It's Been a While.....

Since we've remembered to send Nana a photo for her calendar, luckily we've seen eachother a few times so Grandad has been able to take his own pics without having to rely on us to send them down:

A Fishy Tale.....

H7 was the only lucky one when The Lad took the kiddos fishing at the Kaituna Rivermouth, we enjoyed this kahawai prepared by The Lad in his secret perfect-for-kahawai method - I know it had sea salt and chervil in it and it had to marinate overnight:

L9's Family Fun.....

Yep, she chose a yummy dinner, sickly sweey dessert and then we settled down to making Peg People:


It was a lot of fun and we created loads of zany new pegs to adorn the washing:



We then had super-duper hot choclates and a bikkie and a quick game of dodgeball before collapsing into bed!

Lunar Eclipse.....

A11 accompanied The Lad on the back deck for a few hours of moonwatching. Armed with a blanket, the telescope, the camera on the tripod and some chatter, it was well worth the wait:


Here are a selection of the (many) photos that they took:

The Budgies New Home.....

The Lad has been patiently helping L9 and H7 build a new home for the budgies, L9 and H7 designed it and one of the main reasons for doing it was because our two boys look like they may in fact be a girl and a boy, so a nesting box was the centre of the plan:


The budgies seem to love their new home and the girls are justifiably proud:

League Photos.....

The Lad took team photos for the league club this year, and they turned out pretty spiffing, here's a shot of the three teams and their coaches:

She's a Monkey.....

H7 is forever climbing trees, we have 'climbing trees' on the front lawn of varying degrees of difficulty, that she's always scaling:


She doesn't like to jump out of them from great heights anymore, though, because she says she gets really bad 'groundshock', so she swings and clambers her way down till she's close enough to leap off:

The Formal Shot.....

I loved this photo of one of my cuzzies off to his formal, sent on to me by my Aunty. I wonder how many more times he's gonna wear those shoes, lol?:

See Ya.....

Our homeschooling friends Esther and family are moving town so we had a little gathering at the park for a last play:



Tracey and her family are also moving, but they're leaving the country:


As always, you bid a friend or two farewell, and you get to meet a new one:


Julie was there:


Louise was there:


And Kate was there:


And, yep, that's the same finger ;o) :

Rainbow Magic Fairies Mad.....

The girls have been book-mad lately, they've been getting 16 books each from this series (or their preferred, but fairly hard to come-by Naughty Fairies series, written by our lovely friend Delilah's aunty, or the Magic Kitten series, or the Pony-Mad Princess series.....) and then racing each other to see who can finish all 30-odd books first!:

Happy Birthday, A11.....

Yep, he's legs 11 today! I can hardly believe it, I'm still getting over the shock that he turned 10 a year ago ;o)

So he got loads of cash this year - cash from the grandparents and the uncles and cash from us (Nana C gave him an actual present, though!). Because he had a 7's tournament today, we've decided to have a bit of a party at the Mount Action Centre at a later date to properly celebrate.

He bought himself this funky yellow and orange Gilbert ball (but, being rugger mad, it's muddy already!):

Training Up.....

A11 was pumping up one of his rugby balls and he got a bit over-enthusiastic and ending up bursting the stitching on the outer (lucky it wasn't his new ball). They had the fun of Cork playing with the over-inflated bladder though, man that thing lasted for weeks!:


L4 donned A11's headgear and thought he was just The Man! It was pretty funny watching him, and it occured to me that it won't be long till he'll be on a real field, in a real team, playing real rugby:

Dancing Queen.....

A lucky dip in the dress-up box, and who knows what you'll come up with. Ballet slippers, a fairy skirt and a gymnastics leotard never looked so good:



All that hard work makes a boy so weary, he falls asleep eating his pudding:

Jamie.....

We flagged skiing this morning in order to take the long way home and meet our new cousin Jamie:


How precious is a new baby? Nothing compares to these perfectly formed miniatures encountering this strange new world for the first time, and the way babes have of stillng us all for a moment:

Yee-Hah!!!!!.....

How excited were we when we woke up, looked out the window and were greeted with the mountain!? The first time we'd seen it from the house since we'd got there:


We had a ball at the bottom carpark before we even got on the bus to take us up to the mountain proper:




We locked the camera away for the day while we ski'd, and when we came back down we had a bit more of a play before it got completely dark:




H7 with The Chateau in the fast-fading background:


I wish we could take credit for these cool snow-creations we came across, but it just wouldn't be right: