ANZAC Day

There are three and a half days each year when it’s illegal for the shops to open in New Zealand (with the exception of what’s considered to be essential public services such as petrol stations, dairies and souvenir shops): Christmas Day, Good Friday, Easter Sunday, and up until 1pm on Anzac Day.

If a shop is caught trading on one of these days it can be fined $1000. A few shops flout the law as they forecast the profits will be more than the fines. But the majority stay closed, and on these days the nation focuses on more important things.

Today was Anzac Day, a public holiday marked every year in both Australia and New Zealand in memory of those who fought at Gallipoli in WW1.

Unfortunately when you’re self-employed the number of hours necessary to complete your projects doesn’t reduce when there’s a public holiday, so I spent the morning working today while Jake went running up the mountain and the kids got stuck into a very complicated looking craft project that involved a cardboard box, a massive amount of sticky tape and two toy trains.

In the afternoon though, we focused on more important things and went pottering about on the beach at Plimmerton. Molly and Alfie went hunting for crabs, built a house in the sand, collected dune flowers, did running races and went scootering while I sat on the beach and tried to read my very good book (Marzipan andMagnolias).

But the peace and quiet just wasn't meant to happen for me today. The kids pestered me so much to join in the races that I put the book down after 20 minutes of reading the same sentence over and over again, gave in and ran my socks off with them! 

Living in Wellington

As a capital city, Wellington is one of those rare and special finds.

As the government administrative centre and the capital of New Zealand, it’s got a fabulous range of culture and facilities, including an excellent public transport system which is arguably the best in New Zealand.

But the population is less than half a million and the city’s geographical size is small, so commuting times and driving distances are pleasantly short. People know each other, or know of each other, so it feels like a proper community – something which is uncommon in many other capitals. It’s said that the “six degrees of separation” theory doesn’t hold true here, as it’s only two degrees of separation in Wellington.

Most importantly for Jake and I, Wellington has got both the mountains and the sea. We’ve always been beach people – not sunbathing-type beach people, but running & walking & surfing & beach-cafe-ing and just generally being by the beach.

Since we moved here, we’ve also discovered that we are mountain people as well. It would be very unusual for a week to pass by without both of us having gone for a run (Jake) or a walk (me) at least once in the mountains. And often more than once. (The pictures on this post were taken on my Sunday morning walk a couple of days ago). 

The kids of course love both places too. The beach offers great opportunities for collecting shells and driftwood, while the mountains offer great opportunities for collecting leaves and bugs. They’re not so keen on walking up the mountain though, so given the choice they’ll always opt for the beach.

Someone I know once said Wellington is “beautiful and intelligent” – it sure is.

But one thing which Wellington is failing to impress us with is its housing market.

According to a recent study by Massey University, houses in Wellington became 14% more affordable in the past year. Meanwhile in Auckland prices are hitting record highs. So you’d think we’d be counting ourselves lucky that we’re in the right place at the right time.

But since the wedding we have viewed 19 potential homes (and before Christmas we’d already viewed about a dozen), and we are yet to put in an offer on anything.

Our budget has been pushed up, our wish list has had things crossed off it, and we have found ourselves compromising and compromising until we’re now happily considering houses with 1940’s decor, cracked chimneys, no heating appliances, ancient kitchens and no space for the rellies to come and stay. Yet we still haven’t found anything.

Come on Wellington – please show us something soon!!!

Chickenpox Round Two

Chickenpox has struck in our household again.

On our last day at Himatangi Beach Molly started complaining about what we thought was a very bad insect bite on her leg, and on the day after we got home she broke out in very many spots. A nice present from her brother.  

The medical profession may claim this is an old wives tale, but to all those mum friends who told me the 2^nd sibling always gets a worse dose than the 1^st sibling – you were so right.

Molly’s got it a hundred times worse than Alfie did. She didn’t sleep a wink for the first 48 hours, and I found myself on the phone to the doctor’s surgery several times a day for the first few days, asking for advice and monitoring potentially infected spots etc.

It’s kind of ruined all our plans for the school holidays and poor Alfie has been going a little bit stir crazy this time as it’s the second week he’s had to suffer in isolation (and not even for himself this time!).

While Alfie got bored of staying at home, Molly was completely beside herself with itchiness for several days. All we could do is put her in the bath with lots of Pinetarsol for the majority of the day, and keep rubbing cream into her, giving her Pamol and antihistamines. Big thanks to everyone who provided her with DVDs, creams and phone calls! 

