Back to school 2015

So the kids went back to school yesterday. This means Molly's now in Year 5 and Alfie's in Year 3. How on earth did this happen so fast??

Anyway, their first day seemed to go well, with the exception of a slight drama after school as Molly hadn't listened to where we would meet, went to the wrong place, got lost for 30 minutes and eventually was found by a teacher wandering the streets and was sent back to school. It took a very long time to calm her down.

Other than that, this is what I've managed to find out about their first day...

Molly:
Her class played a game outside all afternoon which involved werewolves.
She ate her friend's popcorn at lunchtime and left all her own food. The entire lunch came home.
She made a name badge for her cubby hole but doesn't have a cubby hole yet.
Practised the Haka with her syndicate. 
She gave all her party invitations out but lost one.

Alfie:
His class played cricket against another class.
At lunchtime he played soccer and grazed his arm. His friend grazed his hand and his other friend smashed his glasses.
After lunch he went to his old classroom because he forgot he'd changed. By the time he remembered and went to the right place, his new class had gone somewhere else. But it was ok because he eventually found everyone in Room 16.
He wrote a poem about himself which included the line "I am the son of Jake and Wendy".
He did some graphs which were easy.

The Rest of the School Holidays

So after our amazing trip away, we still had 3 weeks left of the school holidays. We're almost at the end of them now and it's quite sad :( We've had so much fun!

Here's a little bit of what we've done in the last 3 weeks.....

Alfie spent a week on an intensive soccer camp. This coincided with the start of a heatwave, so he basically spent hours each day running around in the hot sun and by the end of the week he was a walking disaster. But he loved it.

The following week, both children did a week of intensive swimming club. (We do believe in working them hard during the holidays!). As they're both at the same level, they were in the same little group and a lot of giggling went on. But they worked extremely hard and progressed massively. This level includes regular "10 minute challenges" where they have the goal of swimming 20 lengths in 10 minutes. Both have reached 19 lengths and just have to speed up a teeny bit more to get that last one in!

While they've been doing all these activities I've been enjoying the incredible opportunities that modern technology provides by working poolside, working soccer pitch side, working in the park, etc - these days I can just log on from anywhere, it's great!

But if our school holidays sound like too much sport and hard work, don't fret. We have had a lot of playtime too. The water slide has been out more times than I could possibly count, and most of the neighbourhood kids have had a go. Actually so have Jake and I. 

And as if we haven't had enough swimming lesson time, we've also spent countless hours at the Khandallah open air pool. We are SO VERY lucky to have this on our doorstep. At $1.50 per child, it has got to be one of the best possible ways to spend a day during the summer holidays (after the beach, which of course is free). Whenever we go, we seem to know 75% of the other people there, so the kids have instant playmates to swim with (if you're Alfie) or to jump off the diving board with a couple of times and then go and gossip for 6 hours on the sundeck (if you're Molly).

While we've been playing in the sun, Jake's been back at the office :( But we've kept him going with regular lunchtime visits. We sometimes take him to the nearest beach for a picnic and a swim...

And we also took him rock pooling to collect sea anemones...

We LOVE that we can just pop out at lunchtime to do this stuff!  Wellington is amazing.

Because it's been so hot, we've been able to persuade the children that washing the car is a great cooling-off activity ;) And they've actually really enjoyed it (although the car remains very smeary). Signs have been put up all along the fence offering $2 car washes to help raise money for the SPCA, but so far I'm the only person who's taken them up on the offer. (And I've forgotten to pay my $2!)

Also because it's been so hot, we've had lots of late nights as it's just too hard to get to sleep otherwise. One evening we went for a walk around our local streets and while we were walking we came across an abandoned tyre. Alfie decided to roll it all the way home - it took us a long while, but it was worth it because we've tied it up to our Pohutakawa tree with a piece of rope and, hey presto we have a garden swing again!

As usual, we've also spent a lot of time at Khandallah Park over the holidays. It's such a great spot for a picnic, a play, a game of cricket, and a paddle in the stream where the kids always manage to catch a few crayfish (with their hands).

During quieter moments, Molly has been working hard on a piece of fiction for a junior writing competition. The basic rules are that it has to be under 1000 words (this was hard for Molly and we had to do a lot of editing!) and it had to be connected to the ocean. Molly's story involved a dad who murdered the mum by blowing up her boat with a piece of dynamite, leaving the only daughter to be sent to an orphanage where her daily job was to dive for oysters. Interesting ?!The winner will be announced later this month so we'll wait to see what the judges thought! ;)

And other than that, we've done all our usual holiday activities....biking to the cafe, endless hours at playparks, playdates, arts & crafts, and generally making a mess all over the house!

So overall, a great school holidays and we will all be very sad to see it end....

More camping

We got back from our holiday in mid-January and to be honest we had to completely drag ourselves back to work - both of us were suffering from serious post-holiday blues!

After a week of work, we still hadn't properly unpacked our bags or put away the tent, so when it got to the weekend we decided to tackle it. It just took us one look at the tent (still laid out in the lounge room) and a split second to make the easy decision between putting it all away or putting it back in the car and shooting off for the weekend!

Kaitoke Regional Park is less than an hour's drive from Wellington. It's only $6 a night to stay there and they don't take bookings because there's always space. So you pop your tent up in the bush or next to the river and just relax. Ahhhhhhh.....bliss.  We were happy again!

The creeks and rivers that go through Kaitoke provides plenty of playing opportunities - for all ages. There are shallow parts, good for paddling, balancing, and moving rocks around....

