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...