But she is finally on the mend and past the contagious stage, so now we’re going to try to make up for lost time for the last few days of the holidays. 

My Beautiful Children

The other day the kids were playing in the garden after dinner while I was cleaning up the kitchen. All of a sudden I saw them run inside and downstairs to their bedrooms, and a short while later they re-emerged wearing their wedding outfits and shot back out into the garden again!

I resisted the very strong urge to tell them not to wear their beautiful clothes out in the garden as they were sure to get dirty, ripped, snagged, or worse, and instead I grabbed the camera and got some beautiful shots of them playing.

If I had PhotoShop or knew how to edit digital pictures properly I would airbrush Alfie’s chicken pox spots out.

And the pen marks on Molly's face.

But never-the-less I think they look absolutely gorgeous in these pictures!

(And the wedding clothes survived!) 

Easter in New Zealand

One of the benefits of being able to read two newspapers from cover to cover over the weekend is that I now have full knowledge of New Zealand’s easter egg marketplace.

Kiwis spend $28 million on Easter products each year. That’s over $6 a head! It's actually much less money per head than most other countries I've lived in, but it still feels like a lot of money to spend on a single day's worth of chocolate! The nation's favourites are crème eggs and marshmallow eggs, and also eggs filled with Kiwi classics such as pineapple lumps and Jaffas.

Our children both got a few little foil-wrapped eggs, marshmallow eggs (although Alfie disliked his) and a hollow chocolate bunny. Plus a set of pens and some Easter bunny colouring pictures.

We had so much fun watching them hunting in the garden for everything. Their squeals of delight when they found the eggs were brilliant! Then taking them down to the beach to share their loot while we sat on a piece of driftwood as the sun was still rising. What a great start to the day!

But I have a real problem with Easter. Firstly, it’s extremely complicated to explain to a 6 and 4 year old how it relates to a holy man who died more than 2000 years ago – and then rose again! - and why we all celebrate this event by eating chocolate.

To make matters worse, our children still remember the Easter Bilby from last year. Why, they want to know, doesn’t the Easter Bunny deliver to all countries?

However, I do feel lucky that we live in New Zealand, because Easter always coincides with feijoa season. It’s a little painful to have to part with cash this year for our feijoas when I know we have a whole row of feijoa trees back in our Auckland garden which will be supplying massive quantities of fruit.

But never-the-less, feijoas are one of the absolute best things about this time of year and are one of the reasons why Jake and I actually ate less chocolate over the Easter weekend than we ordinarily would do on a normal weekend. Those who know us well may be shocked, but rest assured - we will make up for it soon, as the feijoa season is always short. 

Himatangi Beach

I thought the editor’s letter in this weekend’s Sunday Star Times summed things up well:

“With any luck, you’re reading this at least an hour later than usual. You’ve had a long sleep in at a bach with a bay window that looks out to the ocean. The house smells of cinnamon. And somebody else is making the coffee.”

We too followed the tradition of so many Kiwis and booked a bach for the Easter weekend up at Himatangi Beach. We took it in turns to have sleep ins. We drank lots of tea and coffee and wine and we ate cupcakes and good cheese.

Our window didn’t look out to the ocean though, on account of the fact that Himatangi has these massive great big tall sand dunes running up the length of it, blocking the view from many of the houses – but there are stunning views if you walk up to the top of the dunes.

We kicked back and well and truly relaxed for a few days. Alfie took up residence in the hammock while Molly the artist worked her way through a number of “Learn to Draw” books.

Jake and I read both the Saturday and Sunday newspapers, and went running on the beach every day. (Then came home and opened a bottle of Pinot Gris!)

We all spent hours and hours on the beach itself every day, mostly making copious numbers of sandcastles. 

It’s an unusual beach – it’s actually a public road, so theoretically we were letting our kids play on the equivalent of a 6 lane highway. But strangely it all kind of works ok - people, cars, 4WDs, motorbikes and quad bikes all seemed to co-exist quite peacefully on the sand.

We also spent a bit of time at the beach club, the tennis courts, and of course the requisite playpark where Alfie managed a bit of an accident on the flying fox and has consequently returned home with a giant fat lip.

Anyway, we really quite liked Himatangi – it's a very typical Kiwi summer settlement but it also has such a unique character and was a little bit quirky, eg our next door neighbour had a pet reindeer!