...and there are also deeper parts with swimming holes and bridges to jump off. It's cold, but who cares on a hot day? (OK, I admit it. I'm the only person in the family who didn't actually swim and only got in up to my knees - it was too cold for me, but then I am known for being a bit of a wuss!)

When we weren't getting wet,  Jake and I got stuck back into our books while Molly and Alfie cycled around for approximately 18 hours every day.

And when they got too hot from biking, there was always a river to wade back into for a while!  

Kaitoke may be a regional park, rather than a commercial campsite, but the facilities there are really good. There are flush toilets, clean tap water, and even a coverd barbeque area with picnic tables. So we ate well! 

After dinner, Molly sat up a tree reading (it was the only place she could get away from Alfie apparently).

But they love each other really! It's quite incredible that this summer they've been with each other almost all day every day and after 5 weeks they're still the best of friends. Awww xxx

Summer Holiday Part 3: Camping in Motueka

After we finished walking the Abel Tasman Track, we headed over to Motueka for a week's camping.  Motueka is the land of sun and fruit orchards....

Our campsite was AMAZING! Just what the doctor ordered after 3 days of walking. We had a nice shady spot with plenty of space to sit outside and read, or play swing tennis....

Plenty of space to play cricket too....

But we didn't just need to make our own games, as the campsite had some excellent facilities. The kids spent one morning cycling all over the place on these excellent fun bikes....

There was also a GREAT swimming pool, complete with water slide and climbing wall...this was very well used during our stay!

Every night, the campsite put on movies for all the kids. It was very strange to have our kids go out in the evenings for a couple of hours - we'd be in our PJ's at 10pm looking at our watches and waiting for them to come home!! ;)

There was also a giant jumping pillow. I love those things. (Jake & I even had a few goes!)

Unfortunately during the week Molly became unwell with a suspected flu or ear infection (or perhaps both?) which wiped her out with a high fever for a few days. All she could do was sleep and read :( 

And read a bit more....(she got through nearly a whole Harry Potter book in 3 days!)

But towards the end of the week she perked up again, and managed to have fun. We went boysenberry picking one day - between us all we picked 1 kg and ate approximately 4 kgs!

 And we went kayaking...where the kids saw a stingray!

We had fresh fruit ice creams from the local orchards...

We all played in the swimming pool some more....and some more.....and some more!

The kids jumped in as many times as they could!

We went to beaches and paddled around - and went swimming in the ocean too.

We read books on the beach (and Jake played with his emails)....

And generally just had a really really lovely time. Happy Holidays everyone!

Summer Holiday Part 2: The Abel Tasman Track

Straight after we left Jenny and Wayne in the Marlborough Sounds, we headed east to do the Abel Tasman Track.

The Abel Tasman is one of New Zealand's nine "Great Walks". It takes 3 to 5 days to walk the length of it, and along the way you can either camp or stay in DOC huts. As Great Walks go, it is relatively easy - the area enjoys some of NZ's best weather conditions (so although we took our wet/cold weather gear with us, we didn't use it). Plus it only elevates to 200-300m (whereas some of the other Great Walks go really high into the mountains) and it takes you mostly along stunning coastline and onto plenty of beaches so it's easy to take a dip in the water to cool off if (or when) you need to.

We cheated a little and took a water taxi in on the first day, so missing out the first 4 hours of the walk (!). The water taxi was great fun, a scenic cruise in itself, and after a bit of a walk and a play on a stunning beach, we arrived at Anchorage Hut, our first stop for the night.

Pretty flashy huh? DOC does such an amazing job of building and maintaining their huts - they're all in very remote locations and it's just brilliant that we get use of them.

That night, while Alfie played soccer with some other kids and Jake & Molly got stuck into their books, I managed an evening stroll along the beach - just stunning....

The Anchorage Hut sleeps 34 people in basic bunk rooms, and on the night we were there there was a big family/friends group of 22 parents and teenagers who were very nice, but stayed up playing noisy games until 10pm.

Consequently we set off on Day 2 for a 17km walk in 30 degree heat with two kids who were already exceedingly tired.

But we managed to persuade them to keep going, mostly by taking regular stops to eat and to dip our toes in the water...

We also stopped at Cleopatras Pool for ages, a gorgeous rock pool where the water was freezing and we didn't care because we were so hot and sweaty!

After 7 hours of walking and stopping and paddling and eating, we FINALLY reached Bark Bay hut, our destination for night 2. Yay!

Bark Bay is an amazing little spot and in hindsight we wished we'd booked 2 nights here. It's set on a beautiful estuary which allowed endless hours of crab and mud-snail hunting, with two rivers that flow into the sea. The freshwater rivers were great for paddling in (we had no worries with salt water stinging Alfie's eczema) - and great for catching more crabs in too!

By the end of our explorations the kids were just about wiped out. A bowl of rice cooked on our little gas stove helped a little bit (the huts have no cooking facilities so you need to carry all your own gear) .

The food gave us just enough energy to manage an evening stroll along the beach before we all collapsed into our bunks for a big sleep. (Some of us slept so heavily that night that we were completely unaware of someone else's child vomiting all night in the bed next to us!)

The next day was our third, and last, day of walking the track. For a track that goes around the coastline instead of high into the mountains, it included a seriously long uphill climb to start the day!

It was also a little scarey in places!

But we made it to Tonga Quarry just in time to eat lunch and have a play on the beach....

 .....and then catch the afternoon water taxi back to Kaiteriteri, all ready for Part 3 of our summer holiday!

We LOVED you, Abel Tasman Track, and we will definitely be back for more one day!