My Birthday - Part Two

The celebrating continued on Saturday with friends . . . it was the Cuba Street Carnival that night and Alison and Fleur made reservations for our families to eat together and then watch the parade. On the way to meet them Dugald and I saw two very young little girls crossing the street in Karori, one in a diaper and a t-shirt and the other in panties and a t-shirt. They were both under three-years-old and as best we could tell they were unaccompanied. We stopped and I got out and asked them where their Mommy was and the older of the two wouldn't answer, the younger one couldn't talk. I tried again by asking her where she lived and she vaguely pointed behind her. I asked her if Mommy knew she was out and she said she was just going for a walk. I kept on questioning her trying to determine where she lived but she was adamant she was going for a walk and kept walking away from me, dragging the baby with her. Finally the baby fell and started crying which gave me the chance to scoop her up and sternly tell the other little girl we had to take the baby home. She VERY reluctantly started showing me the way home.

It took a lot of talking, coercion, manipulation and hand-tugging on my part but I finally got to what I was told was their house. I knocked on the door and rang the doorbell. I couldn't help but wonder when nobody answered if perhaps the children's mother was unconscious or something. The oldest of the two got fed up with waiting and started to leave again so I begged her to go get her mommy first and then go for her walk. I could see through the glass door we were at into the kitchen and could tell it was a family home and most likely it was really where she lived. She then went in the open door as I yelled out "helloooooooo" several times. She finally returned with a rather overwhelmed and confused man, along with about five other children all under the age of seven. He had no idea they had been out walking and I had to repeat myself several times before he worked out why I was in his kitchen. I am still not sure if he knows, but I am grateful nothing happened to those darling children.

Anyhoo, we went on and met our friends and headed into town. Here we are with all the children eating at the Chinese restaurant:

Words cannot express how loud they were, but a good time was had by all. Thankfully it was a family-friendly place and was also fairly empty as it was still early. . . the manager only told them off once which is pretty good considering:).

My dear friends Fleur and Alison. We spent the evening ignoring the chaos as much as possible and discussing possibilities for a girls weekend away. It was lovely.

Matt, Dugald and Richard, also ignoring the children, which might explain the fact that the manager had to send them back to our table. Tsk tsk.

We headed downstairs from the restaurant to participate in the evening's festivities.

This magician was from New York and we enjoyed watching him break out of his straightjacket in under 1 minute and 30 seconds to break a new world record (at least that's what he told us).

There were plenty of bands around and lots of dancing in the street.

Friends Rock!!! Meggie and Pippa

Josie and Isabel:

Julia and Katie:

Alison and Monty still dancing:

The prelude to the parade:

These lovely "ladies" weren't planning to stop but the kids kept yelling out "dance for us please". . . so they did!!

We were interviewed by several tv stations thanks to our enthusiastic bunch, our girls were hilarious - when asked where they were from they always said "Texas" which of course got them even more attention for having come "all the way from the United States" for this grand carnival.

Some scenes from the parade:

This last picture . . .that's another guy. Go figure.