Friends, Whanau and a National Treasure.....

Nana and Poppa lent us their car today and so we headed off to The Big Smoke (I LOVE WELLINGTON). On the way down, we stopped in to see the Happy Hippies *in person*:


And then we called in to Ange's to hang with her and her four kiddo's and associated extras, plus Nana, Uncle Trev and Britts and Aunty Pauline. For some strange reason, I only have two photos of this fab afternoon, and they're both of Ange - go figure?:



Then we turned down her very kind and very insistent offer of dinner and hooned into 'town' to go to Te Papa (luckily we chose a day it was open really late):




I was telling the kids on the drive in how much I loved the instant you got to see the city over the harbour when you come down the bottom of the gorge from Porirua. I was telling them to look for it, as it sort of hits you out of the blue all of a sudden, and it gives me nostalgic gooseys EVERY time I see it. One night, many years ago when we were living there, I made Barrie drive me into town (Wellington City, lol) and stop (probably illegally) on the side of the motorway and we took heaps of long-exposure photos with the roof of the car as our tripod. I was trying to find them to scan in, but I remembered we had used a slide film (actual film in the camera - that's how many years ago we're talking here, lol!), so next time you're round visiting and you've had too many Bailey's, I'll get out the projector and treat ;o) you to a slide show (thinking to myself that that might be a good Family Fun Night idea - bore the kids instead, lol!).

Anyway, this rather bad shot of Wellington's night lights from A11's camera tonight reminded me of that story:


We called in to see Aunty Vick to say Happy Birthday (while it was still officially her birthday) before we headed back to Nana's and to bed: