Just some stuff

From recent posts it might sound like it's all been drama and calamity around here. But normal life has to carry on around it all. So here's some of the ordinary stuff that's been happening lately...

It was crazy hair day at school, and Molly proved that you don't need to have hair to join in on crazy hair day.

Then there was the school disco - and I somehow ended up hosting a pre-disco party here for 6 kids. The girls got ready together and had dinner together, listened to music and talked incessantly about make-up and boys. Well, to be fair, only one of them actually had any real interest in boys (and it wasn't Molly, thank goodness!) - the others just did lots of giggling and plotting and "gross" noises. Jake and I found it very entertaining! ;)

The next day was Molly's annual piano concert. She played a piece called Shadow Dance, which was a fairly challenging piece with lots of crossing over hands and staccato chords. She did really well! Alfie was still fairly soporific from his hurting leg and consequently managed to sit still and listen to the entire concert without any noise (apart from when he dropped his crutches loudly).

Last weekend, we held another of our Wellopecia get-togethers.

Wellopecia is the name of the alopecia group we've set up for the Wellington region. It started with just 3 mums who have children with alopecia and we've expanded it now so the group's much bigger and includes adults with alopecia as well.

It's all about just getting together socially for some
subtle support and also to normalise alopecia for the kids and their families by exposing them to others with the same condition.

It's a nice group, and we've done some nice things so far. This time we pulled some strings with Jake who got us a private tour of some of the film props at Weta Workshop. Lots of fun!

Tonight was Parents Night at ballet, so we got to see everything they've prepared so far for Grade 3. The exam's later this year and they've definitely all still got a lot of work to do, but they've come a long way and I was impressed!

I would however like to point out here that I do invest a considerable sum of money on the proper ballet uniform every year and I do go to the correct efforts twice a week to ensure said uniform is in her ballet bag. But by the time Molly gets to class she adds to/removes/adapts every item of the uniform so that she looks like she's not wearing one.

Other than that, we've had a simply gorgeous wintery June with plenty of blue sky and sunshine, with crisp mornings and sunny daytimes. So we've been outside lots enjoying our lovely city. This has included rolling around on sand dunes....

and it's included hanging out lots on our lovely city centre waterfront...

....and I have enjoyed taking several lovely street walks around our mountain suburbs. I've said it before and I'll say it again (and so will thousands of others) - you can't beat Wellington on a good day, and we are so very lucky to live here.

Next.....a broken leg

And then this happened!

The boys have stopped using the field to play soccer on at school, and have moved onto the netball courts at school.

Apparently the concrete makes the ball go faster.

I can tell you this: I have no idea how fast the ball goes but there are definitely a lot more injuries these days!

A fracture to his growth plate. Ouch!

It's been a funny old time...

We've been living for a while now as a family of 3 as Jake's been away for most of the last month. First he went to TRENZ (a tourism exhibition) in Rotorua for a week, then he came home for a few days, and then he went off again, this time to Europe for 3 weeks (working apparently, although his Facebook feed suggests otherwise).

While he's been away lots of stuff has happened.

First this....the result of some over-enthusiastic gym practise. (Lesson learnt - don't ever rush a bend-back).

While she couldn't do gym for a while, and she couldn't write or do schoolwork or get dressed or brush her teeth very well either, it's not easy to keep Molly still and she insisted on continuing to do as much as she could, despite my constant cries of "Stop!", and "Keep still!"

Then THIS happened. A week later, with her arm still in a sling, Molly came down with a (rather scarey) case of Bronchitis which had me on the telephone to the hospital one evening and a visit to the doctor's surgery the next morning.

We came home from the doctor's with a big stock of illness supplies, which included half the pharmacy plus a couple of Secret Seven books which I found on special at The Warehouse (it's not often you find books at $2.50 each in New Zealand). I thought they might keep her going for a while so I could get some work done....I didn't bank on the fact that she'd finish both books within 24 hours!

The virus was so bad that she ended up being off school for a week :( I decided that good nutrition was in order and made up endless batches of soups - in the process discovering that combining purple carrot and pumpkin doesn't make an appealing looking batch of soup (it tasted great, so long as we closed our eyes ;))  Next time I will revert back to the orange carrots.

This lengthy injury/illness in Molly might have given her the time to perfect her six and seven times tables, but it presented me with a major problem in Alfie. There was only one of me, Molly needed to stay in bed or on the couch for a long time, and Alfie is ALWAYS bursting with energy. So I had to get creative and energetic - I'm not sure I did the best job ever, but he was mostly kept entertained.

We went out a bit, just to places where we could place Molly somewhere in the sun under a blanket with a book while Alfie played soccer and went scootering.... and we played and played and played in the back yard too (cricket, obstacle courses, etc). Hope you had enough fun Alfie!

Thanks too must go to the other families who took him out to play tennis, soccer, and more soccer - especially one in particular who hunted around in the mud for ages with him when his tooth fell out as he saved a goal! They didn't find the tooth :( so the tooth fairy got the following letter:

Love the last sentence! And yes, she brought the ""monyay".

Only this weekend did Molly finally start to show small signs of recovery. We took it relatively easy and got old toys and games out that we haven't seen for ages like Battleships, Jenga and Hopscotch. The enforced relaxation was actually really lovely!

By yesterday evening she was just about well enough to go out to the FIFA Under 20s World Cup Quarter Finals - thank goodness, as the tickets cost me some $$'s and I would have hated for us to have missed out! Senegal vs Uzbekistan wasn't a game I would have normally chosen to go to, but it was what Wellington got, it made Alfie a very excited little chap, and Molly finally got to have a bit of fun again too!

Is it Winter?

1st of June marks the official start of winter, although where these dates come from I have no idea. We don't really get much of an Autumn or Spring in Wellington - it just drifts from summer to winter and then back to summer again. And sometimes in the summer we get wintry days and sometimes in the winter we get summery days.

Today, for example, was the first day of winter and my car thermometer read 26 degrees this afternoon.

However, over the last couple of weeks we had a big cold front pass over the country, This means we've had some very chilly Saturday mornings on the soccer pitch where temperatures have been almost in the single digits - agggghhh! Thank goodness for ski socks.

Then, here's how crazy it is - a few days later, here we are today (a public holiday) spending all afternoon playing on the beach! It's very hard to get dressed in the  morning sometimes!

A couple of weeks ago we had another stunning Sunday - you really can't beat Wellington on a good day, as they say. The kids had been asking for months if we could hire a crocodile bike and we decided it was a great day for it (well ok, we had a 50% off voucher which was about to expire) .

We had so much fun driving around the waterfront and over to Oriental Bay. Every member of the family had a go at being in charge of the steering wheel - except me :( - and there were some very hairy moments, but we had such fun!

To occupy herself on the occasions where the season is more indoorsy, Molly has taken to photographing herself - alot. I found 643 photos of her on my iphone this morning. It's taking me ages every day to go through and delete them all.


Molly went for her first haircut in about 2 or 3 years a couple of weeks ago. There's only one lady in Wellington that we know of who can do hair cuts on wigs and she happens to be a hairdresser who has alopecia herself. The perfect person as she understood what to do on so many different levels.

Molly really wanted to keep the length of her beautiful hair, so we got her to tidy it up and put some long layers in.

This lady was AMAZING - she totally understood everything Molly would be feeling, so she spent some time french pleating her hair, curling it, straightening it, and just generally prettying Molly up for a while and trying different looks out on her. You should have seen the smiles!

After paying (alot) for Molly's hairdresser experience, Jake decided to save money and get the clippers out for Alfie at home. Unfortunately something has gone wrong with the clippers since he last used them and within seconds there were screams of pain coming from Alfie and some almost bald patches on the side of his head. So the clippers were quickly put away and I had to take him to the hair dressers and ask if they could fix him up. Unfortunately the lady shook her head sadly/despairingly and gave him a trim but couldn't hide Jake's accident. So he's been wearing hats until it grows out. 

Alfie's hairdresser kept admiring Molly's beautiful hair and saying she wished she could grow hers as long as that. Hee hee! Molly and I were holding it in with difficulty but as soon as she walked away we cracked up! ;) 

Other news - last weekend Jake and I went out partying. My friend Bridget held a Charity party to raise money for Oxfam. Sounds very posh, and we do live in these posh mountain suburbs, but it wasn't really. Just a super fun night - and over $4000 raised. 

We pulled together a lovely table of people and we talked, we laughed, we played in a photo booth, and we danced until nearly midnight. I didn't know we still had it in us!

And finally, the sunsets over the last few weeks have been AMAZING. Apparently the stunning colours are due to ash from a volcanic eruption in Chile?