Johnston Hill Reserve

This weekend the beautiful weather inspired us to attempt our first ever "tramp". . . or hike as we say in America. We started with an easy, beginners walk that is right in our backyard called Johnston Hill Reserve.

About ten seconds into our journey the girls were already complaining about walking uphill. Seriously. I mentioned to Dugald that their complaining was the exact reason I hadn't suggested we do this before - but honestly the day was too perfect to not enjoy the great outdoors so we told them to buck up. Here we are at the entrance:

The foliage is beautiful and I enjoyed trying out different shots with my camera - I so want to take a photography class one of these days!!
New Zealand bush is full of ferns and I just love them:
This technique of blurring the background has a name but I can't think of it at the moment and I'm already multi-tasking too many things to google it, but it looks pretty cool!
A view of Wellington as we ascended the hill on our walk:
I think this is gorse, which is lovely but invasive and has taken over many a hillside. Being as yellow is my favorite color I had to take a picture of it though, how can something so lovely be bad?
The windmills:
If you click on this picture to enlarge it you can see the snow on the tops of the mountains in the background which happen to be on the South Island. Wellington is on the very bottom of the North Island and on a clear day you can see the South Island across the Cook Strait.
More lovely scenery, especially the girls:




We started downhill energized and thinking what an easy walk it had been - we actually had to make the girls turn around and head down because they'd gotten over their initial hesitation and wanted to go on and on but we had somewhere to be and needed to head home.

We decided to take a different route and head toward Karori Cemetery to see if we could find where Dugald's grandparents were buried. We soon found ourselves on a narrower and muddier path, holding on to branches as we descended some of the slippery slopes in an effort to stay upright.
Water trickling in a brook beside us:

At last, the cemetery!!
The reason we needed to get on back to the car was because we had been invited to our friends for the afternoon to play games and hang out for dinner. When we got there their youngest, Rueben, wanted Dugald to hold him and would not let Dugald put him down!
After supper the girls put on a show:


Ellie was too tuckered out to participate so she watched from Daddy's lap which had been vacated only minutes before by Rueben:
We had a great evening, another fun night playing Settlers of Catan!

Budding Architects

I found the idea for this on another blog and the girls ate it up - literally!! We decided to be architects for the day and I gave each of the girls a bowl of marshmallows and a bag of toothpicks and told them to build their masterpiece.

They all began by building a foundation - cue Bible lesson on needing to build our lives on the strong foundation of Christ.

Some kept their construction projects flat - I have to admit that I left them to their own devices while I went to take a shower:
But the older two decided to build up, and up, and up:

Katie decided her house would be two stories tall:


Ellie went for flat star patterns:
Meggie was going for skyscraper, but this was as tall as the little toothpicks would allow:
Josie decided she was going to make jewelry instead of buildings:
All in all it was a pretty fun project for their morning tea!

Travel Pics

The beginning - the girls have their first Mocha at the Tampa airport:

The end - Flowers and a sign on the door from Daddy, brownies from the Sheppards:
Amen

Because it's funny. . .

Home Again

Well we've been home a week now and have settled in quite nicely from our world travels! It took us 31 hours to get from Mimi and Big Daddy's house back to ours, but all in all the girls did really, really well. I'm grateful for those of you who prayed for us!

When we landed in Auckland Josie wasn't quite awake and had a bit of a meltdown as I urged her to gather her things as quickly as she could - but we were all rather laden down with more carry-ons than is legal so I couldn't help her at all. She managed to get it together and we raced to the first checkpoint well ahead of most of the other passengers. We presented our passports without issue (unlike our arrival in the U.S.) and whizzed down to baggage claim to collect our many bags - double the number we left with! We grabbed three luggage carts and stood waiting for our luggage to appear - then I got paged. I headed to baggage services and they told me that one of our bags hadn't made the flight and would be coming in the next morning. The girl who gave me this dire news misunderstood my question and led me to believe that we were going to have to stay in Auckland to take the bag through customs ourselves the next day. I was frantic thinking about the implications of that news, but I went back to the baggage carousel to collect the bags that had arrived. Thankfully I had learned my lesson from our move here (when the airlines lost all of our luggage) and had written down a description of every bag and what it contained.

