Wellington Christmas Parade

Who doesn't love a parade?? Once again the big girls participated in the Wellington Christmas Parade and this year Daddy was a part of it too! Josie, her friend Anna, Ellie and I really enjoyed watching from the sidelines as the city put on a show for us. 

I just LOVE a marching band! The high schools here don't typically have one, nor the universities to the best of my knowledge, so I was surprised and thrilled when these guys came around the corner.

Wellington pulled out all the stops and we had a lovely sunny day for the parade, unlike last year when the girls were freezing in their costumes.

First up from our family was Katie as a butterfly.

Pippa was with Katie but she was a flower.

And this is Tessa - a star - marching with the Musical Stars float.

And Isabel also on the float (she's the one waving with the purple watch band).

Finally we saw Daddy (aka Peter Rabbit) and Meggie and her friend Olivia as Flopsy and Mopsy.  The day after the parade the Wellington paper ran a story on the front page about it and although we didn't rate a picture (Santa got that honor) Dugald did get a mention from a four-year-old girl who was quoted as saying Santa wasn't her favorite character in the parade, it was Peter Rabbit.

The rest of these fantastic pictures are from my friend Matt Sheppard, who also served as a marshall so he was there early and got some great shots of the girls. Thanks for sharing Matt!

Katie and her ballet class prepare to march.

We know some super cute boys and Monty Sheppard is one of them. He made an awesome pirate - here he is in front with the red hat on, just adorable!

Our friend Anna

Many thanks to Meggie for posting for me about our visit to parliament, we had a great time and I found it all to be very enlightening!

Guest Post by Meggie

HI EVERYBODY! This is Meggie speaking! Today I am doing a post for Mom (she set up the pictures) as she is too behind on some things to do so.

As Mom says, we went to Parliament Day "ages ago." We got to go into parliament and see all the stuff in there.

This is the Beehive. I'm sure you've noticed already where it got its name from. It is surprisingly earthquake proof!

From left: Monty, Josie, Pippa, Ellie in Pippa's lap, Katie, and me sitting on the steps in front of a building. Sadly I do not know which building it is or what it is for. . .(we didn't study much of New Zealand history and stuff like that, mainly the USA. I'm not actually that sad, the USA history is quite interesting, except when they were still acting like the English. But apart from that, we are sort of unique in our own way.)

With some guy dressed up like the English.

I forgot what this is called, but apparently it's kind of important. They carry it when they are having a court case. It can't be that important, though, because it is only the size of the Statue of Liberty's nose! (hehe)

In the debating chamber.

Where the "important guys" sit.

Cool! This looks like a photograph album on a chair! It's the Queen's seat.

Not quite sure what this is.

Well that's the end of the Parliament Day trip! By the way, people from NZ, don't take some of what I said seriously...... I mean, I'm from the USA! You can't blame me! (just joking!)

Meggie

P.S. Those of you who read my blog will be glad to hear I will try and update it soon!

(Edited to add - we are having issues with Meggie's blog, for some reason the words aren't showing up, check back soon because we are trying to sort it out!! Dx)

Ellie's Emergency Room Experience

So today we experienced a first for our family - Ellie took a ride in an ambulance, as a patient! Thankfully she is fine but she absolutely gave me a fright. She and I were walking down to pick up the big girls at the pool and she decided to run down the wheelchair ramp, as she often does. Sadly this time she tripped at full speed and landed on her face without breaking the fall with her hands at all. She ended up with a pretty deep cut on the inside of her upper lip and her face had skid marks all over it. I wasn't that worried though - she wasn't crying, she was just subdued and seemed a teensy bit disoriented. I went into the pool and got ice from the staff and held it on her lip while she just lay in may arms but then she told me she needed to throw-up. When I took her into the bathroom to the toilet she full-on collapsed on the floor, at which point my concern began to escalate. I took her out of the bathroom and conferred with some of my mommy friends (thank God for mommy friends!) who suggested I check if the pool staff had anyone medically trained who could help us, meanwhile Ellie barely had her eyes open and was limp in my arms. The staff decide to call 111, lay her on her side and administer oxygen. Her little pupils were just pin-pricks, she was clammy and not really very responsive and I was getting more and more nervous as it was getting harder to keep her awake. Some man I've never met before came and talked to both of us to try and help keep Ellie awake and the pool staff were fantastic. Finally the ambulance arrived and their mere presence calmed me down considerably. They decided she needed to be taken in for observation, that she probably had a slight concussion. Off we went through rush hour traffic to the hospital where we stayed for the next four and a half hours, but at long last we are home and Ellie is fine. Poor Dugald was in Auckland today so he landed at the airport to texts from me saying that Ellie had been hurt and we were on the way to the hospital. Thankfully though by the time he got the messages we knew she was going to be ok. I'm so grateful to my sweet, sweet friends who all pitched in to help by taking my girls, going to my house and turning off the oven and calling and texting. I was only scared for a short while but it wasn't fun while it lasted!

