that they can do art outside without running the risk of their crayons melting and Alfie is particularly pleased that he is allowed to hunt for “cute” (?) spiders now we are no longer living in Australia.

I indulged myself a bit when we got home from school today and spent the afternoon sitting in a deck chair in the sun with a beer & a magazine while I watched the artwork, spider hunting and various other antics. These moments are surely what life is all about....

Mark and Sam etc.

What a lovely long weekend we've all just had with the Campbells Bay Downings. It was so nice to have someone to show all the sights of Wellington to - even though we don't really know them very well ourselves yet!

The climb up Mt Kau Kau, our closest mountain, was great - we had perfect hiking weather and the view was stunning. For anyone else planning to visit us, this is now on our must do list so remember your boots!

I especially loved the "accidental" visit to a wine bar  - thanks for doing the dinner Daniel! And the many coffees and the games of Boggle were just what the doctor ordered after a busy few months (although perhaps a little too relaxing for a certain Dad and a certain Great Uncle who took the opportunity for a little Nana nap!)

Big congratulations to Little Miss Molly who managed to get round a very long tour of the Beehive (Parliament buildings) with Wendy and Sam without any complaining at all, and re-counted the whole tour at school on Monday.

Meanwhile Alfie had his own adventures up at Palmerston North which involved a water fountain, a lot of bubble bath, and the need for Dan to jump in and perform a rescue operation. Thanks again Dan. (His shoes are still wet!)

Mark, Sam, Eve, Dan and Joe - thanks so much for your company. It was lots of fun and we really enjoyed having you to stay. Please come again soon!

Winter in Wellington!

When we left the Falkland Islands in 2010, we genuinely believed that we would never live in a snowy environment again. Unless the remote chance of a fantastic job offer in Wanaka or Queenstown came up (because we’ve always said we’d jump at the chance of living there).

But yesterday a majorly cold weather front came into Wellington and we had real snow that actually settled all around us, not just on the mountain tops but properly on the ground.

This is a very unusual event in Wellington – people who’ve lived here for 30 or 40 years are saying they’ve never seen anything like it - and it’s being referred to by the local media as Wellington’s “once in a lifetime polar blast”. 

Unfortunately Wellington’s a very hilly city and not really set up for this weather. Last night, motorists were trapped, cars were sliding backwards down the steep roads, people were abandoning their vehicles and walking home.  It’s pretty chaotic out there!

When we lived with snow on a regular basis a couple of years ago, we became desensitized to how magical it is, and it often just seemed inconvenient - especially with two very small children who really needed fresh air and outside play.

But as the kids are a bit bigger now, it was different last night – different also because it is most definitely out of the normal weather range we’re all used to these days.

There was just huge excitement in the family when the snow started falling. We had a snowball fight and built a snowman, and the kids were still talking about it when they woke up in the morning today.

The snow is coming down fast and heavy again now, so I’m off to switch the heating on....brrrrr!

School Holidays

The school holidays are now (already) over!

After a 5 week winter holiday last year in Alice Springs, this year’s 2 week holiday just flew by so quickly (particularly since we lost the first 8 days in sickness).

But we made up for it in the last few days – we went to playparks, we had playdates, we went to the theatre to see Pinocchio, we defaced our driveway (just with chalk, but I do need to wash it away now!), we went to a craft session where the kids made beautiful bookmarks out of beads, and we met a fairy in a shopping mall.

During the holidays, Molly has also come on leaps and bounds with her reading and we are very proud of her. She’s taken to leaving messages on the whiteboard for Jake when he comes home late from work (G&T Thursdays!) and her writing is becoming pretty great as well. She still loves her arts & crafts too and made some brilliant play dough people yesterday, then she entered a newspaper competition to draw a picture of a penguin – the penguin is truly gorgeous and is drinking champagne, singing and wearing a butterfly in her hair! 

Walking Tracks

The area we live in is full of walking tracks, but up until now we've been too busy to use many of them. (How crazy our lives have become?) 

