I forgot to say yesterday that I heard on the radio in the morning that Sunday was not only hot in temperature for this time of the year (26 C which is about 79 F) but it felt like 36 C which is about 96 F! The humidity was really high. Must have been all the rain coming today! Last night and pretty much ALL day today was very wet! However, it was still very warm and sticky. It wasn't nice being stuck in the house in the stickiness! Tessa and I made our own play dough and colored it pink. We then tried to make some Christmas decorations and Reuben helped out as well. Tessa decided to use cookie cutters on all the shapes we had already cut out, pretty much mangling them all so ended up with lots of random play dough blobs....one or two stayed in tact after I baked them in the over to make them hard. The activity was kind of reminiscent of Island Dolphin Care for me, where we did lots of play dough making, baking, then decorating!
After picking Libby up from school, Tessa, Libby and I went for a quick swim in the bay, which didn't last too long...Tessa got a little chilly because it was still pretty cloudy. The swings outside have been modified to include a set of rings (hose over the rope tied into circles) and just a lower "surfing" swing for doing tricks on. The last couple nights we've been outside watching the "circus" perform! The monkeys learn new tricks everyday!
Monday, December 13, 2010
Sunday, December 12, 2010
Whoops! Forgot to Blog!
I guess the end of last week was just too busy, writing a blog update just kind of slipped my mind! Let's see...Thursday I played some tennis in the afternoon, and then because it was so hot I went for a swim in the bay right at the house before the tide went too far out. Later, I went to yoga then Thursday night a few of us girls tried out this sports bar in Takapuna that has karaoke every Thursday night! There is also a chance to win $50 every Thursday if you sing karaoke. Unfortunately, we didn't quite know how the winning worked. It's just a raffle of all the numbers on the list where you sign up to sing, so the more songs you sing, the greater your chances or winning! Sure enough, the one guy that sang about 10 songs won the money! Next time we'll sing a lot more songs! Before the drawing all we had done was "All I Want for Christmas is You."
On Friday, in the morning I went to yoga, but brought a bike across on the ferry with me to meet Sophie afterward. We met back at the ferry wharf and cycled to Mission Bay. It was the perfect day to be out and about, nice and sunny but there was a breeze as well to keep us at just the right temperature. We at lunch at Masala, our new favorite Indian restaurant (with $10 lunch specials!) and then had some ice cream. It was a much shorter ride that we though to Mission Bay so we continued on to St. Helier's Bay and then Ladies Bay up a hill to a lookout point. We rode back down the hill and decided to lay on the beach for a little while. It started to get MUCH windier so we started out ride back to the ferry, which proved to be much harder than the way there with the wind blowing straight at us! We ferried back to Bayswater and then decided to lay on the grass for a bit in the sun, since it didn't seem to be as windy there and we watched the sun go down later on.
Saturday was another nice warm summery day and Sophie, An, Astrid and I went to a party in Coyle Park put on by George FM radio station. There was a DJ providing the musical entertainment and people dancing and sitting around just enjoying the afternoon. After that we made our way to the Auckland Domain on the other side of the city where we attended Christmas in the Park, a televised event where there are hundreds of people! One of the performers was Altiyan Childs, the newest Australian XFactor winner, among other locally famous performers. The event finished with a pretty nice firework display.
On Sunday, just to keep up the Christmasy activities, I played tennis as usual, but it was dress-up tennis where most people showed up in Santa costumes or other festive attire. It was soooo hot though, I did wear red and green and my $2 Santa hat with white braids from Christmas in the park but it was not too fun playing in it!
I can't believe it's summer again! The kids finish school on Thursday for their summer holidays!! It's about 6 weeks break. The university students have already finished for their summer! They are starting to get excited about Santa coming and Tessa is even talking about Santa lots. At school the kids wrote letter to Santa, and last week, Santa wrote back. It was a cute letter and Libby especially LOVED it! She wanted me to read it over and over again to her. But what I couldn't get over was that at the end of the letter he asked for a glass of milk, that's usual and water for Rudolf and his SHEEP! And there was a picture of Rudolf pulling the sleigh with a bunch of sheep! I asked Julia if the New Zealand-bound sleigh was always pulled by sheep but she said it was a novelty to her as well. Maybe the school was just trying to confuse the kids! Or the reindeer were on holiday? Who knows!
On Friday, in the morning I went to yoga, but brought a bike across on the ferry with me to meet Sophie afterward. We met back at the ferry wharf and cycled to Mission Bay. It was the perfect day to be out and about, nice and sunny but there was a breeze as well to keep us at just the right temperature. We at lunch at Masala, our new favorite Indian restaurant (with $10 lunch specials!) and then had some ice cream. It was a much shorter ride that we though to Mission Bay so we continued on to St. Helier's Bay and then Ladies Bay up a hill to a lookout point. We rode back down the hill and decided to lay on the beach for a little while. It started to get MUCH windier so we started out ride back to the ferry, which proved to be much harder than the way there with the wind blowing straight at us! We ferried back to Bayswater and then decided to lay on the grass for a bit in the sun, since it didn't seem to be as windy there and we watched the sun go down later on.