By the end of the ambulance ride she was already a lot perkier.

My little bruiser.

Final check before being discharged - you'd never know anything had happened. Well, except for the scratches and whatnot. By this time she was LOVING all the attention.

Thank you friends for helping us, thank you God our girl is ok. What a day!

Happy Birthday Grandpa!

Today is Hugh's 89th!! Happy, happy birthday Grandpa, we love you!

We went to Palmerston North yesterday to celebrate because today is the Christmas parade and Meggie, Katie and Dugald are participating. It was lovely to see M & H looking so well and we all enjoyed our time there.

On the way we stopped by a fruit stand and saw this pukeko, adorable.

We had a delicious roast meal and the girls got to ride their bikes all around the driveway and back garden. Margaret and Hugh's roses are simply stunning and Margaret clipped a bouquet for me to take home with me - along with an enormous bag of lemons and some plums.

Please turn the sound down before viewing this, not sure why I was singing! The girls made some specially decorated cupcakes for Grandpa and of course sang the birthday song.

The ride home was relatively uneventful but the little girls did burst into a fit of giggles that was pretty cute, unfortunately by the time I fished my phone out of my purse things were winding down.

I'm off to town now to try and find a place to park so we can see the parade. Lots of love to all!! xx

Thank You Veterans - and other news.

I'm a day late here in New Zealand as it's actually the 12th, but it's the 11th of November in America and I want to say thank you to all who have served and who do serve us in the military. We appreciate your sacrifice and dedication to preserving our freedom.

Perhaps one day this will be the girl putting the wreath on the tomb of the unknown soldier - we got her this t-shirt in D.C. because she totally has the personality to one day be Commander-in-Chief!

Lastly, we have had an incredible few days of sunshine! We've re-stocked the sunscreen and started doing some of our school work on the back patio to take full advantage of it.

Random Act of Culture

Read all about this here. Awesome.

Happy Halloween

For two years the girls have been begging me to let them trick-or-treat, but I was worried about letting them because it's not a generally accepted tradition here. We have seen the occasional trick-or-treater in years past, but my guess is most houses would be unprepared to have children knocking on their doors and asking for candy. My solution to the problem this year was to see if we could rope a few friends into joining us and then only go to each other's houses, ending here with some drinks and snacks for all. So that's what we did!

Josie the witch with her black cat, Katie.

I also told the girls they needed to forage for costumes in their closets, their sisters' closets and the dress-up box. Ellie, the angel, actually wore the flower girl dress that Chelsea wore in our wedding 13 years ago!

Meggie was an absolutely precious Anne of Green Gables.

One of the first houses the girls went to with their friends served up these tasty shortbread body parts - yum!!

We had a pretty large group which made it all the more fun!

The Sheppards had the kids try to eat chocolate fish dangling from string without using their hands, the girls loved it!

Richard was pretty scary when they arrived at the Hogg household - can't you see the fear in their eyes?

Finally all arrived here, I had made some snacks and planned to have them bob for apples but it was way too cold for that so instead the Wii proved to be adequate entertainment.

All in all it was a great night and we all had a ball - I think a Morrison Family Halloween tradition has been born! Hope you had a festive evening. xoxo