But today was a very beautiful, sunny day, just perfect for wearing the kids out on a walk. So we made our way down to the start of one of the tracks, and up we went. Up and up and up lots of stairs. Down through thick trees. Up some more stairs. Past a lot of ferns. And bingo – a lookout over Wellington!

The kids are exhausted this evening so fingers crossed that we’ll all get some sleep tonight. I’m thinking I may have to work my way through the whole list of walking tracks this week! 

The Flu

Well that was a pretty bad virus! Alfie, Molly and I have just slept for 8 days almost non-stop. Well, ok, a slight exaggeration – we did all manage to get up for around an hour each day. Thank goodness it’s school holidays!

Anyway, we’re on the mend now and trying to get to grips with the chaos that ensues from not looking after a house for 8 days - nothing in the fridge, no laundry done, two weeks of rubbish not taken out, etc.

So we're raring to go and the plan now is to cram two weeks' worth of school holiday activities into the next 5 days!

The Bradys

We’ve just had a visit from Darren & Beth + the boys, who were brave enough to do the long haul drive from Auckland with 2 kids – thank you so much guys, it was great to see you and we really appreciated the effort you went to.

Unfortunately Wendy, Molly and Alfie were all knocked out by a nasty flu virus and spent the best part of 3 days asleep!

Luckily, before it struck, we managed to get out and about to the Botanic Gardens, a cable car ride, the beach and Te Papa. Wellington’s a great city. We hope you come back again soon so we can play the Name Game again – and hopefully we’ll be able to stay awake next time!

Busy and tired!

It’s a busy busy, busy time for us at the moment, with Jake all over the country for work and me with extra contracts, plus trying to organise a wedding and finish setting up our new lives here in Wellington. Molly and Alfie are very  tired and the school holidays next week will be a very much needed break I think.

 

In the meantime, we’ve been trying our best to grab some downtime at home whenever we can, and I thought I’d post these shots....a bit of water play outside on the deck, some fantastic drawings of Jake on the whiteboard (the left hand one by Molly & the right hand one by Alfie), and some very important web surfing by Jake in the chaos that is called our study (aka the place to dump all the still unpacked boxes).

We keep hoping that the pace of life will slow down soon, but I'm not sure when that's going to happen exactly?! 

Other than that, Alfie continues to reject the idea of ordinary sleeping positions and now prefers the floor. It doesn't help with the tiredness.

A Narrow Escape

When we left home yesterday morning, Wellington had beautiful blue skies and we thought it would be great to go up the Kapiti Coast to the beach. As we drove north we could see a serious storm brewing up ahead but carried on regardless, and by the time we got up to Waikanae we were getting close to the storm and the strong winds reminded us of a bad day in the Falklands!

But what fun we had in the wind on the beach!

On the way home we called into Pak N Save for a few bits and pieces (except it never is in Pak N Save, and for a supermarket that’s supposed to save you money we always end up blowing the budget on more bargains). Anyway, we heard heavy rain on the roof while we were shopping, but when we came out we found ourselves surrounded by fork lightning with thunder crashing all around us, we saw ambulances passing by, and discovered a tornado had just passed through.

Crikey! Hoping everyone's ok. And thankful for Pak N Save!

School Disco

Molly had her first school disco last night, and as the official bar lady (water only!), I got to witness a couple of hundred 5-7 year olds doing the “Locomotion” and screaming like teenagers as the DJ announced Justin Bieber.

It was truly unbelieveable. I didn’t even realise Molly was aware of Justin Bieber and was quite astounded to see her singing along to the entire song : “Baby, baby, baby” (in an American accent). And there was I thinking they spent all day at school learning to read and write! 

The level of excitement in the school hall was MASSIVE and everyone had such a great time. After being dragged out of bed this morning to go to ballet at 9am, our very very tired Molly has still been singing and talking about it all day long. We don’t think she’ll forget last night in a hurry! 