Saturday was another nice warm summery day and Sophie, An, Astrid and I went to a party in Coyle Park put on by George FM radio station. There was a DJ providing the musical entertainment and people dancing and sitting around just enjoying the afternoon. After that we made our way to the Auckland Domain on the other side of the city where we attended Christmas in the Park, a televised event where there are hundreds of people! One of the performers was Altiyan Childs, the newest Australian XFactor winner, among other locally famous performers. The event finished with a pretty nice firework display.
On Sunday, just to keep up the Christmasy activities, I played tennis as usual, but it was dress-up tennis where most people showed up in Santa costumes or other festive attire. It was soooo hot though, I did wear red and green and my $2 Santa hat with white braids from Christmas in the park but it was not too fun playing in it!
I can't believe it's summer again! The kids finish school on Thursday for their summer holidays!! It's about 6 weeks break. The university students have already finished for their summer! They are starting to get excited about Santa coming and Tessa is even talking about Santa lots. At school the kids wrote letter to Santa, and last week, Santa wrote back. It was a cute letter and Libby especially LOVED it! She wanted me to read it over and over again to her. But what I couldn't get over was that at the end of the letter he asked for a glass of milk, that's usual and water for Rudolf and his SHEEP! And there was a picture of Rudolf pulling the sleigh with a bunch of sheep! I asked Julia if the New Zealand-bound sleigh was always pulled by sheep but she said it was a novelty to her as well. Maybe the school was just trying to confuse the kids! Or the reindeer were on holiday? Who knows!
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| Lookout from Ladies Bay |
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| Bayswater marina and the bridge Friday afternoon |
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| busy, busy Christmas in the Park |
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Wednesday, December 8, 2010
Baking Again
Today was another fairly average day. Tessa and I went to Narrow Neck beach and played on the slide, swings, watch some dogs play in the water and some people swim as well. We came home, she went down for a nap and I tidied the house, hung out the washing and baked some cookies for Julia's book club. She was having the meeting here tonight, and apparently the do dessert pretty big during book club meetings! She brought home some NZ cake/dessert thing, or the ingredients to prepare it. I'm forgetting the name now but she said, like we have pumpkin pie, NZ has this. I'll probably try some tomorrow but by 10:30 I wasn't too hungry so I didn't try any tonight.
Tessa answered the TV today! Libby turned on her program when she got home from school, with hosts that ask questions about the things they are doing and start the show with "Hi, how are you today?" And Tessa right away relied, "good!" Libby and I laughed and she smiled, half knowing what she did was cute because it was silly, and half still thinking the guy on the TV heard her respond...she has also newly discovered the word "mine" and uses it quite frequently now anytime anything new lands in her hands, and sometimes even if she just wants it be hers. Slowly but surely, she is learning what it means to be a 2-yr-old!
Tessa answered the TV today! Libby turned on her program when she got home from school, with hosts that ask questions about the things they are doing and start the show with "Hi, how are you today?" And Tessa right away relied, "good!" Libby and I laughed and she smiled, half knowing what she did was cute because it was silly, and half still thinking the guy on the TV heard her respond...she has also newly discovered the word "mine" and uses it quite frequently now anytime anything new lands in her hands, and sometimes even if she just wants it be hers. Slowly but surely, she is learning what it means to be a 2-yr-old!
Tuesday, December 7, 2010
Missing Football Season :(
Tonight, unfortunately, the Patriots game was on exactly during working hours. Well, it was more like this afternoon, but right before I had to go pick up the kids from school. However, watching the highlights made me very happy, but also a bit sad that I was missing football season. It's nice to have a Sunday tradition, I suppose I've just kind of replaced watching football with playing tennis. It'll just have to do for now!
Tonight was the 2nd round of the business house tournament at the club, but because the first week was rained out, we're squeezing those for games into these next weeks so that we don't have to play the week of Christmas. Tonight we played 6 20 minute games, so the dinner following was a bit late! Don't think I actually ate anything until 10pm! It was a nice yummy baked ham though, so worth the wait and worked up quite a hunger playing tennis! I actually missed most of the first game, someone filled in for me, because both John and Julia were stuck in really bad traffic coming home. Apparently, there was some kind of accident on Lake Rd (the only main road in a out of this peninsula) so the cars weren't moving at all! They both rang and said they'd be a bit late as the kids were finishing dinner. As much more time started to pass, I decided to get Tessa and Libby in the bath and ready for bed. Then Reuben went in the bath after them. They rang again at about 6:30 when Reuben was having his bath to say that they'd tried going back into the traffic, but it was still not really moving, so they went to get something to eat in Takapuna and would hopefully be home as close to 7pm as possible for me to get to tennis! I had all three kids ready for bed and Tessa even quiet in bed by 7:20 when they arrived home, so didn't do too badly!
