Cherry blossom at Cornwall Park

In my humble opinion, Cornwall Park is one of Auckland city’s greatest assets.  A massive park right in the city, including endless fields, a working farm, and One Tree Hill.  Today we took a picnic to the park and found masses of cherry blossom’s in bloom.  The girls were delighted to find one low-hanging branch that had flowers ready to drop off with a quick shake, so they had the pink-snow-falling-on-my-head experience.

We spent about three hours picnicing, playing, exploring Acacia Cottage, (one of the oldest timber buildings in New Zealand, and incredibly cute), and reading the paper while the girls played hide and seek.

Grey Lynn Farmers Market

At last!  A farmers market close to home.  Well, that’s not strictly true, when I lived in an apartment in central Wellington there was a farmers market two blocks away, but I was young and child-free and Sunday morning was about sleeping in and reading the paper in bed.  Now, forced out of bed before 9 every weekend morning, we’ve discovered all these extra hours in the day, and free activities like farmers markets are a good place to entertain the little ones for an hour or so. Read more of this post

Five things I’m thrilled my girls can do for themselves

There are loads of milestones in a child’s life.  Walking and talking are all very well, but there are some more practical things that I am just thrilled my two girls can now do for themselves.  Here is my top five: Read more of this post

Rules for surviving a work ski trip

1.  Expect delays: If you leave Auckland at 5pm on a Friday, you will spend a soul-destroying hour sitting in traffic.  You knew this would happen, which makes the whole experience worse.

2.  Expect livestock: You may, driving north of Taumarunui, come across two men and a dog in hot pursuit of a lovely brown goat gamboling across the road.  Stopping in time means Billy Goat Junior won’t be tonight’s dinner.

3.  Expect an emotional time: You might feel very cheerful when you first see the lovely show, but may proceed to disbelief when you put your ski boots on and re-discover how ridiculously heavy and uncomfortable they are.  The thrill of your first little run might be accompanied by deep humiliation when you fall over on your first attempt to use the tow-rope.   Read more of this post

Ballet concert video

The girls had their annual ballet concert back in July, and we have just received the DVD of the performance.  It was 120 minutes long, but we’ve edited it down to about four.  Lulu is wearing the biggest fairy dress in the first performance, so she is easy to pick.  Madeleine is definitely the best dancer in the second performance, so hopefully you can pick her too

Ballet

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