Wellington's Best Playparks

I was planning to have a lazy start to the weekend this morning but having already been up for over 3 hours (and it’s still only 9am), the kids are getting restless and have come up with a grand plan for a “Playpark Tour”. Apparently we’re scheduling 84 of them in today.

Our whole family have invested a considerable amount of time at Wellington’s playparks over the last 18 months, so I thought I would put together a list of our favourites.

Wellington has 104 playparks so children are definitely very well catered for here! Most of them are pretty excellent, which makes choosing a top five list very difficult indeed and we have certainly left some good ones off this list.

But, in no particular order, here are our personal, all-time family favourites:

1.      Khandallah Park 

The flying fox here is a huge hit for our kids, as is the very long slide (which is frequently covered in bird poo, leading to very dirty bottoms and legs). The muddy stream is another drawcard and has also been responsible for many extra hours of laundry.

2.   Waitangi Park 

Also known as the “science park” in our family, on account of its water play area which allows for endless hours of “experiments”. Also, for some strange reason, every single time we go to Waitangi Park, we always bump into someone we know. The kids think it’s a guaranteed source of finding friends.

3.       Karori Park 

Mysteriously, it always turns out to be sunny when we go to Karori Park. It doesn’t matter what the weather’s like when we set out – by the time we reach Karori Park it’s cricket weather. We love this one for its 1km circuit path – it’s the best place to take bikes and scooters.

4.       Nairnville Park

A year ago Molly was stung by a bee here and it took us a wee while to get her back again as she was convinced the bee would still be sitting on the dandelion waiting for her. The long tunnel slide here is brilliant, as is the helicopter shaped climbing frame. So long as it’s not a windy day, this is an awesome spot.

5.       Frank Kitts Park

You just can’t beat ambling around Wellington waterfront on a sunny weekend, and we always end up spending a while at Frank Kitts Park. The kids can’t get enough of the big lighthouse slide, and are clever enough to have worked out that there’s always an ice cream van nearby too! 

Having finished this post, I better go and get my gear ready for our "Tour" now! 

September...

September in Wellington has been full of sunshine – and also some serious heavy rain, hail and gale force winds! But we’ve had a great month of playing outside whatever the weather.

We've had lots of very cool visitors this month from all corners of the world - Kevin, Hayden, Mark, Dan, Mark again, Tracey, Anton, Leigh-Anne, Debs - it's been brilliant to see you all! 

Other than that Alfie and I continue to enjoy our days off together, doing swimming and gymnastics, catching up with friends, exploring and playing and making things. 

We're on a mission to visit a new and/or different playpark every week at the moment and we're doing quite well. I'm happy so long as the sun's out and I have a flask of coffee and Alfie's happy so long as there's something to climb, something to hang upside down from, and something to jump off. 

This month however, we’ve often had to wearily plod through our days very slowly due to Alfie’s ongoing battles with eczema and nightmares which have been keeping us all up alot at night.

The eczema has involved countless trips to the doctor, a bucket load of creams and steroids, antibiotics (three doses in the last month), and we still can’t clear it up. 

On the plus side, we have turned a corner with the taniwha & monster nightmares by making our very own dream catcher. It took us an entire day to shop for the parts and put it all together, but Alfie came up with the fabulous idea of putting a plastic eye in the middle (to look out for the bad dreams) and 4 small round mirrors inside so that when the bad dreams are caught, they see themselves and get scared and run away (!).

Now we've come out the other side of winter, Molly and Alfie are both spending most of their after school hours in the garden, blowing bubbles, playing on the swings, collecting bugs and leaves, and perfecting their swing tennis techniques. The house we live in is great because I have a perfect view from the kitchen window while I cook dinner - and it's not far to run when I have to break up yet another fight over who broke the swing tennis rules! 

Molly’s school have been really busy this month studying film/drama. Every single class has made a short movie (Molly’s class did “Snow White and the 15 Dwarfs”) complete with casting, storyboards, acting and editing, and culminating with a movie premiere in town. A real cinema was hired, they all dressed up and walked up the red carpet and the movies were shown on the big screen. Lots of fun and excitement all round.

Meanwhile Jake has spent over 50% of this month on various holidays, oops sorry I mean business trips around the country, and we are all missing him a lot. 

