March in pictures...

Zach as a dragon for his pirates and princesses party at Kindy:

Harry and Jess playing guess the Jelly Belly flavour.  Although for Harry, the fun was all in finding imaginative ways of putting it in Jess's mouth while she had her eyes closed!

My first real life look at a Weta, on Sam's deck:

Watching the big boys do their tricks at the skate park in Browns Bay:

Such adorable cuteness!

Zach after getting Charlie The Ram (CTR) at church for being enthusiastic in Primary.

In one of our favorite places - the library:

Zach got to do his own face paints at Kindy.  He's a spotty T-Rex:

The girls got bunk beds again.  Here they made them into a camapavan which also turns into a boat and they were off to Waiheke :D

Tilly and Zach went to the Polkadots Junior Explorer's concert:

And Tilly turned 3! But more on that later...

Kindy Wheelathon

Zach had a Wheelathon fundraiser for Kindy in February.  It was actually held at Lani's school, so all three loved going along with their scooters.  They lined up and had to do 10 laps of the playground each.  Not that Tilly had any idea what was going on - she just followed the crowd around happily on her Barbie scooter.  Zach and Lani went hard out with their competitive streak shining brightly!  They love being on their scooters, so it was great fun for them, especially for Tilly, because she doesn't get to go on hers much.  I walk to school while Lani and Zach scoot, but Tilly's too slow on hers so she's still in the push chair (although I make her walk up the hills now!).  They each got a certificate of completion and a lolly.

We also got to see the new art installation at the school - pillars made from tiles that the students made.  They carved a picture into a clay tile and then it was fired and glazed with a colour and put on the outside of a set of pillars along one of the paths into the school.  We had a little hunt for Lani's after the wheelathon.  Hers is the green one with a butterfly on it:

Castor Bay to Milford

Castor Bay is definitely our favorite beach near us.  It just works perfectly.  There's a park, grass, nice sand (very rarely any seaweed), rocks, trees, shallow water for a long way out, sheltered from the wind... perfect.

The next one down is Milford and ever since I told the kids that when the tide was low enough you could get round to Milford beach they've been dying to do it.  And asking every time we went if they could.  So finally, one time we turned up and the tide was really low, so they begged as usual and I decided we'd give it a go.

They absolutely loved it.  Although it was a bit of a rougher walk than I'd imagined, with lots of scraggy rocks to climb over, so talk a bit longer than I'd thought.  But, that did make for great little rock pools all over the place that they liked to stop and have a look in.  We got almost all the way around - far enough for me to see that the last bit involved quite a lot of climbing, and since I'm not sure of the tides here yet, I was a teeny bit concerned about it coming back in too fast and us getting into trouble.  So we turned back, having at least seen all the way around :)  (by the way, it turned out I needn't have worried, we got back with hours to spare before the tide turned and even when it did it came back in very very slowly!)

The beginning - at the Castor Bay side

Inspecting a rock pool - and asking if we could take the cockles home for Daddy to have for dinner!

Nice flat sandy bit in between two rocky bits we had to climb across

The rocky bits! Much more rough and jagged on the surface than it looks here

A great adventure for the kids :)

February

A lot happened in February - which you can probably tell because it's nearly the end of March and I'm only now getting round to blogging...

Mum + Dad + Jess + Sam's wedding = Awesome! (Would have been with 2 extra exclamation marks if Cait and Amy could have come too!)

(Side note: not being able to so anything with the photos yet because of issues with the computer - the complete opposite of awesome!)

Anyway, to kick off February, Zach got his first proper hair cut at the hairdressers.  He thought it was so cool, especially because Daddy was having his done at the same time and the hairdresser had clippers that barely made any noise at all (not like Mummy's...).

Goes without saying that we spent every sunny minute we could at the beach...

Waiting for Lani to finish in her classroom so we could go to the beach

Mum, Dad and Jess arrived... it was all a blur of lovely-but-busy-ness trying to fit in spending time with everyone, preparing for Sam's wedding, having the hen night, having the wedding and then looking for blue carafes for Jessie's wedding :D

It was all lovely, of course, and awful to say goodbye to them when they had to go back to England after just two weeks :(

Sam's wedding was really amazing.  The weather had been terrible right up until the night before (and through the night) and then the sun came out on Friday morning and the rest of the day was gorgeous, absolutely perfect for their beach wedding in Waiheke.  The whole thing was beautiful and calm, small and friendly.  Jess and I sang Entwined by Tim Myers, with Renee accompanying us on the guitar.  I also got to take some pictures, which I am dying to get working on, but am waiting on photoshop being reinstalled on the computer, so photos to follow later... I wasn't the main photographer as I was a part of the wedding, so that was pretty great to be able to take pictures, but without the pressure :D

I started walking a bit more (see widget at the top of my blog).  Just trying to work in a bit of exercise into my normal routine, since we drive everywhere where we live - nothing is within normal comfortable walking distance.  So sometimes we walk/scooter to school, although it takes 35mins to get there.  If we don't we park at the supermarket near school and walk the rest - about a 10-15 min walk/scoot.  I'd put on a stone since arriving in NZ and in the first two weeks of just doing these little extra walks I lost half of that stone.  I was pretty surprised.  Just have to keep it up to get back in shape.  And I'm not at all obsessed about it - honestly - I still eat junk and have a bit of chocolate when I feel like it, and know I haven't got much to lose, just want to get back to what I was.

January in a nutshell

So I just realised I haven't posted properly since the New Year, so time to go about fixing that.  I don't think much happened in January, it can pretty much be summed up with "We went to the beach".  It was school and kindy holidays and any sunny day we got, we went to the beach.  The summer wasn't actually particularly good this year, so we would have a few miserable days every week or so, but still, much better weather than our summers in England!

We all love the beach.  Our favorite one is Castor Bay - it's nice and sheltered, smooth sand without much seaweed or stones/shells, there's a grassy bit with a park and also rocks to go explore.  The kids love to go and just play and it's one of the few places I can leave them to it and they don't argue with each other - it's magic!

This summer they've been getting used to going in the water.  Tilly has taken to it straight away and will go in at any chance she gets.  She's scarily fearless and if someone is in that she can go to she'll just wade right out to them until it's up to her neck and then just laughs as the waves bounce her around.  Fortunately she's got a pretty good sense of balance in the water and has very rarely been pushed over.

Zach has taken a bit more convincing to go in the water, he's pretty scared of it, but will go in with an adult with a bit of coaxing and has gotten much better over the last couple of months.  He prefers to stay on the beach playing in little pools or exploring the rocks.

Leilani has come along way this summer and is much more confident in the water, especially since she had a few weeks of swimming lessons at school.  She likes to go in, but a lot of the time before we go tells me she probably won't go in - I think she doesn't like the idea of it and likes to stay clean(ish) and dry on the sand.  But if anyone goes in, she'll go with them.

One of the times we turned up at Castor Bay and they had a van full of toys out for kids to play with  - it's a scheme run by the council during the holidays to help get kids outside and playing.  My 3 had a lot of fun playing on a whole load of different things than they're used to and had a great time using the wagon to go down the hill :)