Summer days

Been playing with my sewing machine.  Made some shorts for daycare for Missy Moo.  It was windy this day...

Went up to Omaha and stayed in a friend's bach for a couple of nights.  Lovely beach, lots of expensive boats and baches full of young, slim and beautiful people.  We felt just a tad out of place! ;-)  I decided the Oratia Farmers Market is just as good, if not better, than the Matakana one which had way too many people for my comfort.

Watching someone load their boat onto the trailer.

The simple bach we stayed in.

Views of the beach.



I've been making some pages for the Southern Cross Kids Camp drive that Trina's doing.  They are very easy to do and rather addictive.  I did 36.  I would have liked to do more, but they needed to get posted off today.

Missy Moo is three tomorrow so I need to bake a cake.  I've been given instructions - it must be PINK with PINK candles.  I think I can work with that brief.

Train trips and Christmas morning

Took a trip into town on the train the other weekend. Mr 6 was delighted! Had the most delicious gelato from Valentino's in the Ferry Building.

Thought this sequence of photos was quite amusing...

The night before Christmas

Mr 6 wakes up at 6am - starts sorting his into a pile...

Mum persuades him to just open one while waiting for Missy Moo to wake up. ('Scuse the jammies). *yawn*

Mummy gets dressed and caffeinated...

Missy Moo modeling her front pack I made (needs some adjustments) while picking her nose... charming.

I'm busy relaxing.... toodle pip.

weekend away

FIL has been in hospital for a gall bladder removal, so we went up north to see the whanau on the weekend.

We decided to go for a $2.00 thrill and check out the new toll road and tunnel. Reckon for $2.00 the tunnel should have been longer! ;-)












On the way up we thought we'd visit Tawharanui to see what it was like. DH wanted to vet it for photographic possibilities and I was keen to see what it was like for camping. It was a lovely crisp, clear day.

The kids and I played on the beach while DH wandered round the rocks.

Both of us have favourable reports about it so looks like we will re-visit it.

After lunch we headed further north to Whangarei. Tim complained about having a sore tummy. I thought he was just grumbling until he chundered all over the back seat, his car seat and the foot well just as we came into Warkworth. *gag* So we had to pull into the rest area and clean him up. Amazing what you can do with tissues and wet wipes! Thankfully we had some clean clothes for him. DH was ready to give up and go home but we'd come so far, and I knew SIL and MIL were keen for our visit. So we pressed on. Tim seemed ok - a bit pale but he thought it was cool I let him have chewing gum.

"I hold it with my teeth and don't swallow it eh Mum?"

We got there with no further puking incidents and I wrote it off as car sickness, but he did have another go after dinner so I sent him to bed early. He was fine the next day.

We visited FIL several times and spent a quiet weekend with them all. The kids enjoyed the novel toys, I enjoyed them messing up somebody else's lounge for a change!

Here they are Sunday morning before we headed out for church.

Here's SIL teasing her brother by giving him a kiss.

Here is MIL watching her kids being silly! :-)

FIL has been allowed to go home today, so everyone is pleased about that.

A holiday in Thames

After spending Wednesday morning filling up our car with gear and kids we set off for Thames.

View Larger Map

DD? Check.

DS? Check.

Kitchen sink? Check.










There was a bit of traffic on the road. We are used to having holidays outside of the school holiday period so there was some muttering about traffic from the driver. ;-)

Still, we made good time and audio-books are an excellent invention for keeping kids (and drivers) amused.










The appearance of clouds as we turned off Highway 2 delighted the Mad Photographer but didn't exactly fill me with joy.















The new tent got set up without getting rained on though. The kids were very excited about it. DS got into his bed as soon as I made it up! We found a leak in our airbed (just what you need to discover) - I'd foolishly lent it to some folks and they'd tried to mend it but not very successfully. So we had to head back into Thames to try and find a replacement. Fortunately the friendly Hammer Hardware folks found me one and even checked to see it had a bung in it ... no. So they opened another one and purloined the bung out of that one.










After the bed acquisition we set off for the Kauaeranga Valley. The autumn colour was lovely in the afternoon light.














We did a couple of short walks around the visitor centre and up further into the valley.

This one included a model dam. The valley was extensively logged for kauri to fuel the booming Thames goldrush in the late 1800's.















We crossed a swing bridge over the Kauaeranga River. DS was very brave - he did stop halfway over and say he didn't want to go any further but after a bit of encouragement he did go on. I hate these bridges. If I hadn't been carrying DD I'd have gone over it with my eye's shut! On the way back we decided to boulder hop over the river instead ;-) Wet feet seemed preferable!














The Billy Goat Falls.
Not the greatest of photos - difficult with the light. The falls are at the top of the picture, in the distance.















When kauri loggers tried to transport kauri over these 180 metre high falls they shattered. Doh. Eventually they built a tramway to transport them.

Another walk we did was to the Wentworth Falls over near Whangamata. You would think with all the stuff we'd brought that I would have put in the back pack for DD, but guess what? I didn't!