Other than that, we're very focussed now on house hunting in every spare minute we get, and have been encouraged by all the new listings suddenly appearing now it's Spring. We have our eye on one in particular - but unfortunately we know that a few other people do as well! Still, there are lots of very lovely properties coming up at the moment so we are hoping we'll have some good news soon.  

The Day We Met The All Blacks

There aren’t many people out there who haven’t already heard all about the amazing weekend we’ve just had with the All Blacks. But it’s got to go down on this blog anyway!

Last week, I entered an online competition with Air New Zealand. I wasn’t really expecting to win – but on Wednesday afternoon I got a phone call from a lovely guy at Air NZ who began to tell me the good news while I was trying to restrain Alfie, who was attempting to eat the entire food cupboard right before his dinner.

The Air NZ man was very patient with me, even though my conversation jumped backwards and forwards between him and Alfie, but he basically told me we’d be going to the rugby on Saturday and meeting the All Blacks on Sunday!

Our prize started off on Saturday night with four tickets to the All Blacks v Argentina game at the Westpac Stadium. It was the kids’ first time at the rugby and quite a poignant game for us (considering Alfie’s place of birth).

We managed to persuade him out of his favourite Argentina soccer shirt for the night (disclaimer: he is too young to understand the politics and only likes it because he likes the yellow sun on their flag) and into a lot of warm, waterproof layers. 

New Zealand's spring weather is renowned for being quite  unpredictable: for the last couple of weeks we’ve been basking in sunshine, but all of a sudden this weekend a violent storm came crashing in with winds of up to 140kph and torrential rain. Not the best weather for the players to give their best, but Air NZ came up with brilliant seats for us and we were some of the lucky ones under cover, protected from the worst of it.

However a surprise power cut half way through the game put the stadium into darkness for a few minutes, and had Alfie completely spooked and wanting to go home.

Meanwhile Molly surprised us by fully embracing the game, chanting “All Blacks clap clap clap...” at the top of her voice, enthusiastically joining in the Mexican waves, and giving out an almighty scream when Cory Jane scored a try (my ears are still ringing).

Anyway, after a very late night and a bit of a lie-in the next morning we got ready to go and meet the team! 

Excitement would be an understatement! The kids spent AGES choosing a pretty dress for Molly to wear and then spiking Alfie’s hair up so that it matched Richie McCaw’s! (They used up so much hair gel that it's still not all out, 3 showers and one swimming lesson later!)

When we were finally introduced to the team, I had to try extremely hard not to become like the man in the Mastercard advert and I forced myself to act dignified and restrained when I shook hands with Dan Carter and Richie! (I think I managed ok, but my heart nearly stopped!) 

We then got on the plane and flew down to Dunedin with the team! After a very shy start, Molly and Alfie took a great shining to Israel Dagg and Ben Smith and regaled them with tales of gymnastics and school and DS games and Barbie dolls and other such important stuff.  

Anyway, a huge thank you to Air NZ and the All Blacks. You've given two children some amazing memories (and for me and Jake too!). We had a great time at the game, and you guys were awesome on Sunday as well. Can we do it again soon please?! 

You Know You Have Young Children In The House When...

• The laundry basket is constantly overflowing. The washing machine is on every day. The job is never finished.
  
• Your best, most expensive, high heeled shoes only come out when your daughter has friends round and they decide to play dress-ups with them.
  
• You realise you haven’t worn nice clothes or high heels for several years (with the exception of our wedding last February).In fact you pretty much live in trainers or gum boots now, and it’s a truly exciting day when the ballet flats or boots come out of the wardrobe.
  
• The same goes for handbags. I used to have heaps of pretty handbags. Now I carry a humungous sack like thing filled with spare clothes, water bottles, snacks, more snacks, tissues, toys, a toilet roll, etc, etc. 
•  Your kitchen cupboards are full of fruit roll-ups, little boxes of raisins and kid-sized packs of crackers & cheese dip, six different bottles of food colouring, and a truckload of different varieties of cake decorations and sprinkles. I never had this stuff BK (before kids), and can think of plenty of better things I’d prefer to fill the cupboards up with!
• Your toothpaste tube has a permanently congealed, sticky blob of toothpaste at the top. 
• You realise you are probably playing a key role in keeping New Zealand’s dairy farmers in business (we go through 6 litres of milk and who knows how much cheese and yoghurt each week). 
• The kitchen floor is NEVER clean, despite sweeping and mopping several times a day.
•  If you want a relaxing bath you have to clear a trillion toys, water bottles, bubble makers, funnels, etc out of the way first. 
• You can’t remember the last time you went to the toilet on your own. 

