Winter is upon us

Queen's birthday weekend brought frosty mornings and beautiful days and for us heavy dew on the ground and fog over the valley.

 The ballet focus continues with Boogie winning her first cup for her restricted barefoot dance and a first equal in her age group classical.

 

We also saw the Royal New Zealand Ballet's Coppellia  production - lots of fun and Padfoot only fell asleep in the final Act!  Madam, of course, was spellbound.

Boogie had her school cross-country, running around the school twice and finishing mid-field out of the Year three girls. 

Finally - our boy got to start his first rugby season at Petone Rugby Football Club.  He's been doing lots of training drills and is looking forward to his first ripper rugby game.

 Andrew has found himself helping the groups of kiddies with their drills.  His grandfather would be proud!

 We've started doing a little work on the house including replacing rotten barge boards and sorting out the drainage on the property.  However, the nicest was replacing some lead light windows (held in place by the cobwebs) with new ones.

We had a lovely Queens birthday public holiday on Monday - with beautiful (frosty) weather, Andrew got the kids up early and took them fishing of the wharf in Eastbourne.  No fish were harmed in the cause of this adventure.  One book was finished in there absence - by me - Elenor Caton's Lumineries - yay and fabulous!  We then took the kiddos for a walk down to the old Korokoro dam.

Busy first loonnnggg term of 2014

I've been very slack on the blog front.  So this will be a small update that will (hopefully) get me into the rhythm of positing again.  Christmas was spent in Auckland, as usual, but we've signaled that we would like to (after 8  years of commuting every December) to have a Wellington Christmas this year.  Just for a change...

 We had a couple of nice days out on my parents new pride and joy.  Padfoot loved driving the boat with grandad and Boogie enjoyed swimming and snorkling and Andrew loved everything!

I really enjoyed the after dinner walks on the beach and the rock pools.

 The kids are thriving.  Padfoot is in his last time at daycare and will start school on his birthday in August.  Boogie is now in the middle syndicate (Year 3) at school and is loving it.  She has just applied and was accepted into the Enviro-warriors group at school.

I managed to get some small summer vege garden going after our return from Auckland, and got a decent crop of beans, squash and tomatoes.

Andrew has got in a few ocean swims, doing the Capital Classic and his favourite Eastbourne wharf to wharf.  This weekend he and Cedric are in Auckland for the King of the Bays.  Hopefully, next year we'll get Boogie doing the kiddies 200 m swims.

Start of the Capital Classic 2014

Boogie moved into Grade 1 ballet in March and is thrilled to be with good friends and in character shoes!

She has also had a successful start to the ballet competition season.

And then, of course, there was the Katey Perry Jungle Roar 7th birthday party.

Followed by a more civilized jungle-themed birthday dinner out with our BFF.