Wedding Planning

It’s a lot of fun planning our wedding because we get to go exploring new beach locations every weekend at the moment while we look for a venue. This weekend we looked at a GORGEOUS place by the beach which is perfect in almost every way, just a couple of small issues which we need to work through before we commit to it.

As most of you know, we are not normally very comfortable with committing to anything until we have thought about every possible angle a billion times over for several months. Hopefully we will be able to get our thought processes moving a little bit quicker than usual this time, as we know some of you have already booked your flight tickets so we really are most definitely tied to next February. Anyway, you’ll be pleased to know we are now a little bit closer to having something organised for you all!

Anyway, we visited a beach afterwards where we had hot chocolate & scones, collected stones, shells and driftwood, played running races and a local lady let the kids have a ride on her horse! Molly then spent the entire car journey home begging us for riding lessons....aaagggh!

NZ Garden Bird Survey

This week Jake encouraged the kids to get involved in the NZ Garden Bird Survey, so yesterday they put some bread out in the garden and then got ready to spend an hour sitting in front of the window with their Landcare Research forms, ticking off how many of each species they could see.

Usually our garden is jam packed with tuis, fantails, sparrows, blackbirds and Kererus; however today they must have all known the survey was going on because not a single bird came into the garden in the whole hour, apart from one lone wood pigeon (perhaps he was scaring the others off?).

The kids got totally bored within 15 minutes of no action, so they went off to play and I had to sit by the window for the remaining 45 mins. Thanks kids/Jake!

PS Two hours after our survey ended about 30 birds came back into the garden. 

Kapa Haka and a Fruit Bat

Molly had her first Kapa Haka performance at school this week, and despite to only having been to three practise sessions so far, she managed to keep up with the others and made us very proud!

Not only that, but the performance was followed by some student awards presentations, including one to Molly who was praised for improvements in her writing. In amongst moving country, house, school, etc, we think that’s a pretty great achievement and so we’re doubly proud of her.

Meanwhile Alfie has taken to sleeping like a fruit bat – hanging upside down off the side of his bed. We can only imagine he is dreaming of his gymnastic classes, where he’s been spending lots of time hanging upside down on the bar and balancing on the high beam??

What a weekend!

It’s been a very full-on weekend for us.

Yesterday was a perfect winter’s day with warm sunshine so we took a trip up to the Kapiti Coast. The idea was to look for a wedding venue (at long last!), and we did look at a very wonderful little place, but unfortunately it was a bit beyond our budget.

Anyway, at lunchtime we were looking for a place to have a picnic and we chanced upon a little spot which has now officially become our absolute favourite beach in the whole world – we won’t publish where it is as we need to keep it secret! We pottered around for ages in the sun, climbing over driftwood, collecting stuff and just enjoying the sunshine. Our job this week is to work out if there are any wedding venues in that area!

Afterwards we took a long overdue visit to the shops and we well and truly blew the credit card limit on some very essential items. After 2 weeks of sharing an air bed with Molly, Alfie is now the proud owner of his very own bed, and the whole family have new bedsheets and fluffy winter blankets. Tonight the kids actually went to sleep on time, and are snoozing peacefully in their new bedding...

After a night out for Jake and I last night to a GROWN-UP drinks party – thanks to Jerry for a great evening, and thanks to Emma for baby-sitting - we woke up this morning to a huge tantrum at 7am from Alfie and stormy weather outside, not the best start to the day!

But today Wellington had a ‘open day’ for locals – the idea being that with the Rugby World Cup coming up soon, the local tourist board wanted us all to know the local attractions so we could recommend them to our visitors. So we had access to a lot of places for just a gold coin donation today. Our plans were to go to three places: Wellington Zoo, Zealandia wildlife sanctuary and the Carter Observatory. Yeah right – three places in one day with two little ones??!! We managed to get round half of the zoo! Molly just had the best time ever, as we got to watch an operation on a chimpanzee, meet a one-legged Kiwi with a prosthetic leg, and she listened to a talk on how to become a vet.