This is what real life is like in our household. But it's worth it of course, because they are gorgeous!!! 

“We’re Going On A Bug Hunt and We’re Not Scared...”

"Uh Oh....A Weta Hole!" 

Alfie and I went on a bug hunt today!

Thanks to the help of a very lovely gardener at Otari Wilton Bush we learnt all about how to recognise Mahoe (Whitey Wood) trees and how to spot weta holes in them.

Alfie of course thought this was a fantastic activity and spent the best part of two hours searching for weta holes, all the while hoping very hard that he’d find a real weta. 

Thankfully we saw none. Alfie was gutted but I was secretly relieved as wetas actually scare me more than the Redback spiders we used to find in Alice Springs!

However, we did forage around in the mulch and mud a lot, looking for fungi and little bugs and worms, and we managed to collect a number of fallen fern leaves and a dead caterpillar (all of which were returned to the bush when we left). We had endless games of Pooh Sticks on the bridges across the stream and managed to complete one of the walking tracks with almost no complaining from Alfie. 

It's a bit of a secret little corner of Wellington, but Wilton Bush is starting to become one of our favourite places in Wellington: it has amazing plants and trees, heaps of native birds, barbeque areas, good walking tracks - and lots of bugs! 

Countdown to Spring

The winter weather is just about hanging in there - we’ve just had a very blustery few days – but we’re all very aware now that Spring is just around the corner now (just a week away, officially).

I recently managed to win meal for two at one of our favourite south coast cafes (The Bach Cafe), so we went for a very luxurious, cozy Sunday lunch yesterday, and then spent the rest of the afternoon at Lyall Bay, where the beach was empty and the waves crashed in and the wind blew sand in our eyes and we were reminded a little of the old days at Surf Bay...

But it’s almost September, the daffodils and hyacinths are out in the garden and the evenings are lighter for longer. Molly is as busy as ever and Alfie is permanently outside on the deck with the hosepipe and a large bucket of water. 

Meanwhile, Spring being so near means house hunting season is about to begin again. During the winter hardly any new houses are put on the market, with people preferring to sell during the drier, sunnier months when their homes look more appealing. Not that it's stopped us: since March I've viewed 64 houses (with my 65th viewing due tomorrow). 

This is our 3^rd time purchasing a house but it’s proving to be the most difficult. Perhaps it’s because we’ve become more fussy over the years, and there are now 4 people’s needs to consider (both our previous house purchases were made pre-children).

Or perhaps it’s just Wellington’s unique market. Wellington is a small city so there’s not as much choice (our previous homes were bought in Auckland and London). Only a handful of suitable houses are listed each month. 

Each property is individual and unique so it’s hard to compare prices – unlike London where there were whole streets (if not entire suburbs) full of terraced Victorian flat conversions, all identical and all similarly priced. In fact more often than not there is no price here - auctions and tenders are popular selling methods instead.

And just to make things super tricky there’s the city’s topography to consider. So many houses here are on the wrong side of the mountain or road and hardly see the sun, and it's so difficult to tell which houses they are when you're on a 15 minute viewing.  Thank goodness for iPhone apps: we're using a great one which tells us exactly where the sun rises and sets in relation to the property we're looking at. 

We're all looking forward to the day when we can move. There's certain things you can't do in rental accommodation. The kids are desperate to plant strawberries and get a pet. I am desperate to buy new furniture and hang our paintings up, and Jake is just desperate to stop paying rent / somebody else's mortgage. 

Wish us luck - it's got to happen soon! 

Working Hard (well, some of us are!)

We sometimes go through periods when Molly has quite a significant level of homework (for a 6 year old, anyway) to fit into a regular week. This term we're having one of those periods.

Once you factor in a couple of after school activities and some rest time, plus allow a bit of time for playdates, it starts to become a real challenge to fit in all the spelling, writing, reading and news preparation each week.

(Especially when you have an attention-demanding 4 year old in the house whose main goal in life is to distract his sister).

Last week's news topic was to perform a song or a dance for the class and Molly spent roughly 3 or 4 hours - at least! - practising in total. 

This was mainly due to the fact that she kept changing her mind about what to do. After starting off the week by learning the dance to "Hoedown Showdown" from Hannah Montana she decided it was too fast and after a lot of frustration on her (and my) part she then changed the plan to choreographing and rehearsing a dance to "Everybody Walk The Dinosaur". 

Then, at the eleventh hour when she realised how hard it was to keep in time to the music for that one, she broke down in tears and eventually decided to sing "Count on Me" by Bruno Mars instead. Which involved a lot of time learning all the words. 

Thank goodness this week's news topic is simply to talk about your two favourite places in Wellington - although currently Molly has a list of eight places to talk about so I'm expecting more dramas over the next few days. 

(For the record, these are: Makara Beach, Nairnville Park, scootering on the waterfront, the Sunday food markets, The Beehive, Frank Kitts Underground Market, Te Papa Museum and Raumati Beach). 

Meanwhile I am loving the fact that we’ve now got WiFi in the house so I can finally move my workspace out of our small, dark, cold, uninspiring study and mix it up around the house instead. I work so much better when I have natural light, warmth and big windows near me. I have some lovely clients at the moment and I’m sure they’re benefiting from my moves!

But when it comes to mixing up your working environment Jake definitely wins the family prize. His job frequently seems to involve hardly any time sitting behind a desk in the office and plenty of time outdoors instead doing the kind of stuff the rest of us can only dream of. 

His last few months at work have included helicoptering around the mountains in the South Island, hiking three of the famous "Great Walks", a total immersion week on a Marae learning the Maori language and protocol, attending team meetings at the Monkey House in Wellington Zoo .... and more. I won't go on, except to say that the rest of the family are insanely jealous! 

A very special corner of Wellington

And THIS is why Wellington is such a lovely capital city.

Makara Beach. Where else in the world could you find somewhere quite so special, and so rural and remote right in the heart of a capital city? 

Makara Beach is a tiny suburb in a rugged and wild patch of Wellington, right on the shore of the Tasman Sea. 


It's not a long drive to get there, but literally within 5 or 10 minutes of leaving our house you feel about as far away from a big city as it's possible to feel. 


The drive winds through farmland and valleys, with fields of cows, horses, ducks and of course the lovely native pukekos...until eventually you get to the very end of the road and see this:


Just stunning!


There's a spectacular 6km walking track at Makara which takes you up and over the clifftops, past an old Maori pa site and some old WWII gun emplacements. 


However, after a late night on Saturday night we were all feeling quite sleepy (and full of colds) yesterday so we decided to take it easy. 


A sunny day spent rock-pooling down by the sea was just what the doctor ordered!  We wandered around the shoreline, clambered up and down rocks and boulders, collected crabs and water snails, pebbles and paua shells in our buckets and took turns snoozing in the sun. 

And when we'd finished, we went for hot chocolates & ice creams at the local cafe, the perfect way to end a day at the beach! 

Winter Sun

July has been ticking along rather nicely here in Wellington, with a blast of what could almost be described as summer weather in the middle of winter to keep us going. We’ve had plenty of sunshine, and even a few afternoons where no jackets have been required!

We all love being outdoors, and the sunshine has allowed the kids plenty of playpark time, me plenty of mountain & walking time and Jake plenty of cycling & running time (although still probably not as much as he’d like!)

I’ll never tire of the views around our suburb – even just walking around the streets it’s breathtaking, and it’s even better from the nearby mountains. I went for a hike early this morning hoping to see snow on the South Island mountain tops in the distance, but there was none. Just blue and  green as far as the eye could see. 

In the meantime, Molly has been a very busy performer this month. The school choir (which she's in) did a performance at Assembly last week (they performed Kiwi classic "Six Months in a Leaky Boat", very cute). And next week her class are doing a singing assembly too so she will be performing again - although this time there are no Kiwi classics and I suspect a Bruno Mars track might be making an appearance but we'll see. Not only that but she's still in the Kapa Haka group and practises with them every Thursday - and if that's not enough, ballet has stepped up a notch as she'll be taking her Grade 1 soon, so there's lots of Hungarian Folk Dancing and barre-ing and chasse-ing going on too. It's no wonder her eyes shut as soon as her head hits the pillow these days! 

Another visit to Himatangi Beach

This post is dedicated to a certain member of the family back in England who, on hearing that we had spent the last few days relaxing up at Himatangi Beach, declared that it sounded exceedingly boring.

Here I will prove him wrong!

Himatangi is a very small village of about 450 houses (about 60% are permanent homes and 40% are baches, or holiday homes). It's about 2 hours drive north from Wellington, up the west coast - just a bit further north from where we got married.

Going there is like a proper blast from the past – there’s no flashy houses, boutique clothes stores and sophisticated coffee bars. Instead most of the properties are basic 1970’s baches and there’s no shops except a dairy*.

In fact, in general, there’s not much of the modern world at all and it’s really quite refreshing. There are no distractions and you make your own entertainment.

So, what do people do at Himatangi Beach? Well, I can't speak for everyone, but this is what we did:

- The beach is very long and at this time of year it’s wild and covered in masses of driftwood. So on the first day we built a teepee out of driftwood. This became our daytime base for the rest of our holiday, and we kept returning to it and adding bits, like a path and a pretend campfire outside.

- The beach was also the perfect spot for lots games of tag and stuck in the mud, long walks and runs. (Other people ride quad bikes or horses on it, or go fishing),

- The dairy sells great thickshakes, coffee and freshly baked scones - perfect for when you need something to pick you up after too many games of tag!

- The kids' playpark is BRILLIANT, especially considering the small size of the village. As well as all the usual stuff, there's a skateboard park (Alfie was lethal on his scooter!), plenty of trees to climb and a BMX track that had Jake pining for his younger days.

- Then there's the Cossie Club (Cosmopolitan Fishing & Boating Club), which is open for dinner 3 evenings a week and is a great place to take the family when you want a break from the cooking and cleaning up. The beef stroganoff was yum - and cheaper than I could have made it myself - and the sofa area with Kids' TV means the adults get to enjoy a couple of beers in peace & quiet.

- Victa the Reindeer. We were delighted to find him still living in his garden on Himatangi Street. He just loves to be fed your food scraps and he gave us endless hours of entertainment after every meal!

- Finally, because it's winter, we also just hung out a lot at the cosy bach we'd rented, sometimes reading books in front of the wood burning stove, sometimes playing rugby or cricket in the huge garden, and sometimes drinking wine in front of a DVD.

So, all in all, a classic Kiwi winter bach holiday (and definitely not boring!).

*In New Zealand, the "dairy" is a small corner store, a little bit like the convenience store in the UK or an American milk bar. It stocks basics like milk and bread, as well as newspapers, ice creams & milkshakes.

Adventures in the City - woolly mammoths, pies and five dollar notes

It’s week 2 of the school holidays and I think I’ve well and truly worn the kids out already.

We started off on Monday with a big trip into the city, as I had discount vouchers for Reading Cinema on Courtenay Place. It was Alfie’s first time at the movies – I’ve never been sure in the past whether he’d be able to sit still long enough or be quiet for long enough. But he’s been extremely hyped up about today for ages, and had been telling everyone in sight that he was going to see Ice Age 4 on Monday.

So the day comes and we finally walk into the dark theatre and within 3 steps Alfie stops in his tracks and says “Mum I’m scared”. I cajole him in to his seat and all the way through the movie he repeats “I’m scared, can we go home now” approximately every 2 minutes. Hats off to him though – he still managed to stay in his chair for the whole film.

(Molly and I enjoyed it though – it’s a great movie!)

Afterwards, we went to meet Jake for lunch, where Alfie suddenly completely forgot how scared he’d been and proudly boasted to Dad how he’d been to see Ice Age 4.

Whenever we meet Jake from work for lunch we always go to a cheap local pie cafe. For some reason it’s Molly’s favourite lunch venue (apart from sushi). And Jake and I don’t mind it either - they may be completely and utterly unhealthy, but you can’t beat New Zealand pies. So we hung out in the armchairs eating and chatting for a while. And this is where things went wrong...

While we were sitting there, Jake gave the kids some holiday spending money, $5 each. This is more than our children have ever been given to spend in their lives (usually it’s the occasional $2 to go to the dollar shop with!) and in hindsight it was a bit overwhelming for our Molly!

Alfie spent his money quickly, choosing a rocket ship folder to put all his artwork in. Molly however appears to take after her father when it comes to making decisions.

We spent the next 2 hours walking up and down Lambton Quay and visiting the same 3 jewellery/accessories shops over and over again. I never want to see any more clip on earrings, friendship necklaces, hair bands, etc in my life!