I'm pretty sure we'll be back at some point. 

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... 

Chickenpox

It all began last weekend when Jake and I went up to Hawkes Bay for a friend’s wedding while some very kind (and brave) friends in Wellington offered to have Molly and Alfie to stay for the weekend.

The wedding was great but when we got back, the kids were both complaining about itchy mosquito bites. We put it down to the fact that they’d played outside for most of the weekend, put some toothpaste on the bites and told them to stop moaning.

It turned out Molly’s really were mozzie bites... but Alfie’s were chickenpox spots (oops!)

And there set the tone for the rest of the week. Alfie and I have been in isolation/solitary confinement at home (I’m thinking of painting a white cross on our front door).

Dealing with The Pox is not an easy task when you have a usually-very-active 4 year old – and you still have to get your work done. Still, we are surviving, and I have to give particular thanks to the following for their help:

- The manufacturers of Pinetarsol and Alpha Keri Lotion.

- A huge jar of instant coffee to help me get going after a sleepless night looking after an itchy boy.

- Kids on Four for an hour of kids TV shows each morning – it kept him occupied a bit while I worked.

- Activity Village for their free colouring in/writing/etc printouts which kept him occupied a little bit more while I worked.

- A full week of sunshine – so I could at least do something constructive while I was stuck in the house and get 4 loads of washing done in a day and a load of freezer food baked. 


- The sun also meant we could hang out in the garden making volcanoes and doing fun science experiments! 

- Countdown Supermarkets - I had my first ever experience of online grocery shopping this week. It was bloody expensive but great service and I couldn’t have fed the family without it! 

- Some very great friends who made sure Molly got to and from school and after-school activities, and who did pharmacy runs for me when I needed more Pinetarsol .

-  And on the subject of Molly, she deserves an extra big thank you for being so patient, for making do without a parent at her ballet performance this week, for caring so gently for Alfie, and especially for the letter which she wrote to the fairies and left outside her bedroom door last night. It said:

"To the flower fairies,

I rilly want you to make my little bruv feel better. Cood you help get him better. He has chicken pox. He has got only a littlll bit that’s shoing. I am 6. 

Love Molly.”

Autumn Leaves

There’s been a real Autumn-ey feel to life this week.

Late March in New Zealand is the equivalent season to late September back in the UK where I grew up. I remember it as a time when we’d just started the new school year, a chill in the early morning air, kicking up crunchy, fallen leaves as I walked to school, the trees becoming bare...

Here it’s the same but different.

Our school year started in January/February so we’re nearly at the end of the first term already. The trees remain green – in fact, very green due to the amount of rain we get! – and they will do so all winter. There are very few trees here which will end up with bare branches, which I like.

But there are still some falling leaves around and the kids had a ball this week collecting them and admiring all the colours. Truly beautiful reds, pinks, oranges, yellows, lots of green, and even a few black ones (which delighted Alfie as black is his favourite colour). 

The kitchen table has been covered in leaf rubbings over the last couple of days – it’s Alfie’s new favourite pastime.

In the meantime, we went to a local school gala last week and Molly managed to totally kit herself out for the Autumn/Winter with a complete new wardrobe of second hand clothes (all for $5!).

She just loves choosing what to wear each day from the big pile. Sometimes it matches, sometimes it doesn’t.

Her teacher loves to see what she turns up in each day and has forecast that Molly will one day in the future become one of New Zealand’s best known fashion designers and we’ll all be watching her creations at WOW. 

Pigs/Pegs, Beer/Bear, Sun/Shade - our lives are complicated

We probably owe a few apologies to the people of Wellington today.

Last night we invited everyone to come over and help us polish off the last of the wedding wine. It was a great evening, but it didn’t end until 1am and I know for a fact that there were a lot of sore heads this morning and pharmacies throughout town were in danger of selling out of Nurofen!

Not only that, but we still have 5 cases of wine left (we’ll have to do it again soon then!)

With mild hangovers ourselves, we spent the bulk of today dragging ourselves around open homes as our next project is to buy ourselves a home to live in. Wellington's an interesting place to buy a house in. The topography of the city means you have to take a lot of time to work out how the sun moves around the mountains and whether you'll get any or not. And if you are going to get the sun, will it be during a time of day when you're all out of the house, or will you get the afternoon/evening sun? 