So she started off with lots of energy....














but quickly degenerated into lots of "Mummy up" requests...









The falls were nice though.














While Daddy went down to the bottom of the falls to take photos, we stayed at the lookout and amused ourselves with the self-timer and video function on my camera.









We also visited the Broken Hills area which was a thriving goldfield from 1893. By this time DD was over walking.










So the holiday was nice in parts.

On the bad side:

• DS managed to work himself up into puking after a coughing fit one night... all over the bedding.
• DD is scared of moreporks and anything that makes a sound in the night. Everytime they called she said, "No like dat sound" and came running into our bed. Most inconvenient. Especially when Mummy and Daddy had ..uh.. other plans.
• My ankles are a mass of sand fly bites.

On the plus side:

• I got to see my friend S who has moved to Thames.
• We did enjoy some family time and walks together.
• I didn't think of work at all. (Not looking forward to going back tomorrow).
• We had a swim at Miranda.
• I had the best sleep back in my own bed when we came home. ;-) For months I've been waking at 3am-4am and staying awake for awhile so it was nice to have a full night's sleep.

Summer Jam

Following Sharon and Hannah's outing to the strawberry farm, I decided we should go too. Of course this was in no way related to the fact I have some strawberry paper and stamps at home. No really.

The kids weren't that enthusiastic pickers to my surprise! But we did get a bucket full - about 1.5 kilo I think. I made 4 jars of strawberry jam and 5 jars of plum+strawberry.


I think the size of the patch was a bit overwhelming for them.


DD is in there up to her armpits! Can you tell she isn't that enthused?

However, they both enjoyed the ice cream we got when we paid for the strawberries. There was also a tractor in the shop that DS played on while I waited in line. He had the idea that he'd get to ride on the tractors that were driving around the farm so was a bit miffed when we walked! "Those are John Deere tractors Mum" he told me.

Here is my pumpkin in the garden with clothes peg for comparison.

Pity the kids don't like pumpkin ;-)

A tag

My friend Jenny tagged me to tell you 10 of my husband's favorite things. After censoring the less family-friendly answers, this is what I got out of him. *snort* I asked why his family wasn't on the list and he said, "Well you said favourite things."

1. Photography - well this one was obvious. He's a landscape/wildlife person. Doesn't do people or street photography type stuff. Tends to the more traditional end of the spectrum in terms of style and doesn't think too much of overworked Photoshopped-to-the-nth-degree type stuff. Which makes it interesting because it seems like the PSNZ is tending towards that sort of stuff when it gives out awards these days. He would love to have more time to explore this hobby. *aside* It amuses me that the 3 guys I had relationships with (and married one of them), all were into photography. In fact one of them now owns a glamour photography business.
   
2. Big white lens - a lust after item! He does have one BWL, but he'd like a bigger one to get up close and personal to birds with.
   
3. Computers/ gadgets - he's really good at electronics stuff (it's his job) so luckily for me he can do some useful things when the computer dies.
   
4. Music - he plays the piano, the piano accordion and is teaching himself the guitar. He listens to music regularly.
   
5. Food - his tastes have expanded as he has got older and upon leaving home.
   
6. Birds (the feathered kind) - particularly natives.
   
7. The bush - this is his happy place. Whereas I'm a beach/water person, he prefers the bush.
   
8. Trains - where do you think DS got his obsession from!? He's planning to build a model train one day.
   
9. Chocolate - dark of course, like me ;)
   
10. Coffee - he makes a really good flat white, as good as any barista. He scorns these machines that do all the work for you and has one that requires his input. It really spoils me for anything else! LOL!
    

Cheering time!

Hello blog my old friend
I've come to post on you again

My IRL friend, stamping-guru-scrapping-goddess-extraordinaire Rachel has reached Challenge 8 of Project Scrap Away which is being hosted by Scrap 'n' Crop. Hooray! I am watching what she's doing with this latest challenge which is to use B&W and NO colour. Tricky.

There have been some awesome entries for this Project Scrap Away.

And now she needs some help to get points, so pretty please... here's what you can do.

Go to her blog and leave a comment.

Post about her and Project Scrap Away on your blog.

Leave a comment on the Project Scrap Away blog : Rachel's Friend + a link to your blog.

As for me - I've been doing various things. Sewing some bags, going to birthday parties, making some cards... just busy and not really feeling like blogging much. I have lots of ideas for posts but not much time to sit down to do it! I did make a bag for my Cuttlebug.


















DS has gone up north to stay with his gran and granddad so I have one very bored little girl who doesn't know what to do with herself and who follows me around getting into everything I try to do. She's adding more and more words to her vocab. The latest is "darti" and "guk" for dirty and yuk. (Said most often when changing nappies. In fact, she's started to tell me when her nap is "darti").
DH has got some lurg we've all had... made worse by the fact he's male and won't take any sick days.

So he's in bed (with his MP3 player). He pointed out to me that he now has a gallery up at one of the forums he posts on. "Maybe you'd like to put a link on your blog," he says.

Maybe I would!

My super talented photographer husband's Gallery!