Sunday seemed like a good day to go for a hike. We’ve got a holiday coming up soon with lots of walking planned so we’ve been wanting to get out a bit more and have Alayna get used to longer treks. With a decent looking weather forecast we set our sights on the New Zealand […]
Just So Festival
A festival aimed at families where we get to camp in the beautiful Kaitoke Regional park and take part in all sorts of events including a madcap tribal tournament? Sounds great! The inaugural New Zealand edition of the Just So Festival took place over the last weekend of February and we had a blast 🙂 […]
Lets go to Newtown!
The Newtown Festival came around again so we had an afternoon walking around the stalls and checking out the sights and sounds. We parked up near Catherine and Paul’s (amazingly finding a park quite quickly) and went for a quick visit to say hi and because Alayna likes visiting her Aunty and Uncle. Later on […]
Mum’s birthday and driving north
Our final day in Timaru and the main reason we’d come down, Mum’s birthday. The morning was spent preparing food and getting everything ready for brunch as a bevy of family arrived. There were copious pancakes and croissants, fruit and Christmas mince pies. And then it was time for a birthday cake to be presented. […]
Strawberry Fare
Our trip down south coincided with the Waimate Strawberry Fare, a celebration of the local crop that has become a well known event. We parked at the home of Waimate legendary teacher Mary Firth (also fantastic Aunty) and headed inside for a chat. Mary produced a suitcase full of interesting things for Alayna to play […]
Timaru for a few days
From Hanmer Springs we continued on towards Timaru with a couple of stops in Christchurch, one to pick up some duplo we’d bid for on TradeMe and a second stop at Riccarton Mall to stretch the legs. We were looking for some new shoes for Alayna and found a pair on big discount at Rebel […]
The kiwifruit incident
We left St Arnaud in the morning with a plan to do a morning walk before lunch. This worked out quite well other than a couple of incidents, one during the walk and one afterwards. Lake Rotoroa was the first stop and we had lovely views from the pier and got to watch a swan […]
St Arnaud, Lake Rotoiti, Mount Robert and a fire alarm
Day two of our holiday and more walking in store. We again took the Black Valley walk and had a look around the lake shore. This morning’s destination was the Brunner Peninsula Nature Walk and as we neared the start point we could see a group of people congregated at the lake side taking in […]
A big boat, driving and a forest walk
Our December family holiday saw us take an early morning ferry from Wellington heading to the South Island. Earlier in the year I had won a return sailing with Bluebridge and our first journey across Cook Strait was taken on the Strait Feronia. We spent a lot of time in the family room which we […]
A photowalk and Bird of the Year
With longer days and the promise of warmer weather we’ve been getting out and about making the most of the opportunities outdoors. Earlier this month was the latest Scott Kelby worldwide photowalk and the Wellington event took place in Petone. This was the first time Keryn and Alayna have joined in and we set off […]
And now 2
Alayna is now 2 years old which meant a party and lots of celebrating. Alayna recieved lots of cool presents including loads of clothes, many great books and games (the fishing game from Aunty Bridget and the clan Burdett is fantastic). There were a number of gifts that were made rather than bought such as […]
Re:Lux
We’ve now visited the Lux festival three times this week. On Wednesday evening there was some rain about so I headed into the city to try and get some photos of lights and reflections. Unfortunately (for me anyway) the rain was light and didn’t hang around so there wasn’t much in the way of pools […]