Go Eagles!!!

Last Wednesday night we had the opportunity to head over to Scots College to meet the USA rugby team, the Eagles. The US Embassy was hosting a good ole American pep rally ahead of the Eagles' game in Wellington on Friday night and we got an invite via school. Unfortunately my camera's flash is acting up but I did manage to snap a few pics without it, sadly I'm not skilled enough in the manual settings to get rid of the yellow tint to most of these pics, sorry.

We dressed up in our red, white and blue and cheered and hollered as the team arrived. After a greeting from the American ambassador, David Huebner, as well as a short speech from the Eagles' captain, they announced that people could line up for food and autographs from the players. We started in the queue for autographs but after much jostling and a long wait we moved over to the food line. All of us except Katie that is. She stayed in line and met every single player. We were done eating by the time she showed up with her reams of paper and autographs!

We chatted briefly with the ambassador before leaving and he kindly posed for a photo.

Friday night it was time to dress up and go cheer for the Eagles in their game against Australia. It was so much fun getting ready and since New Zealanders cheer for anyone playing against the Aussies we were surrounded by quite a bit of red, white and blue. Not since I've lived here has America been so popular.

Wills came to watch the little two since the game didn't even start until 8:30 pm. The atmosphere was so festive in town! We grabbed a burger at the McDonalds by the stadium and it was packed with people all dressed up. We watched the game with our Australian friends from school which was fun except for the fact that the Wallabies annihilated the Eagles.

Homemade Playdoh

So Ellie, Josie and I decided to make playdoh the other day and it was really fun. We made four different colors before running out of flour, but it wasn't until the last color, the green, that we had the brilliant idea of adding glitter. I'm sure we will be making more sometime soon!

Katie at Art Splash

This year's Artsplash celebration took place during Wellington's Festival of Carnivale - one of many celebrations taking place during the Rugby World Cup currently being hosted by New Zealand for the first time in 24 years. Artsplash is an annual production involving all the schools in the wider Wellington region coming together to celebrate the arts. Katie took part in the music evening and Dugald, Meggie and I went to watch her perform with her school one night last week.

This year, in honor of the World Cup, the children sang songs from around the world. Each song was meant to represent one of the countries participating in the tournament. Of course the evening began with this:

But it was followed by a song from the USA that I had never heard of in my life. Very disappointing. I should say the song choice was disappointing, the performance of it was quite nice. We heard "Danny Boy" from Ireland, "My Boomerang Won't Come Back" from Australia, "Wales Forever" from Wales (obviously), "Eres Tu" from Argentina, "Consider Yourself" from England, "Pacific Unity" to represent Tonga, Fiji and Samoa, "Take Me to Your Heart Again (La Vie en Rose)" from France and then several more from New Zealand.

This one is my favorite though, Poi E -