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!