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 -

Daddy/Daughter Tramp

Hi everybody it's Katie! Mom says I can be her guest writer to tell you about our weekend tramp with Daddy and some friends. Daddy took me and Josie because he couldn't carry the food and sleeping bags for all four of us - next year Meggie and Ellie get to go.

This is us all ready for our tramp. We've all got bags because it's an overnight one.

Here are most of the dads sitting on the rocks at rocky lookout. This was a stop along the way and we ate lunch here on the way there and the way back.

This is Dad eating a salami stick that looks like a cigar.

This is the wonderful view.

Having a laugh!!!

Us and our dads.

Richard loves scroggin while Julia doesn't.

Stopping for a break! [We had quite a few on the way there because it was mostly uphill.]

We finally arrived at the hut after walking for about four hours plus stops. It was way up on a mountain. After we dropped off our bag we climbed up further for a play in the snow. 

We stayed in Powell Hut. There were other people staying there too. We ate dinner and played cards while the dads all listened to the rugby on the radio.

Eating dinner at the hut.

Beautiful sunrise!!!!

It's the next day and we're off to a cold but good start!

Standing on the rocks.

Josie and Pippa on the rocks at Rocky Lookout.

The dads.

We're almost there!!!

Josie and Pippa.

We're at the end, crossing the bridge to the finish. 

It's been a great tramp, it was tiring, but fun!!!!!!!!!!

The new, old, app on my phone that we rediscovered is called Hipstamatic. It lets you choose "lenses" and "film" to play with different looks for photos you take with the phone. As I mentioned earlier our Sundays are pretty much consumed by ballet rehearsals for the upcoming exams. Last Sunday we decided that we would just spend the day in town rather than ferrying girls back and forth so we also ate lunch at the noodle shop near ballet. The first few photos are from lunch while Meggie was in her class, but then we did finish in time to see the end of her class, so there are photos of that too. There are quite a few photos in this post, all with the iphone, some better than others!

Meggie's class:

Katie's Class:

It was so much more difficult to get pictures of Katie as her class is HUGE! Also there were quite a few parents watching so it was harder for me to maneuver around them all to get the best shot. Katie is just behind the little boy in the red shirt and khaki shorts.

Josie's Class:

Another big class so more difficult to get photos. It was also later in the afternoon so I changed the "lenses" and that varied the lighting a bit.