In our local area, your house is also fairly likely to be built into the side of the mountains and any land you have is therefore likely to be quite steep. Not always useful for kicking a soccer ball around or riding a bike. 

Anyway, four houses later and we were already feeling a little despondent as we quickly realised the type of house we are aiming for is going to be about $200k-300k over our budget. It could soon be time to revise our expectations and plans!

Changing the subject, we are still struggling to understand our little boy’s Kiwi accent. This morning’s desperate cries of “I want my beer! Where’s my beer? Dadder, I can’t find my beer” initially created great shock for Jake and I, but we were later relieved to discover that he isn’t a 4 year old alcoholic after all. He just wanted his teddy “beer”.

This followed last week’s earnest explanation by Molly to Alfie that bacon is made out of pigs. “Real pigs?”, asks Alfie. “Really? Like the sort of clothes pigs you hang the washing out on the line with?”

It’s a cute accent, but we’ve got some serious misunderstandings going on in our house at the moment! 

It's Autumn already

We keep being teased with a touch of summer this week. We’re basking in the sunshine one minute, and wrapping up in gale force winds and pouring rain the next. We don’t know what to wear each day and we no longer know which season we’re in...

The storms have destroyed our beautiful garden, which is now just a mixture of dead flowers, tall weeds, and overgrown bushes.

But we’ve had some good sunny periods and we are really making the most of things and taking every opportunity to get out, now our busy season is over! The kids went out on their bikes with their friends last weekend while us parents sat in the sun drinking coffee – heavenly!

Molly’s picked up riding her new birthday bike really well now (although it’s still quite a bit too big for her) but she seems to have perfected the helpless girlie look every time she gets to an uphill bit and was very good at waiting for the 3 boys to run over and help pull her up.

Meanwhile Alfie managed a fair bit of riding without training wheels and while he didn’t have helpless look on him at all, the rest of us did every time he came careering towards us and crash landed.

With Molly away at a sleepover party on Saturday night, we’d promised Alfie that we’d go camping in the garden.

However when the temperature started to drop in the late afternoon we chickened out and ended up “camping” in the lounge room for the night instead.

Needless to say, no one got a good sleep – but at least we were warm!

Turning 40

OK, so I’ve been a little guilty of covering up the fact that I’ve just had a birthday. It wasn’t deliberate. We’ve just had so many big family events lately that I was a bit over it all. Shame. A 40^th is actually a great excuse for a party, therefore I am now planning a belated one for next week (hey, we still have a lot of wedding wine left over!).

When I was little, I had this vision of what life would be like when I was 40. I would have a 5 bedroomed house in the suburbs of London, 3 teenage children, a husband who worked long hours earning mega bucks in the City and I would be a meteorologist.

I would spend my weekends playing the piano and playing tennis. And I would have my hair cut short – because my mother always told me that once you turn 40 you have to have your hair cut short.

I can now confirm that my visions were all wrong. Life couldn’t be more different! Not only have I lived in some fairly extreme and crazy locations around the world, but I have now made my home on the other side of the world.

Five bedrooms is beyond reality, but we are now home owners and landlords. I have two young children (no where near teenage-hood yet), my husband unfortunately does not earn mega bucks in the City (but he is very lovely and has a much more interesting job), and I am not a meteorologist. I don’t play the piano as often as I’d like to, but I do often watch people at the tennis club outside my kitchen window (if that counts?).

For months now, people have been asking me if I’ve written a bucket list. Or if I have written a list of “40 things to do before I’m 40”.

So, last weekend we tried to write me one of those lists, but we couldn’t think of more than 9 things to go on it. The task was too hard and eventually we abandoned it to a bottle of bubbly. And in truth, I’m more than happy not to have another list (I have too many lists already – shopping lists, work lists, buy bread, invoice clients, etc, etc).

I have done so very much in these last 40 years (and even more in the last 10!) that it was always going to be very difficult to write such a list. Ten years ago I couldn’t have possibly imagined all the things I was going to go on to achieve. So in actual fact, I am now simply content to dream and wonder and hope about what new adventures the next 40 years hold. Anyway, I’m far too busy doing life to write a list about it!

The Honeymoon

Strictly this isn’t a post about our adventures in Wellington, because Jake and I have just got back from a few days in the Marlborough Sounds – which isn’t even on the same island as Wellington (it’s on the South Island) – but we are going to include it on our blog anyway.