Off to enjoy my own new fluffy blanket now....night night!

The First Month

We can’t believe we’ve been here a whole month already!

Time’s flying by quickly, but we’re settling in and getting used to the different colours, the different environment and the different weather in NZ.

After more than 2 years in the Falklands (which have a semi-arid climate) followed by a year in the desert, the rain is one of the most novel things to us – especially to the kids who don’t really remember rain! The good thing about it is that it creates all this GREEN around us. We’re living in a very beautiful place.

Molly’s been extremely tired and overwhelmed at times, but is enjoying school, has kicked back into ballet lessons and has joined her school Kapa Haka Group too. Meanwhile, Alfie has started gymnastics and is seriously proud of his strong arms, while I just love watching his wobbly efforts on the bar and balancing (aka shuffling) on the high beam – so cute!

The house is slowly coming together, although the dining table is yet to be re-assembled due to lack of tools – this means we haven’t eaten a meal sitting down for 10 days now. Standing up must be good for your digestion though?

We also very quickly need to purchase some beds as we only have one at the moment, and our first house guest arrives tomorrow – at the moment he is only vaguely aware that he will not be staying in great comfort, and we do hope he is brave enough to come back again later in the year when we can offer him a real bed and a more furnished house!

Sad and Happy

We had a bit of a roller coaster day today. It wasn’t very nice checking out of our holiday home (long story!) and it poured with rain all day.

But on the upside, today we moved into our own house! Well it’s rented, but it’s a proper, long-term home. Not only that, but all our possessions arrived from Auckland today.

We haven’t seen most of this stuff for three and a half years so it’s been a hugely exciting day discovering lots of old treasures – as well as a whole load of stuff which we seriously shouldn’t have kept in storage for 3.5 years, eg a bottle of sweet chilli sauce which was 3 years past its sell-by date.

Meanwhile the kids ran riot and moved everything as soon as I’d unpacked it. We couldn’t find anything to cook with or eat off, so Pizza Hut got a call as it was the only number I could remember from 3 years ago: “Oh eight hundred, eighty three, eighty three, eighty three, la la la”.

Meanwhile, Jake missed out on pizza because he got lost on the way home from work and ended up walking several kilometres in the lashing rain and wind. Two hours later, a bedraggled curly man arrived on the doorstep, but even he is excited about seeing our stuff again and is about to put my piano up! 

Scorching auctions

We’ve spent heaps of time over the last few days looking for a car. We’re using a hire car at the moment but that has to go back soon and we desperately need our own.

Yesterday we spent a huge chunk of the day driving all over the city looking at cars, and ended up at Turners Auctions which Alfie thought was completely amazing – “Can we buy this one?” ..... “No this one”...... “No I like this one”.....”Can we get this van?”....etc etc.

By the afternoon we still had no car but were seriously in need of a break, so we bought a pie each (NZ pies, mmmm!) and headed to beautiful Scorching Bay for a bit of R&R. Molly became very muddled up between the car auction and the name of the beach, so it became ‘Auction Bay’.

Someone had done an amazing sand sculpture on the beach, so Jake and Alfie tried to make one of their own (they didn’t get very far), while Molly collected an entire car boot full of shells (as usual). Me, I just climbed around a bit and smiled while I looked at this amazing place we are living in. 

Cross Country Running

Molly's first week at school has been spent running for miles. Literally. They've been training for the school's cross country race, so they've been out every day running across fields, around playgrounds, up hills and down hills (although I suspect a lot of walking usually takes place on these bits).

Yesterday was the day of the race, so all the families came along to cheer them on. Alfie and I were standing on the sidelines, and Alfie was fully briefed to shout "Run Molly, Run!" as she came past.

However, when the moment came, Alfie instead shouted "I love you Molly!" and then he legged it across the field and chased after her before I could catch him, and continued all the way to the finish line with Molly! He was so proud of himself!!