It's Autumn already

We keep being teased with a touch of summer this week. We’re basking in the sunshine one minute, and wrapping up in gale force winds and pouring rain the next. We don’t know what to wear each day and we no longer know which season we’re in...

The storms have destroyed our beautiful garden, which is now just a mixture of dead flowers, tall weeds, and overgrown bushes.

But we’ve had some good sunny periods and we are really making the most of things and taking every opportunity to get out, now our busy season is over! The kids went out on their bikes with their friends last weekend while us parents sat in the sun drinking coffee – heavenly!

Molly’s picked up riding her new birthday bike really well now (although it’s still quite a bit too big for her) but she seems to have perfected the helpless girlie look every time she gets to an uphill bit and was very good at waiting for the 3 boys to run over and help pull her up.

Meanwhile Alfie managed a fair bit of riding without training wheels and while he didn’t have helpless look on him at all, the rest of us did every time he came careering towards us and crash landed.

With Molly away at a sleepover party on Saturday night, we’d promised Alfie that we’d go camping in the garden.

However when the temperature started to drop in the late afternoon we chickened out and ended up “camping” in the lounge room for the night instead.

Needless to say, no one got a good sleep – but at least we were warm!

Turning 40

OK, so I’ve been a little guilty of covering up the fact that I’ve just had a birthday. It wasn’t deliberate. We’ve just had so many big family events lately that I was a bit over it all. Shame. A 40^th is actually a great excuse for a party, therefore I am now planning a belated one for next week (hey, we still have a lot of wedding wine left over!).

When I was little, I had this vision of what life would be like when I was 40. I would have a 5 bedroomed house in the suburbs of London, 3 teenage children, a husband who worked long hours earning mega bucks in the City and I would be a meteorologist.

I would spend my weekends playing the piano and playing tennis. And I would have my hair cut short – because my mother always told me that once you turn 40 you have to have your hair cut short.

I can now confirm that my visions were all wrong. Life couldn’t be more different! Not only have I lived in some fairly extreme and crazy locations around the world, but I have now made my home on the other side of the world.

Five bedrooms is beyond reality, but we are now home owners and landlords. I have two young children (no where near teenage-hood yet), my husband unfortunately does not earn mega bucks in the City (but he is very lovely and has a much more interesting job), and I am not a meteorologist. I don’t play the piano as often as I’d like to, but I do often watch people at the tennis club outside my kitchen window (if that counts?).

For months now, people have been asking me if I’ve written a bucket list. Or if I have written a list of “40 things to do before I’m 40”.

So, last weekend we tried to write me one of those lists, but we couldn’t think of more than 9 things to go on it. The task was too hard and eventually we abandoned it to a bottle of bubbly. And in truth, I’m more than happy not to have another list (I have too many lists already – shopping lists, work lists, buy bread, invoice clients, etc, etc).

I have done so very much in these last 40 years (and even more in the last 10!) that it was always going to be very difficult to write such a list. Ten years ago I couldn’t have possibly imagined all the things I was going to go on to achieve. So in actual fact, I am now simply content to dream and wonder and hope about what new adventures the next 40 years hold. Anyway, I’m far too busy doing life to write a list about it!

The Honeymoon

Strictly this isn’t a post about our adventures in Wellington, because Jake and I have just got back from a few days in the Marlborough Sounds – which isn’t even on the same island as Wellington (it’s on the South Island) – but we are going to include it on our blog anyway.

Thanks to Jenny, who looked after Molly and Alfie for a few nights back home, we managed an actual honeymoon! Where we did grown up things.

For example, we ate a very nice dinner in a very nice restaurant each night. We drank wine in the middle of the day. We read books for hours on end . We slept in until 9.30am! (This was a majorly big deal!). And we did lots of outdoorsy stuff, which did not include going to playparks and collecting bucketfuls of shells and insects, but real outdoorsy stuff, the sort of things we used to do all the time pre-kids.

Our trip began with a journey on the Interislander ferry from Wellington to Picton, from where we took a truly awesome little float plane ride to our hotel in the Sounds. Just magic. I love that kind of stuff.  

