Picton pirate ship

During the school holidays, the kids got to go to Picton for the last time. It has been one of their favourite places to go while we have been living here in the South Island. There is lots to do there for kids at the foreshore... sail model boats, have a train ride and play in a variety of playgrounds... the best one being a large pirate ship. The kids were happy they got to have a turn on the new pirate ship that was recently built before we left. Here are some pics of their fun times. 

The joys of moving...

The countdown for leaving Blenheim is fast upon us. We haven't figured out yet which day we are leaving... but we know we sell out house the 22nd August, so it will be that weekend. We have had a garage sale, and tried to sell our biggest stuff on trademe. We have given a car-load of stuff to the salvation army store, and there is still a lot more packing and sorting to go....oh no... only 2 weeks.

It is crazy that we have so much stuff. It's the first time since we have been married that we have had a really ruthless 'spring clean'... We can't believe some of the stuff we are finding. Some curtains that came from England... Some of the old wallpaper from my old bedroom... in England! - into the bin. Clothes I had from before Tane and I were married... I was glad to see they still fit, but had holes in so... into the bin they went.

We sold our bed yesterday... so last night Tane and I slept in the lounge on the inflatable camping mattress... We had spent the whole day packing and sorting... so when it got to 9 o'clock I was tired... it then took us another hour or something to pump up the bed while we listed to the All Black vs Wallabies game on the radio. Mission accomplished - we had a surprisingly good sleep.

 Camping in the lounge :)

We have no kitchen table or couches in the lounge. Our computer sits on the floor with the screen on top of the hard-drive. The kids beds have also been sold... but their mattresses are not being picked up until the day we leave.

We have boxes for chest of drawers. Initially there was a semblance of order... the boys had a box for their undies and pjs, a box for T-shirts and jumpers and a box for pants... but now whey just have a whole bunch of boxes and clothes everywhere... and that is when I have packed some of their clothes and given away a whole lot more.

Since we are now sleeping in the lounge, our bedroom has become mission control and storage for all our packed stuff. It was all orderly and neat until late Sunday afternoon when the kids got in there and started climbing all over the boxes, several have since fallen over and will need re-packing...(great).

Our bedroom. :( Sad to be missing our bed.

This evening the kids decided to dispose of our dilapidated washing basket once and for all. They took turn bashing it to smithereens with a wrench. They had such a fun time.

Destruction is fun...

"It feels like camping" Tane says. The kids think its exciting... but I am sure the novelty of living out of suitcases and sleeping on mattresses on the floor will long have lost their novelty by the time we depart for Australia in October.

The kids are finding new and novel things to do with their time as most of their things have been sold, given away or packed. Today as we were getting ready for church I shushed  Tane so I  could listen to the boys conversation which went something like this.
Josh:... and we can be spys"
Joseph: "I don't want to be a spy"
Josh: "But we can be spys and figure out what people are doing" When Josh and Joseph are scheming they remind me of Angela and I when we were little.

We are sad to be leaving Blenheim... We have made some really good friends here, both from work and from church. We are really glad that we departed from the comforts of familiarity , family and friends to venture out on our own. We would never have made such good friends and Tane and I have had to rely on each other a lot. We may not have been to as many movies as Tane would have liked... but it has meant we had to choose just the best ones (which is fine by me).

We are getting excited to see Grandma and Grandpa. in 2 weeks and Aunty Hoana & Uncle Rob in 5 weeks, and also catching up with the rest of our family and friends before we head off on our next adventure.

Ella-Rose is growing up fast

 It's not fair she is growing up so fast. When I see newer babies of my friends I wonder where has the time gone, she was only born 7.5 months ago, yet it feels she has never not been a part of our family.

Ella-Rose is now crawling and can get anywhere she wants to in the house. We keep the bathroom door closed but every time she can't see me she seems to think I must be in there and crawls to the closed door and cries.

Snow Fun!!

A great way to end the school holidays! We went with friends of ours to the snow. We had a really great time. Here are the kids being really excited as we approach the skifield.

Tane took Josh skiing. Josh had a lesson first then spent most of the time of the beginner slope. Josh is really starting to enjoy himself and is pretty good on the skiis. It is the 4th time he has been, so now he spends more time on his skiis than in the snow. Tane is getting pretty good too. Towards the end of the day Tane took Josh onto the advanced learner slope and he did really well on that. Tane thought he was going to crash in the barrier at bottom of the slope, but he has learnt how to control his speed, so was able to slow down.