Thanks to Jenny, who looked after Molly and Alfie for a few nights back home, we managed an actual honeymoon! Where we did grown up things.

For example, we ate a very nice dinner in a very nice restaurant each night. We drank wine in the middle of the day. We read books for hours on end . We slept in until 9.30am! (This was a majorly big deal!). And we did lots of outdoorsy stuff, which did not include going to playparks and collecting bucketfuls of shells and insects, but real outdoorsy stuff, the sort of things we used to do all the time pre-kids.

Our trip began with a journey on the Interislander ferry from Wellington to Picton, from where we took a truly awesome little float plane ride to our hotel in the Sounds. Just magic. I love that kind of stuff.  

On hearing that they had one of NZ’s best massage therapists at the hotel, we both opted for a one hour massage straight away. Over the years we’ve both had a wide range of different massages, but this one was quite something else! I felt beaten up and drugged by the end, and Jake walked back to the room after his, wide eyed, hair sticking up everywhere! Still, we think (?) it did us good....

I am never ever ever again supposed to mention the fateful fishing trip that evening (sorry Jake), so I will move on....

On the second day we walked a section of the Queen CharlotteTrack – something I’ve wanted to do since my Bridge the World days (so I’ve only waited 14 years!).

The water taxi ride to the start of the track was very cool, and the whole walk was simply amazing, just beautiful. We did a 4 hour section, but we’ll be back one day to do the whole 71 kms.

And we finished off with a very nice kayaking trip around the bays on the last day. It’s a stunning part of the world. So quiet and peaceful. Until Jake thought a shark had knocked into the kayak and completely freaked out (it was just me moving my foot an inch to the right). Anyway, we carried on into little bays and coves and watched little jumping fish everywhere. Very nice.

Marlborough Sounds – we will be back! With the kids (because we did miss them) and so we will be exploring the playparks and bringing buckets and spades with us next time. 

Molly's Summer

This summer Molly too has been spending every spare minute in the garden. Mostly pottering about collecting flowers, looking for fairies, helping Alfie terrorise the snails, playing on the swings and blowing bubbles.

With school and after-school activities becoming increasingly full-on, she has developed the appetite of an elephant, demanding porridge, Sultana Bran, toast AND a boiled egg each morning for breakfast. I’m having to get up extra early to fit it all in and it’s quite amazing how someone so very small can eat quite so much! 

Year 2 at school continues to be a big source of happiness for her (phew!) and her personal highlights at the moment are singing in the school choir (only because 50% of the tunes they practise are by her current idol Bruno Mars) and bringing home the class bear last week.

Back at home, like all good women, she’s learnt to multi-task – chef’s outfit on, cupcake mixture prepared and into the oven, over to the art table to design some dresses while they bake, then back to the kitchen ,etc etc.

Alfie's Summer

We have had a pretty crap summer in NZ this year. Lower temperatures than usual and lots of rain. But although the media have discussed the poor weather constantly, we didn’t really care too much and have managed to have a lot of fun anyway. Hey – we didn’t have to deal with tennis & school in temps of 45 degrees, or trying to sleep in temps of 42 degrees..... or getting to work in a foot of snow.... so for us it’s been great just to have everything in the middle, nice and easy!

We’ve spent a lot of time on the beach, which is one of Alfie’s favourite past-times. He loves collecting bits and pieces in his buckets, paddling, swimming, and looking for sea creatures.

He’s also spent a lot of time collecting wildlife in the garden. He spent most of last week making an elaborate home for his pet snail, with walls of bricks and a bed of leaves – all great stuff until he then accidentally trod on and squashed the snail – cue lots of tears “Oh noooooo.....I’ve killed him Mummy!”

He also found a dead mouse stuck in the rubber matting which we have under the swing. There’s a pattern emerging here.... let’s hope he never wants to become a vet.

He’s also been to sign up for the local rugby team. Training doesn’t start until later in the year but he already has a Wallabies rugby shirt, and his team beanie and his gum shield and wears them most of the time. The consequence is he gets rather hot under his hat and we don’t understand a word he says, but you can’t fault his enthusiasm.

 Unfortunately Alfie spent the 10 days following our wedding with Slap Cheek virus, and has been a very miserable boy. He’s spent his time playing Snakes & Ladders with Grandad, watching DVDs and moaning and groaning a lot....but he’s on the mend now and we are once more sending warnings out to the wildlife of Wellington – watch out, Alfie’s about!