The Beach

Alfie’s now all crusted over and theoretically no longer contagious, so we finally ventured outside the house again today.

After a morning hike up Mt Kau Kau, we ended up at Paekakariki and had an afternoon of great adventures on the beach, which will probably become one of my best memories of this Autumn  - although I do think Alfie and I probably appreciated it all a lot more than usual having been locked up for a week.

I just love the Kapiti Coast beaches. They’re all covered in driftwood and shells and backdropped by Norfolk Pine Trees and flax, and there’s always an adventure to be had.

When we arrived today the kids’ faces looked like they’d just arrived in The Land of Do-As-You-Please (as in Enid Blyton’s Enchanted Wood stories, which I have been reading somewhat excessively this week - not my personal choice I must add!).

We discovered a whole stretch of beach completely covered in shells. So they picked out their favourites and very quickly filled their buckets up (as if we don’t already have enough shells floating around the house! )

Meanwhile Jake found a piece of driftwood, got comfy and fell asleep in the sun.

Next they moved up the beach to a gigantic piece of driftwood which they chose to treat as a climbing frame and spent a good couple of hours climbing up it and dangling from it and practising gymnastics on it.

Meanwhile Jake continued his nap...

Eventually the kids decided that the driftwood was a pirate's ship! At this point I was allowed to climb aboard and Alfie and Molly took me on an adventure "around the whole world", looking for baddie pirates. We went to the South Island first, then Alfie wanted to go to the South Pole to see some penguins, then Molly wanted the North Pole to see Santa, followed by Africa to see a giraffe. And finally, Alfie says, “let’s go to Alice Springs!”

No matter that we were in a pirate ship. Apparently it also had wings and could fly like an aeroplane. And then we landed and it had wheels like a car. Brilliant, we were in Chitty Bang Bang!

As the afternoon drew into early evening Jake woke up just in time to grab a minute on the pirate ship before it was time to head off home. We have two very worn out kids now, snoring peacefully in their beds... 

Chickenpox

It all began last weekend when Jake and I went up to Hawkes Bay for a friend’s wedding while some very kind (and brave) friends in Wellington offered to have Molly and Alfie to stay for the weekend.

The wedding was great but when we got back, the kids were both complaining about itchy mosquito bites. We put it down to the fact that they’d played outside for most of the weekend, put some toothpaste on the bites and told them to stop moaning.

It turned out Molly’s really were mozzie bites... but Alfie’s were chickenpox spots (oops!)

And there set the tone for the rest of the week. Alfie and I have been in isolation/solitary confinement at home (I’m thinking of painting a white cross on our front door).

Dealing with The Pox is not an easy task when you have a usually-very-active 4 year old – and you still have to get your work done. Still, we are surviving, and I have to give particular thanks to the following for their help:

- The manufacturers of Pinetarsol and Alpha Keri Lotion.

- A huge jar of instant coffee to help me get going after a sleepless night looking after an itchy boy.

- Kids on Four for an hour of kids TV shows each morning – it kept him occupied a bit while I worked.

- Activity Village for their free colouring in/writing/etc printouts which kept him occupied a little bit more while I worked.

- A full week of sunshine – so I could at least do something constructive while I was stuck in the house and get 4 loads of washing done in a day and a load of freezer food baked. 


- The sun also meant we could hang out in the garden making volcanoes and doing fun science experiments! 

- Countdown Supermarkets - I had my first ever experience of online grocery shopping this week. It was bloody expensive but great service and I couldn’t have fed the family without it! 

- Some very great friends who made sure Molly got to and from school and after-school activities, and who did pharmacy runs for me when I needed more Pinetarsol .

-  And on the subject of Molly, she deserves an extra big thank you for being so patient, for making do without a parent at her ballet performance this week, for caring so gently for Alfie, and especially for the letter which she wrote to the fairies and left outside her bedroom door last night. It said:

"To the flower fairies,

I rilly want you to make my little bruv feel better. Cood you help get him better. He has chicken pox. He has got only a littlll bit that’s shoing. I am 6. 

Love Molly.”

Autumn Leaves

There’s been a real Autumn-ey feel to life this week.

Late March in New Zealand is the equivalent season to late September back in the UK where I grew up. I remember it as a time when we’d just started the new school year, a chill in the early morning air, kicking up crunchy, fallen leaves as I walked to school, the trees becoming bare...

Here it’s the same but different.

Our school year started in January/February so we’re nearly at the end of the first term already. The trees remain green – in fact, very green due to the amount of rain we get! – and they will do so all winter. There are very few trees here which will end up with bare branches, which I like.

But there are still some falling leaves around and the kids had a ball this week collecting them and admiring all the colours. Truly beautiful reds, pinks, oranges, yellows, lots of green, and even a few black ones (which delighted Alfie as black is his favourite colour). 

The kitchen table has been covered in leaf rubbings over the last couple of days – it’s Alfie’s new favourite pastime.

In the meantime, we went to a local school gala last week and Molly managed to totally kit herself out for the Autumn/Winter with a complete new wardrobe of second hand clothes (all for $5!).

She just loves choosing what to wear each day from the big pile. Sometimes it matches, sometimes it doesn’t.

Her teacher loves to see what she turns up in each day and has forecast that Molly will one day in the future become one of New Zealand’s best known fashion designers and we’ll all be watching her creations at WOW. 

Pigs/Pegs, Beer/Bear, Sun/Shade - our lives are complicated

We probably owe a few apologies to the people of Wellington today.

Last night we invited everyone to come over and help us polish off the last of the wedding wine. It was a great evening, but it didn’t end until 1am and I know for a fact that there were a lot of sore heads this morning and pharmacies throughout town were in danger of selling out of Nurofen!

Not only that, but we still have 5 cases of wine left (we’ll have to do it again soon then!)

With mild hangovers ourselves, we spent the bulk of today dragging ourselves around open homes as our next project is to buy ourselves a home to live in. Wellington's an interesting place to buy a house in. The topography of the city means you have to take a lot of time to work out how the sun moves around the mountains and whether you'll get any or not. And if you are going to get the sun, will it be during a time of day when you're all out of the house, or will you get the afternoon/evening sun? 

In our local area, your house is also fairly likely to be built into the side of the mountains and any land you have is therefore likely to be quite steep. Not always useful for kicking a soccer ball around or riding a bike. 

Anyway, four houses later and we were already feeling a little despondent as we quickly realised the type of house we are aiming for is going to be about $200k-300k over our budget. It could soon be time to revise our expectations and plans!

Changing the subject, we are still struggling to understand our little boy’s Kiwi accent. This morning’s desperate cries of “I want my beer! Where’s my beer? Dadder, I can’t find my beer” initially created great shock for Jake and I, but we were later relieved to discover that he isn’t a 4 year old alcoholic after all. He just wanted his teddy “beer”.

This followed last week’s earnest explanation by Molly to Alfie that bacon is made out of pigs. “Real pigs?”, asks Alfie. “Really? Like the sort of clothes pigs you hang the washing out on the line with?”

It’s a cute accent, but we’ve got some serious misunderstandings going on in our house at the moment! 

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!