Meggie's 13th Birthday Party

For Meggie's birthday party this year we booked the private room at the Mediterranean Food Warehouse and let her host her friends there for pizza. I paid for the food, took a few pictures, and left them to hang out and eat by themselves. The plan was for them to walk home after dinner and have dessert and presents at our place, but of course it started raining right when it was time for them to head out so we shuttled them home with the help of my friend Felicity. The girls were lovely and it was a really special night for Meggie.

Christy, Bria and Meggie. Christy and Bria spent the night after the party.

Meggie, Bria, Christy, Imogen, Gothami and Olivia.

Gothami and Lucy

Bria and Georgia

Pippa and Olivia

Georgia K. and Kristi

Back - Aimee, Gothami, Claudia, Olivia, Meggie, Georgia K., Lucy, Christy and Zoe. Middle - Georgia B., Emerson, Lilly, Bria, Kristi, Olivia, Ariane, Kate. Front - Pippa and Imogen.

Imogen, Gothami and Kristi playing with Choe.

Zoe, Imogen, Christy, Georgia and Lilly dancing in the living room.

Aimee and Claudia

The girls congregated on the stairs for awhile.

Presents!

Meggie reads her little sisters (and friends) a bed time story.

Our House - Living and Dining

I have really enjoyed finally owning our own home again after renting for four years. The past few weeks I've been focusing on trying to make our house more "us" after spending months mentally prioritizing the budget. I am happy with the things I've decided to focus on first - floors (we had the old carpet pulled up and the floorboards underneath polished), some painting, some art work, repairing and painting our dining table - and thought I'd share the updates. I have plenty more ideas for the future but for now we are all loving our bright new space.

The dining area - the table was a very beat up and worn out mahogany so we freshened it up by painting it black. I love how it turned out and I've ordered some great black and white fabric similar to the runner on the table to re-cover the chairs.

Looking back into the kitchen. I really want to paint those green cabinets white. . .

The artwork is named Hatfield and it was painted by an artist in Tyler, Texas where the girls were born. We love it!

Peeking over into the living area.

I'm not loving the artwork above the mantle and would like to move it but just need to find a replacement. I also am thinking about a different carpet but don't tell Dugald. I think this one would be fun.

We have a lot of books and I wasn't sure how to sort them so decided color-coding would do for now.

A very important area!

I'm also going to get a coffee table to replace the leather ottoman which is too small but I just haven't found what I love yet.

I will post more pictures soon of some of the bedrooms I've been working on but they aren't quite finished.

Dxx

Mid-Winter Christmas 2012

You wouldn't know it looking at the kids in kayaks, but our mid-winter Christmas this year was quite cold. We stayed at the Scouts camp in Wainuiomata just outside of Wellington City so it wasn't far away, but it felt much colder and was definitely more rustic! As always camping - or in this case cabining - with this lot of friends is such a treat. Meggie missed it unfortunately because she had a good friend's birthday to attend and to be fair I wasn't sure we were going to get to go anyway because there was the real possibility we would have a baby to look after, but in the end CYFS found permanent placement for that child and we were able to join the fun. Matthew and Monty also missed it because Monty was sick.

Katie

Matthew and Anna

In the bigger boat - Pippa, Ruthie and Julia. In the kayak -Sophie.

This lot have no idea what they are doing - Isabel, Amelia, Ellie and Josie.

Pulling the boats out of the water.

Sophie and Ruth

Katie and Daddy cleaning up.

Inside it's time for cocktails and appetizers.

Alison, Kathryn and Linda.

Mike and Dugald deep in conversation.

Me and Fleur

The boys start on dinner for the kids.

Josie and Izzy

Noah, Ruth, Ellie, Pippa, Katie, Anna, Libby, Julia and Sophie with Matthew peeking out at back.

Clean-up duty

Katie posing in a tree.

Ellie organizing her stuff so she can get in bed.

Meggie's Birthday (a little over a month ago)

Two posts in two days - it's a miracle! These photos are from Meggie's 13th on August 6th. Since her actual birthday was not conducive to partying (we'd only just returned from the states), we instead celebrated by going out to dinner at one of her favorite Wellington restaurants with two of her closest friends from school. Her actual birthday party is this coming weekend. So this year we celebrated 0 out of 4 birthdays with parties in the month of their actual birthdays. The upside of this sort of disorganization on my part is that they in fact get celebrated twice instead of once, so it may become a tradition. Or not.

Anyway, here are some photos of our lovely girl and her special day. . .

Breakfast in bed

Claudia, Meggie and Katie

Cadillac Diner

Ribs and Fries. . . and she ate it all!

Meggie Sings!

We went to Marsden earlier this week to hear Meggie sing. Marsden allows their students to take music lessons once a week from a group of itinerant teachers and Meggie takes from our family friend Annabelle Cheetham. This small concert was an opportunity for all of Annabelle's voice students to sing for an audience of parents and friends. Meggie performed two songs - she had a problem remembering all of the words in the first song (she wasn't the only one) but she performed beautifully and I was proud of how she just kept right on going regardless. Unfortunately my phone ran out of memory while I was videoing the second song so I didn't get all of it but you can see Meggie's part.

Have a great day!