       

Me and the 3 other kids hung out in the area where everyone was sledging. It was very cool. I kept going down the slope with Anna-Maria, and Joseph did it him self. Baby slept in her buggy, then tried touching and eating the snow. 

The only little hitch we ran into was that I had left Tane to sort out the food... I had bought it the day before but he was to pack it.... So he just grabbed umpteen boxes of muesli bars, chips, chocolate and bottles of water. But there was nothing substantive... He had severely underestimated the amount of energy that skiing saps out of him, and how hungry a family with 4 growing kids would be... so after eating the entire contents of our car... the kids were still hungry... luckily they could survive the 1 hour drive home with promises of fish and chips without having a melt down... A promise which did come true and the day ended with smiles and full tummies.

Comments from the Daddy Daycare Centre

My wife has been working a few shifts at the hospital, conveniently during the school holidays, and I organised the time off work to spend some quality time with the children. to put it another way, this was the "dry run" for when we go to Australia when Deborah goes and works full-time.

Well what do I make of it? Key for me, and for the kids, was routine.Getting them up at the same time, or similar, because it was the holidays and sleeping in for an hour was a nice treat.

26 July 2011

Went to Kungfu Panda 2 with all of the kids. I am a self confessed movie buff and I love it when block buster season is out, cause I would try to see all of them if I can. The kids were the first ones to remind me that today was the long awaited movie day. I told them that they needed to do their homework, which unsurprisiningly they did with a cheerful attitude. Josh did piano pieces without complaining and he even did written book reviews, and to my surprise, he did a very good one on robots. Joseph did addition cards and Anna did her word cards without a hitch. Strange what a little motivation can do for the troops! When I started tidying up the kitchen, Anna unloaded the dishwasher by herself.

The kids insisted on getting some treats for the movies, but not wanting to disappoint the kids and not wanting to pay for trumped up prices the cinemas charge and the lousey service they provide, the kids and I trundled off to the supermarket to get us some treats. Drinks, caramel popcorn, whittakers chocalate and 2 bananas for baby was all we needed. Now you might wonder why we got "whittakers". It's because Deborah has told them of the evils of normal chocolate and the harrowing pictures of some little kid their age making the chocolate in sweatshop conditions. the least Joshua and Joseph comment was that we could buy only "free trade" chocolate and the only one there was, you guessed it whittakers! Next stop the movies.

One thing that I did not think of was the parking. Being a small town and I thought "no problem", but no, it didn't dawn on me that school holidays, combined with the Cheap Tuesdays would create and perfect textbook example of supply and demand in economics101 senario where supply, being carparks, was outstripped my all those mummys in Blenheim getting to the cinema carparks before me and forcing me to pay a premium ($1.50 to be exact) in parking meter fees. Lucklily it didn't stop me or the kids from getting some good seats for the movies.

The Movie Review... Kung Fu Panda 2

To cut a long story short I saw hardly any of it :(... On cue, baby was being restless and I had to take her out. The funny thing was, I didn't really mind. Coaxing her off to sleep was something special. And while I could hear the movies behind the door to the cinema I took more enjoyment watching her go to sleep. When I did get into watch the movie I liked what I saw. Josh, Joseph and Anna by this time had drank almost all of their drink bottles and I was running through my mind that each one of them at various stages of the movie would want to go to the toilet. Funny enough none of them did.

We got home with mission accomplished.

Random pics from the week that was

Anna-Maria's Kindy photo

 Ella-Rose... Joseph's 'purple grape'. Other people think she looks like a Teletubby. I think she is much cuter than a Teletubby.

 Peace at last!!

 This is what Daddy thinks of this!!

Story-time with the kids. We read The Wind in the Willows

Spaghetti and marshmallows

This week has been pretty hectic. It's school holidays, but Tane and I had a change of roles for the 2nd half of the week. He had time at home with the kids, and I worked some shifts at the hospital.

Firstly family home evening this week was great. For our activity, we decided to have a competition to see who could build the strongest and tallest towers with spaghetti and marshmallows. It was pretty hilarious. The Spaghetti are used for struts and the marshmallows as the putty between them.

Joseph teamed up with me, and Josh with Tane, with Anna-Maria helping us out. Joseph and I were doing pretty good at the start for the tallest tower, except we didn't count on one thing... BABY!! One foul swoop with her hand and it was all over... spaghetti was flapping in the wind, broken and sad.

