wednesday – muriwai and other stuff

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another fun packed day

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the girls went off to school and once the bathrooms were cleared the rest of us ventured out

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after breakfast (outdoors) we drove over to Muriwai for a walk in the bush, up some hills and over to see the Gannet colony

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luckily you don’t get the smell in these photos. especially relevant as it was quite windy and we were downwind.

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we dodged rain showers

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jane joined us for the morning section of the day which was great, but had to leave us alone in the afternoon to do girl school stuff

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we had to dodge waves to get back to the car park which was good (and thankfully all visitors reached the other side with dry feet)

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we went to a golf course for lunch which was nice

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then, after jane left we went to a vineyard for some wine tasting, but then got stage fright so we just had coffees and hot water (cheaper and more sober option – but we did have a glass of matua wine with our evening meal to make up for it)

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this is the same place we were at last Saturday for the phoenix foundation concert

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then we went cross country back to Albany.  on the way we went past kim dot com’s house for a gawp.  we didn’t see him

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here are some brussel sprouts (photo taken by my dad).   we were in the shopping maul (sic) to get dad a mobile broadband dongle thing

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we had to pick up esther from tennis so we had a quick walk at mairangi bay

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the beach was busy (for new zealand) with a life saving school doing some training

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here’s the tennis

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this evening esther’s been to her church youth group and kezia had a meet the teacher evening.  the rest of us stayed at home and wrote diaries/played with computer things

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here’s pearl the dog who has still not eaten marjorie (thankfully) although marjorie was very brave and gave her a tummy tickle.

and here’s a baby praying mantis which was on a garden chair

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dad and marjorie seem to have avoided any jet lag and are completely naturalised.  excellent!  (although dad is sitting alongside me and just said he feels really tired – but it is nearly 10pm on day 2 for them in New Zealand!)