Molly absolutely could not decide what she wanted to buy. Poor Alfie was dragging his feet up and down the road, and only broke down after the 4^th time at Equip “Mum, why does Molly want to go in here AGAIN??”

Once I’d fed and watered him, and calmed him down, Molly then had a meltdown and there were tears everywhere as she poured her heart out about how she couldn’t choose what to buy and didn’t want to go home without spending her money from dad.

Alfie acted great as big brother and quickly draped his arm around her, saying “It’s ok, Moll-Woll, I’ll help you choose”, wiping her tears away – so sweet!

But it was clear that we’d over-done our time in the city, so I steered us towards the train station for the ride home – and Molly STILL has that blessed $5 in her purse! 

What an awesome weekend!

Wellington sure put the weather on for us this weekend, and it’s been a little piece of what the doctor ordered for all of us!

We spent most of yesterday up at Lindale Farm on the Kapiti Coast, feeding all their animals. Molly, Alfie and I were super excited and squealed every time an animal slobbered all over our hands (me and Molly), stuck its tongue out to grab food (me, Alfie and Molly) or ate our arm instead of the food (Alfie).

Meanwhile Jake acted as the grown up among us and remained cool, calm and collected as the chaos and noise grew louder and louder.

Once we’d cuddled and fed a collection of lambs, sheep, rabbits, piglets, cows, donkeys, goats, llamas, rats and other assorted animals (some of which we weren’t even sure what they were!), we grabbed a Japanese curry from a nearby foodstall and sat in the sun and watched some Taiko drummers performing outside. If you’ve never seen this ancient Japanese drumming before, then look out for it – we were all transfixed and it’s AMAZING!

After several hours we made our way back home for the last of Molly’s school holiday swimming lessons. 

Our little superstar made us SO proud when she graduated from her current level after just one week (it normally takes a lot longer at this level). She picked it up so quickly, and I’m sure it’s partly because we did it during the holidays when she had more brain space available, rather than after school. She was very proud too, and insisted on a photo outside the swim school with her ribbon and prize lolly!

This morning we took Alfie to yet another birthday party and then Jake, Molly and I had some very special time together. It's not often it's just the three of us these days, and when it is Molly keeps us so entertained by her constant chatter and observations on life. We enjoyed a lovely relaxing time out at Ohariu Valley, looking at horses and watching eels in the stream.

I also managed to squeeze in a beautiful walk this weekend. Just me and my iPod. I just went up and down the streets in our suburb this time (rather than my usual mountain hikes), watching the sun set and the sailing boats in the harbour. We do live in a very beautiful place. 

Winter School Holidays

Well, it's the winter holidays again and we're well into the swing of things! Last year we all spent the winter holidays in bed with a serious case of the flu, so it's been great to be able to enjoy our time together this year.

We did get off to a shaky start when on Day 2 there was a magnitude 7 earthquake not far from Wellington – it hit us just as I was going to bed and consequently I hardly got any sleep that night and Day 3 was a bit of a write off for me! The quake was quite deep but it was still the scariest and largest one I’ve been in so far and not something I enjoyed at all. Our house was ok and luckily there’s not been any real damage to anything (just reports of things like tea bags and painkillers falling off the supermarket shelves, and I do know of at least one father who was clutching at his flat screen TV set while he watched the cricket during the shaking rather than looking after his kids, but at least the TV was ok!)

Anyway, after a super hectic Term 2 at school, we decided to keep this week fairly simple and relaxing, but we’re on Day 4 now and we’ve packed a lot in already...

We've barbequed our lunch in Otari-Wilton bush, then explored a bit - and got very muddy! I love how Australia and NZ have free gas barbeques in their reserves and public parks. We used to do it in Australia all the time and it was great to reinstate the tradition here.

Molly’s been on a school holiday swimming programme so she’s been at the pool every afternoon learning how to stick her bottom up and down (the beginnings of butterfly stroke apparently!)

We’ve been to see a show by BJ Bear (yes unfortunately that really is his name, but the kids LOVED him).

We’ve been to several playparks (of course!) and for fluffies at our favourite local cafe.

We’ve had friends over for playdates.

We’ve had long arts & crafts sessions at home with playdough, beads, scissors, pens, etc (not all at once!).

We've baked - we made alien cupcakes! 

Looking forward to the rest of the holidays now!