we had a good family day today
it started with us all piling in to the car and going to the local music centre where the girls have their orchestra lessons on a saturday morning
today was the annual concert and AGM (sneaky way of making sure people attended the boring meeting bit by including it in the middle of the proceedings)
the girls did really well in their pieces. the other exciting thing is that esther won the competition to design the new glenfield music centre logo. although this isn’t exactly how her winning entry looked, it’s based on her idea, which is very cool (and a useful introduction to how the world of design works – ideas are the key thing!)
once that was all done and dusted we headed home for lunch (via the pottery place to pick up the stuff the girls did last week – i’ll show you pictures of them in the week)
and then, because the weather wasn’t too bad and we can, we headed up to Sullivans Bay which is where we spent new year’s day nearly 9 months ago now.
we parked up the hill and went for a circular walk
here’s a kereru, the native new zealand pigeon in a tree. can you see it ?
it’s quite a hefty lump so you can hear it and see the wobbling about before you see the real thing. much nicer than the british pigeon.
the walk was very good, although really wet and slippery because of all the rain
here’s a map in case you want to go, but let us know if you are going and we’ll show you the way
the views were fab. such views usually require a hike up a hill and this was no exception, but worth it.
here we are avoiding getting our feet messy. but failing
and here’s some family portraits as we haven’t had any for a while
and then we went through a field of new zealand lambs
so here’s some pictures of them
as you can see, it was typical auckland day – hot and cold, wet and dry, cloudy and sunny, all within a few minutes
after our walk we headed down to the beach for some fizzy pop and biscuits
then we went for a walk down to a little island you can only walk to at low tide. which it was.
kezia found this which she knew to be a kina (or New Zealand sea urchin)
apparently you can eat the insides raw which is a local delicacy. I don’t think they’ve got the poison featured in sea slugs (read here) but i don’t fancy eating one raw myself although we did see a few people harvesting them
we also saw loads of starfishes
here’s the little island
on the way back (once we knew we weren’t going to get cut off by the tide) we did some crabbing.
esther loves picking up crabs for which i blame my brother in law !
here’s a couple she caught. i think that’s geoffrey tucker (above) and valerie (below) you are looking at there
and graham
and here’s a teeny one that kezia was brave enough to pick up
then it was time to make the 40 minute drive home so we could head out to our local favourite restaurant for our celebratory dinner
everyone has had various things to celebrate over the last couple of months, and we’ve missed our 9 month and 10 month anniversaries so we thought it time to go out. so we did.
whilst there we raised our glasses to my cousin dawn in the UK who is getting married today in York to Eric. It’s a shame we’re missing all the fun of a family gathering, but that’s the down side of living on the other side of the planet.
so there we are. a good family day. and one in which everyone had a jolly time in some good sea air. hoorah.