Libby went to gymnastics with a friend after school today, so it was also an accomplishment to get here there even a few minutes early before 3:30. Usually we haven't even left school yet by then, when they get out at 3pm. Tessa and I did our usual park morning this morning and she was telling stories again in the car. She's trying to say more and more words, and knows a lot, but when she tries to compile them into sentences, somehow nothing makes any sense. She just makes up her own language sometimes. Soon, I think she'll just have a breakthrough and start speaking real, understandable sentences because she know what she wants to say and usually has a lot to express!
Tonight was the 2nd round of the business house tournament at the club, but because the first week was rained out, we're squeezing those for games into these next weeks so that we don't have to play the week of Christmas. Tonight we played 6 20 minute games, so the dinner following was a bit late! Don't think I actually ate anything until 10pm! It was a nice yummy baked ham though, so worth the wait and worked up quite a hunger playing tennis! I actually missed most of the first game, someone filled in for me, because both John and Julia were stuck in really bad traffic coming home. Apparently, there was some kind of accident on Lake Rd (the only main road in a out of this peninsula) so the cars weren't moving at all! They both rang and said they'd be a bit late as the kids were finishing dinner. As much more time started to pass, I decided to get Tessa and Libby in the bath and ready for bed. Then Reuben went in the bath after them. They rang again at about 6:30 when Reuben was having his bath to say that they'd tried going back into the traffic, but it was still not really moving, so they went to get something to eat in Takapuna and would hopefully be home as close to 7pm as possible for me to get to tennis! I had all three kids ready for bed and Tessa even quiet in bed by 7:20 when they arrived home, so didn't do too badly!
Libby went to gymnastics with a friend after school today, so it was also an accomplishment to get here there even a few minutes early before 3:30. Usually we haven't even left school yet by then, when they get out at 3pm. Tessa and I did our usual park morning this morning and she was telling stories again in the car. She's trying to say more and more words, and knows a lot, but when she tries to compile them into sentences, somehow nothing makes any sense. She just makes up her own language sometimes. Soon, I think she'll just have a breakthrough and start speaking real, understandable sentences because she know what she wants to say and usually has a lot to express!
Sunday, December 5, 2010
Lots of Tennis!
On Saturday morning I was up bright an early and at yoga by 7am for two and a half hours of pranayama breathing! Let's just say it definitely woke me up! We even had to have a bar of soap and a wrap bandage. The soap we had to pin to the wall by keep our shoulders back while at the same time keeping our chest lifted and chin tucked, holding the wrapped bandaged under it. This was not the most comfortable position to sit in for an extended period of time, hence why pranayama takes years of practice and training your body to be comfortable in the positions.
After yoga I came home and made a manicotti for tennis interclub. I played as a reserve for one of the teams (women's doubles then mixed doubles) and as the home team, we bring a dish to feed everyone after we play. I arrive at about 12:45 for short warm up and then started playing right at 1pm. I played with Julie, who was also a reserve playing her first interclub match. We ended up taking the first two sets to tie-brakers and then finally winning in the 3rd set! Then we went straight into mixed doubles, as that match had taken forever already! I played with Neil and we also went to three sets! Unfortunately we ended up losing in the 3rd set in that match. By the time we were finally finished our match it was after 5pm! So it was a VERY long day of tennis in the sun, which decided to come out right as we started! It had been pleasantly cloudy the whole morning.
After tennis I attended an xmas bbq! Kind of a strange phenomenon for me really...it's pretty difficult to associate a summer bbq with Christmas time...but I guess that's something I'll have to get used to because it's what everyone does! The tennis club is having an xmas bbq after Sunday doubles next weekend!
After yoga I came home and made a manicotti for tennis interclub. I played as a reserve for one of the teams (women's doubles then mixed doubles) and as the home team, we bring a dish to feed everyone after we play. I arrive at about 12:45 for short warm up and then started playing right at 1pm. I played with Julie, who was also a reserve playing her first interclub match. We ended up taking the first two sets to tie-brakers and then finally winning in the 3rd set! Then we went straight into mixed doubles, as that match had taken forever already! I played with Neil and we also went to three sets! Unfortunately we ended up losing in the 3rd set in that match. By the time we were finally finished our match it was after 5pm! So it was a VERY long day of tennis in the sun, which decided to come out right as we started! It had been pleasantly cloudy the whole morning.
After tennis I attended an xmas bbq! Kind of a strange phenomenon for me really...it's pretty difficult to associate a summer bbq with Christmas time...but I guess that's something I'll have to get used to because it's what everyone does! The tennis club is having an xmas bbq after Sunday doubles next weekend!
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