Summer School Holidays

I love school holidays. I love hanging out with the kids, abandoning our normal routines, doing whatever we want, whenever we want - even if it means I then have to work until midnight each night!

But the difference between school summer holidays in New Zealand and summer holidays in the UK is that here in NZ we have Christmas in the middle. By the time school's broken up and you've had the lead-up to Christmas, then Christmas itself, then you go away for a couple of weeks for a summer holiday....well, you get back and you realise there's only a couple of weeks left of the school holidays. There's only a few days now until the start of term.

The UK school holidays used to stretch on forever. I feel kind of cheated!

Anyway, here's a little bit of what we've been up to...

Both kids have been in Swim School during the holidays. We often do these, and because they're such intensive courses the kids learn heaps. It also wears them out and means they're happy to do quiet stuff for a couple of hours afterwards, which means I get some work done during the daytime, which saves me burning the candle too late at night for which I am truly thankful!

Of course, there's been plenty of playpark time too, as always...

Back at home, Molly's taught her brother to skip...

The kids have been so into painting this summer and we've had the paint set out most days. One day they made painted stone signs for virtually every plant in the garden (not all spelt very well though!)...

Often they've been content to just sit inside doing arts & crafts...so sweet. They get story CDs from the library to listen to while they paint, and they beaver away for hours while I work. 

Unfortunately Molly's Alopecia hasn't been great lately, and the bald patches have been prone to sunburn, so last week we went shopping for a new sunhat...

Luckily she loves it, wears it everywhere, and often gets comments from random strangers about how much they like it - and I think it really suits her too!

January's given us a very mixed bag of weather this year, but when it's become too hot we've had plenty of water fights and sprinkler sessions in the garden...

And we've often cooled off in the local outdoor pool (which is situated at the bottom of the mountain mostly in the shade, and is unheated!)...

On cooler days we've been into the city, met Jake for lunch, pottered around the waterfront collecting water snails...

And we've spent endless hours at Te Papa, our national museum...

I love that during school holidays, normal routine goes out of the window. Meals happen just whenever we're hungry (what I mean by that is whenever Alfie gets hungry, as he's always first). Lunches take place while we're out for the day or just outside in our back garden, any time we feel like it...

One of Molly's favourite pastimes - chatting to one of her friends on the phone for hours...

And finally, of course, we've hung out at the beach..... so sad it's nearly over :( roll on the next holidays!