sculptures and friends glowing

the girls had their orchestra session first thing which went well.  they’ve got a new teacher at last and have their first concert planned so hopefully it’s all systems go

when the girls got back we piled in to the car and drove to a sculpture garden about half an hour away and then this man let us through his secret door in to a fantastic garden

it was quite strange to see daffodils in full bloom (it’s the equivalent of end of January/beginning of February here)

and kezia got to work photoing things

in fact, kezia took so many photos she has said she’s going to write a blog post about it, so i’ll not spoil it by showing you too many of the pics now

but needless to say it was a lovely garden and great sculptures

then we drove down the road and had a picnic before going in search of a geocache further down the road.

this involved a walk round an old maori pa site which is the equivalent of a hillfort. making it a proper archaeological significant site (quite rare in NZ)

and it had some nice waterfalls

and cockrels

then we rushed back to host our lovely friends bruce and fleur and their lovely daughters.

we had takeaway from the fush and chup shop (fleur is a kiwi and kindly pronounced it like that for my amusement)

and after tea we ate this tremendous cake in honour of my impending birthday tomorrow.

here i am doing a big smile and then blowing out.  neither of these are my normal expression (at least not any more)

we also had big fun with the ultraviolet light bulb.  who knew that money, passports and credit cards had so much secret hidden writing on them …

unfortunately the camera wasn’t really up to catching the effect of the UV light on fleur’s teeth and eyes which seems to glow rather strangely in the light, much to the worryment of everyone present (especially her youngest daughter)

much fun was had by all. 

see ya !