After baby had dealt to Joseph's tower

Anna-Maria doing her own thing with the spaghetti and marshmallows

 Tane and Josh did well with theirs and managed to balance a book on top.

Getting ready to put it to the test.

It worked... just..Tane was scared to let it go incase it came tumbling down, but it did hold... for a short while... till the kids destroyed it.

Rugby World Cup Fever!!!

If you haven't already heard, I took the kids down to the Convention Centre for the 2011 Rugby World Cup Roadshow. Joseph and Josh both play rugby for the Harlequins. They love it and are very excited about the Rugby World Cup. If you click the link below you can vote for the kids to win a family holiday (we are currently in 27th place)

http://hotfanfaces.co.nz/2011/07/face107121784735/

Anyway... on with the story...We woke up at 5am so I could feed they boys and the baby (Tane and Anna were in Auckland). They got dressed in their rugby uniforms and I painted their faces. They were really excited also because they had the chance to be on TV. So we got there just on 6am.

When we arrived, there was a group of kids gathering together for something... I thought they were getting ready for a photo or something so I told the kids to go stand in the front (because they were smaller than most of the kids)... Then I realised they were to sing a song to be videoed and broadcast on air. So while I was feeding Ella her weetbix, they were being drilled in a song all about how their dad loves rugby. By about 6.30am it was time to be filmed... I didn't get to see it, but Tane and Anna watched it in Auckland. He txted me and said their faces looked like 'stunned mullets'.

The boys with Tamati Coffey - Host of the RWC Roadshows

The boys with a random guy that all the kids were mesmerised with...  he had a suit, mask shoes, had all  made from mirrors, it was pretty amazing.

After that they looked around at some of the displays they had. One was on Russia as Blenheim is hosting Russia for the RWC. They got to look at and have a photo with the Ellis Webb Cup (the Rugby World Cup). It was smaller than I had imagined. They even convinced me to get in the photo. The kids had a taste of the excitement which is yet to come...

Hats off to Daddies!

Daddies who love their kids.

Dad and Anna-Maria skyping the boys

Tane has been away for the weekend. It really made me appreciate life with a participating father. It wasn't the getting the kids ready for church that was difficult, it was more the fact that he takes care of Ella-Rose while I spend 2 hours teaching the 3-11 year old children at our church. She is very particular about her parents at the moment and screamed hysterically anytime any one of the very willing mothers tried to prize her out of my arms so I could get on with teaching. She couldn't even be bribed with a mandarin... even though she was happy to munch on it while I held her.

So the lesson was a little crazy to say the least... teaching forgiveness to 12 rowdy CTRs and sunbeams, followed by a sharing time of 'forever families' and temples to the whole primary - with Ella-Rose in my arms. Needless to say I was glad to get my heels off after that!

Joseph really made my day when he came out from the bedroom long after the other kids were asleep. He retold me the story I had told them in primary... almost word for word. He told me he learned how to be kind (because the boy had been kind to another boy who had been mean to him). It made me realise not everything I say falls on deaf ears.

Tane usually cooks pancakes for Sunday breakfast. Josh has been learning with him. As he wasn't going to be there I made them for Saturday lunch. There was some pancake mixture left over so while I was talking to Anna-Maria on Skype (she was lucky enough to go to see Grandma and Grandpa with her daddy), Joshua decided to make pikelets... from the leftover mixture.
They did not look too appetising, but he and Joseph enjoyed them. It is neat to see how they are learning little things from their daddy. Tane jokes with them about how they have to cook pancakes for their mission companisons and their own families one day.
We managed the Sunday roast and the chocolate brownie without Tane, but somehow a roast for 3 seems to be almost as much work as a roast for 7 (we usually also have the missionaries every sunday). I realised why it felt like so much work though... as Tane usually does the clean up afterwards... which I really appreciate!! :)
It was pretty funny, because he cooked the same sunday roast for my parents- right down to the corn on the cob and peas. We got all the details on Skype from Anna-Maria. She spent a lot of the afternoon watching and talking to the boys and in some ways it felt like they were in the same room.

More pics the kids took while skyping their sister.

So thanks Tane for spending time with your kids, cooking great meals... and fresh bread, and helping keep the place clean and loving your wife. I love you.  Keep up the great work.