On hearing that they had one of NZ’s best massage therapists at the hotel, we both opted for a one hour massage straight away. Over the years we’ve both had a wide range of different massages, but this one was quite something else! I felt beaten up and drugged by the end, and Jake walked back to the room after his, wide eyed, hair sticking up everywhere! Still, we think (?) it did us good....

I am never ever ever again supposed to mention the fateful fishing trip that evening (sorry Jake), so I will move on....

On the second day we walked a section of the Queen CharlotteTrack – something I’ve wanted to do since my Bridge the World days (so I’ve only waited 14 years!).

The water taxi ride to the start of the track was very cool, and the whole walk was simply amazing, just beautiful. We did a 4 hour section, but we’ll be back one day to do the whole 71 kms.

And we finished off with a very nice kayaking trip around the bays on the last day. It’s a stunning part of the world. So quiet and peaceful. Until Jake thought a shark had knocked into the kayak and completely freaked out (it was just me moving my foot an inch to the right). Anyway, we carried on into little bays and coves and watched little jumping fish everywhere. Very nice.

Marlborough Sounds – we will be back! With the kids (because we did miss them) and so we will be exploring the playparks and bringing buckets and spades with us next time. 

Molly's Summer

This summer Molly too has been spending every spare minute in the garden. Mostly pottering about collecting flowers, looking for fairies, helping Alfie terrorise the snails, playing on the swings and blowing bubbles.

With school and after-school activities becoming increasingly full-on, she has developed the appetite of an elephant, demanding porridge, Sultana Bran, toast AND a boiled egg each morning for breakfast. I’m having to get up extra early to fit it all in and it’s quite amazing how someone so very small can eat quite so much! 

Year 2 at school continues to be a big source of happiness for her (phew!) and her personal highlights at the moment are singing in the school choir (only because 50% of the tunes they practise are by her current idol Bruno Mars) and bringing home the class bear last week.

Back at home, like all good women, she’s learnt to multi-task – chef’s outfit on, cupcake mixture prepared and into the oven, over to the art table to design some dresses while they bake, then back to the kitchen ,etc etc.

Alfie's Summer

We have had a pretty crap summer in NZ this year. Lower temperatures than usual and lots of rain. But although the media have discussed the poor weather constantly, we didn’t really care too much and have managed to have a lot of fun anyway. Hey – we didn’t have to deal with tennis & school in temps of 45 degrees, or trying to sleep in temps of 42 degrees..... or getting to work in a foot of snow.... so for us it’s been great just to have everything in the middle, nice and easy!

We’ve spent a lot of time on the beach, which is one of Alfie’s favourite past-times. He loves collecting bits and pieces in his buckets, paddling, swimming, and looking for sea creatures.

He’s also spent a lot of time collecting wildlife in the garden. He spent most of last week making an elaborate home for his pet snail, with walls of bricks and a bed of leaves – all great stuff until he then accidentally trod on and squashed the snail – cue lots of tears “Oh noooooo.....I’ve killed him Mummy!”

He also found a dead mouse stuck in the rubber matting which we have under the swing. There’s a pattern emerging here.... let’s hope he never wants to become a vet.

He’s also been to sign up for the local rugby team. Training doesn’t start until later in the year but he already has a Wallabies rugby shirt, and his team beanie and his gum shield and wears them most of the time. The consequence is he gets rather hot under his hat and we don’t understand a word he says, but you can’t fault his enthusiasm.

 Unfortunately Alfie spent the 10 days following our wedding with Slap Cheek virus, and has been a very miserable boy. He’s spent his time playing Snakes & Ladders with Grandad, watching DVDs and moaning and groaning a lot....but he’s on the mend now and we are once more sending warnings out to the wildlife of Wellington – watch out, Alfie’s about!  

Birthday Season

In amongst all the chaos of the last few weeks, we had two other very important events to celebrate and it would be very wrong of us not to mention them on our blog.

First, Molly turned six. SIX! Not a tiny little girl anymore. We celebrated on the day with a big family barbeque (it’s not often we have all the grandparents plus an uncle in town!) and she had a disco party last weekend for her schoolfriends too.

Next, Alfie turned four. FOUR! Definitely not a tiny little boy anymore! He too got a family barbeque, but unfortunately we are very bad parents and haven’t yet organised a friends party for him. We are completely partied out! And he hasn’t asked yet....

Next on the list is my birthday in a couple of weeks time. It's a big one this year. I'm going to be 30 (again). Ha ha! 

In the meantime I have resolved not to make any more cakes whatsoever until next February. It's become a little bit ridiculous lately!

The Hughes-Downing Wedding Story

It’s been a whole week now so it’s definitely about time we posted about our wedding. What a day! Actually - what a weekend!

Because we held the wedding at a private beach house which we’d booked for the weekend, it meant everybody could come and go as they pleased and stay as long as they wanted, so the event  ended up more like a 3 day party (rather than just a ceremony).

Exactly the way we wanted it, it was just great!

It would be impossible to write the whole story here, but just a few of our favourite moments and memories were...

Friday night’s big game of touch rugby on the lawn – it was quite a fantastic sight to see all the boys and men running around so much and it realised  Andy D’s dream of playing rugby with his son!

Alfie surfing with all his grandparents – and the looks on their faces the first time he caught a wave! Because he’s so little, his lack of weight made him go at the speed of light. Sheer panic for the grandparents, sheer joy for Alfie! Even more funny when he fell off and came up smiling!!

Jake and I taking a sneaky midnight spa bath with Mark, Sam and Darren on Friday night. Go the spa bath!

Jake getting up at 2.30am when he heard the rain, and heaving all our hired furniture inside from the garden because he was nervous about whether the tables were waterproof or not.

Being able to hang out on the beach and swim in the sea just an hour or two before the ceremony (rather than the traditional chaos of being caught up in the stress of flower arrangements, hairdressers, make-up artists, etc). It meant I went into the ceremony with chipped nail polish and sticking out hair on one side and I’m still not sure if I should have spent a little bit more time on my appearance, but it was worth it for me!

My Mum & Dad’s efforts at holding me up while I attempted to walk out in my killer heels.

Our Wellington friends Dave and Andrew’s Mihi, which began the wedding ceremony.

The poem about “Love” which Molly made up and read out (I noticed there were a few teary eyes at this point!)

The sound advice given in Jenny’s reading (eg “Jake – remember to flush”).

The complete and utter seriousness with which Alfie took his ring bearing duties – including the pretend-lost-ring joke our celebrant had practised with him. Absolutely priceless!

Jake’s decision to replace my beautiful Ash Hilton wedding ring with the battered up shell which he used to propose to me on Sea Lion Island back in 2007. I did assume for a moment that Alfie really had lost the rings, but luckily the correct ring was brought out fairly quickly after Jake’s ‘joke’.

My mum’s amazing wedding cake – and its Pied Piper effect! All of a sudden 17 children appeared at our sides begging for icing flowers, and poof – almost the entire cake disappeared before I could blink!

Walking into the swimming pool room to find 17 kids and several adults all jumping in after eating their wedding cake!

Not so great was when Hayden (aged 6) ran straight through a glass window as dinner was being served and we had to call the ambulance and window-repair man.... but luckily he was ok and hey, all good weddings need a little drama!

Other great stuff included a fun game of croquet on the lawn with my lovely friends and a fun game of table tennis with my little boy.

And dancing with all the kids to the band as the sun went down over Kapiti Island. A stunning sunset, a shared tambourine, and some great tunes.  

I could go on for pages here, but I think you’ve probably all got the picture by now....

Thank you everyone for coming and making the weekend so special for us....and for all those who couldn’t but sent messages and presents – we are stoked, we have a bloody good bunch of friends!!

Watch out, the Hugheses are about!

My family arrived in Wellington a few days ago from the UK – the first time in NZ for my brother and the first real chance to get to know Wellington properly for my parents (they had a brief visit once before but don’t remember much).

Molly and Alfie are super hyped up and have a lot of excitement and energy at the moment. Grandad was exhausted within half an hour of arriving here! They are also mega excited about having Uncle Philip here (“because he’s a little bit naughty Mum”) so he’s not getting much rest time either.

So, in amongst rushing around collecting our rings, nail polish and other last minute bits & pieces for the wedding, we managed to spend the weekend in a fairly leisurely way – we even managed some daytime beers! We showed the family some of our favourite south coast beaches and one of our favourite cafes on Sunday, and we took them to the Waitangi Day celebrations yesterday.

Waitangi Day is a public holiday and a pretty important event in NZ, so there were celebrations going on everywhere. We chose to go down to the waterfront where we watched a ceremonial waka (Maori canoe) and then the kids went wild and scootered around a lot, we had a few beers & lemonades in the sun, and then we watched a few bands, storytellers, cultural performances etc.

Hopefully my family are enjoying their time here, although it’s not been without mishaps so far. Mum and Dad have managed to get lost every time they’ve gone out in their car so far, Dad and Philip have both managed to get sunburnt (despite a complete lack of sun/summer), and one member of the family (who shall not be named here!) had to leave the Waitangi celebrations for a while because the music was too loud for him! 

Year 2

It was a big relief all round today.

Molly went back to school – her first day in Year 2. For the last few days she’s been a complete bag of nerves, not sleeping at night, snapping at everybody like a teenager, telling us she didn't want to go back to school, and occasionally confiding that she had butterflies in her tummy.

But her new teacher was a HUGE hit and when Alfie and I arrived to collect her at 3pm she told us she didn’t want to come home and wanted to stay at school because it was so much fun and the teacher kept smiling and winking at her (?).

Meanwhile, Alfie spent the day doing very odd things around the house like tying all his soft toys to the swing and practising the haka wearing nothing but his sister’s jewellery. His gymnastics classes started back today as well and he has a new coach this term – a man with no hair, who is apparently the coolest coach ever.

So we have a happy boy and a happy girl. 

An Update

It’s the last day of school holidays today. I never knew that six and a half weeks could go so quickly.

Jake and I have been extremely busy over the last few weeks, so it’s been mostly up to Molly and Alfie to show Nana Jenny the sights of Wellington. We did manage to take her to see a live band performing at Aotea Lagoon one evening and we ate fish & chips while we watched an interesting mix of Burmese and American Wellingtonians (!) playing Country & Western. They did manage to get us up dancing a little and the kids hyped up before bedtime.

The kids have spent the last couple of weeks having great adventures with Nana Jenny while I’ve been at work – swimming in the sea, walking up mountains, playing on the beach, going to the park, plus a whole load of bizarre new garden game inventions which include car tyres, ropes, basketballs, much of my Tupperware and caterpillars (?)

We also managed to fit in an awesome weekend away recently, over at Riversdale Beach. Some friends of ours have a family bach there which they invited us to, so we managed to kick back and relax for a bit. The fact that we were 4 adults plus 5 kids all aged under 7 meant it was noisy, but they mostly entertained themselves – meaning us adults could sit in the sun, open a few beers, and actually hold a conversation (most of the time).

Meanwhile, Jake and his running buddy attempted their first official mountain/off-road race last weekend. As they now regularly do 3 hour runs in the mountains around Wellington they’d assumed this one would be a piece of cake.....however they’d completely under-estimated how challenging the terrain would be – I hear they were scrambling up rock faces and had to walk at some points. They eventually completed the 24 kms in 4 hours and 21 minutes. They hobbled back home looking quite a bit worse than usual and Jake is still not fully recovered 4 days later. Still – they are already preparing for the next one!

No gin required after all!

I am pleased to report that I found the solution to all my troubles – a weekend away with the girls is the cure to all problems!

Especially when the weekend is in Hawkes Bay, the home of some of New Zealand’s very best food and wine (what more can 3 girls ask for?). 

Our original plan to hire bikes and cycle around idyllically in the sunshine tasting the wines at all the local vineyards was quickly abandoned after we found a very lovely tapas bar by the quayside on the first night and drunk multiple bottles of very nice wine....

....leading to my first hangover in years and an absolute desire NOT to be riding a bike around. Or to be tasting any more wine.

Instead we got in the spa.

Walked along the beach.

Went for coffees.

Went up a hill to admire the view. 

Wandered around town looking at art deco buildings. 

Watched  beautiful sunsets and sunrises from our deck. 

Ate fresh strawberry ice cream at a farm. 

Watched a live band playing down by the ocean (who were completely brilliant, I must give them a plug here - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jN2I9VHid60&noredirect=1 ) ) 

And when we felt a bit better we went to some vineyards and tasted some wine!

