Queen's Birthday Weekend

While our friends and rellies over in England have, by the looks of things, been wildly celebrating the Queen’s Jubilee this weekend, it’s a little ironic that here in New Zealand we always have a public holiday on the first Monday in June every year.

Officially it’s supposed to be for “celebrating” the Queen’s birthday, but truthfully we don’t really celebrate the Queen’s birthday –all the shops use it as an excuse for Queens Birthday Weekend Sales, and the rest of us all just enjoy an extra day off work!

Still, in honour of the Queen’s Jubilee and to honour our British roots, we decided to spend a bit of time this weekend trying to teach the kids a little of what the royal family is all about. We got as far as making paper crowns and decorating red, white & blue cupcakes and then it all deteriorated as they started to argue about whether to go out on their scooters or watch a Ben 10 DVD.

The scooters won and we spent a very lovely sunny afternoon yesterday on Wellington waterfront trying not to knock too many pedestrians over (Alfie), as well as digging holes on a beach (for me to fall into).

Queen’s Birthday weekend is always at the very beginning of winter, and is the last public holiday we have in NZ until spring. We were lucky with the weather this weekend but the South Island is forecast to get snow this week and it looks like the North Island is in for a temperature drop as well, so I took advantage of the Queens Birthday Weekend sales and bought myself a new puffer jacket which is so puffy I actually feel like I'm  wearing a sleeping bag - here's hoping I will feel warm this winter!