Will somebody please pass the gin...?

The holiday period is over and it’s back to work – boo! – and things are incredibly chaotic in the Hughes-Downing household at the moment.

I’m the second to admit (Jake’s always the first!) that there’s a long list of things I am no good at. My lack of spatial awareness and poor map reading abilities being amongst the most frequent causes of arguments in our household. But I have long been renowned for my thoroughness and attention to detail.

Not any more!

With life at the moment containing far too much in it for one person to properly manage, things are no longer getting done to our usual standards. Hence the very dirty kitchen floor, the lack of balanced meals for the family, dirty children, late invoicing to my clients, late birthday cards (sorry Dad!), library fines, the grocery shopping not being done until 10.30pm last night (thank goodness for the modern retail environment and long opening hours!), the overflowing laundry basket, and the huge pile of overdue paperwork at the moment (a big sorry to our accountants and to our British bank – although I doubt you are going to accept a formal apology through this blog?).

Not to mention the fact that there are still a rather large number of things to do on the wedding planning front (148 on the To Do List at the last count). 

And to top it all, Molly’s flower girl dress arrived in the post last week a size too big for her due to my poor skills with a tape measure.

AND - there is no gin in the house!

So, if there are any blog followers out there who are expecting phone calls, birthday cards, or anything else from us, please bear with us – we are either just running late with it or we have more likely completely forgotten and we are very very sorry!

Having said all that, Nana Jenny has now arrived to stay for 2 months, so we have childcare for the rest of the school holidays which is a HUGE, massive bonus – so big thanks to Jenny for easing some of the pressure!

The kids are loving all the adventures their Nana takes them on. Meanwhile, I am trying hard not to ask what they are currently doing in our garden with two car tyres (where did they find them??), a piece of rope (again, where did they get that from?), a very large bucket of water and my new luxury handsoap.

Anyway, given the above circumstances, I am temporarily checking out of the blogging world until the Government officially changes the length of each day to 54 hours long....

Camping at Paekakariki

Our third trial at camping with small children took place in the last few days – and we’re pleased to report that now they are both a little older it is starting to work pretty well.

Having seriously considered a range of Dept of Conservation campsites (which are located in stunning places but don’t come equipped with playparks, jumping pillows and ice cream stores), we ended up taking the easy option and drove up the coast to a very lovely holiday park at Paekakariki instead.

Cheating, I know, but it made life much easier!

Paekakariki was a major US Marine base during WWII and I believe there were over 20,000 Americans stationed there for training and recreation purposes. It’s hard to envision now, as these days it’s just a very sleepy, little coastal town (with a population of less than 2,000).

We had an incredibly lazy time, the hardest work being the 15 minutes required to put up the tent. Other than that, we played tag on the beach, had coffee at one of the best cafes in NZ, hung out at the play park, visited Pizza Hut for dinner (aaagggh, yes really, we did), and read lots of books and magazines.

At night the kids were allowed to stay up late and take their scooters out around the holiday park and go on the jumping pillow – oh ,what fun they had! (Oh ok, ok, so did we!)

Beach Bach

Our exceptionally sunny Christmas was followed by a very rainy few days..... starting exactly on the day we left Wellington to go on holiday, and continuing until exactly the day we returned home!

Ah well. We enjoyed ourselves hugely anyway, regardless of the weather.

We spent the week in a little Kiwi bach (beach house) in rural Wairarapa. Please don’t ask us the name of the beach as neither of us could remember/pronounce it most of the time! All we can say is it was about a 3 hour drive north-east of Wellington, in a small settlement of about 20 houses with nothing else in sight except a long coastline, lots of mountains and trees (and a lot of clouds!).

We didn’t let the rain spoil our time though, and managed to get out collecting shells, surfing (Jake in his wetsuit and Alfie in nothing but his undies but he did a great job, better than his dad), paddling and running up and down the sand every day. The sun even came out a couple of times (briefly!).

Thinking about it, this is in fact pretty much what we’ve historically done every single year for our NZ Christmas holidays – ie hired a bach and chilled out in a remote spot for a few days – and it is SO worth it! We have all come back completely refreshed, relaxed, well slept (yes, really!) and very happy.