Once we had collected all the other bags I got back in the baggage services line to let them know which bag was missing. While I was doing that the lovely concierge from our Air New Zealand flight was watching the children and our bags for me - I really love Air New Zealand, they are very good to us! I filled out my paperwork and asked what to do about our flight to Wellington - at which point the girl looked at her watch and told me to follow her. We all followed her, with our bags, to the front of the customs line, she escorted us through (and assured me that we could leave and our missing bag would be delivered later), then she walked us to the front of security (concierge lady is with us too, and she hands me her card in case the bag doesn't turn up when expected and tells me to contact her if I need help), then she walks us into the terminal where Uncle Hamish was waiting (for a LONG time) to greet us, he joins our entourage over to the Domestic Transfer desk and she makes the man there check us in to our next flight and check our bags (despite it being less than an hour until our flight). I mean seriously, we were well-looked after!

Once all was checked in and we were sure we'd make our fight, if we hurried, Hamish walked with us from the International Terminal over to the Domestic Terminal and directed us to security and our gate there. It was great to have a 15-minute catch-up with him and lovely of him to get up so early to help this sleep-deprived mama get where she needed to be!

Dugald was in Wellington with flowers to pick us up - so good to see him and be reunited!! We managed, just barely, to fit our things into the van and I realized again that it was a blessing in disguise that we were missing a suitcase because if we'd had it some of us would have had to ride in a taxi home. And, thankfully, the missing suitcase contained gifts and sleeping bags but nothing urgent.

We've been so warmly welcomed back this week - we've had lovely, unseasonably warm weather, our friends have been more than generous and we've slowly but surely gotten over our jetlag. We arrived home Sunday morning and on Monday afternoon we had a lovely tea with Fleur and Alison and children complete with a sign to welcome us home, a cake and balloons! On Thursday when we arrived at swimming two of the "big girls" had made us a cake that said "Welcome Home". We've been blessed with dinner with friends both Friday and Saturday nights and just now (Sunday) we're off to Palmerston North to catch up with Margaret and Hugh.

I wish I had my camera with me for all of the above-mentioned festivities, I'll do better now that we are mostly unpacked and I know where things are.

Lots of love from all of us!! Come see us in New Zealand!!

Meggie's 10th Birthday (or why she may need counseling by 15)

As I said in an earlier post, Meggie's big present from us was to get to spend time with Clara. However, because she was in Florida on her actual birthday she also had a bit of a birthday celebration - which is only fitting as she was turning double digits. My normal policy is to offer a birthday party, a trip or some cold hard cash/big present (ie; Clara) - but never a combination.

Anyhoo - we began the day with doughnuts, delicious, American, Dunkin Donuts! Mimi even made them into a cake shape and added candles which was totally cool and celebratory!

To cap it off - she got an Ipod from Mimi and Big Daddy!! She's been wanting one for ages but was under the impression that since she'd been allowed to go to Busch Gardens to celebrate her birthday there wouldn't be any big presents - so it was an extra-sweet surprise to get her heart's desire.


Doesn't she look pleased? Later that evening we celebrated again with Lala and Mari, Aunt Ali and Uncle Stacy, Lilly, Anna and G.G.. Mimi made Meggie's favorite dinner - Mimi's spaghetti - and we had a cake too.





After dinner we took a few last pictures of the girls all together - this one of all of the big girls with their American Girl dolls from NYC.
And a group shot - thank Stacy!
But, here comes the part where she may need counseling, we also had to say our final goodbyes to Lilly, Anna, Uncle Stacy, G.G., Lala and Mari. Oh. My. Word. Heartwrenching doesn't even begin to describe the agony. AND - to top it all off - Meggie reminded me that LAST year on her birthday it was the day we gave away Rico. Somebody scrape me off the floor and award me the worst mother evah award. Seriously - could it get any worse?

This is the girls clinging to Stacy's car that had Lilly and Anna inside sobbing!
Josie getting some comfort from a visibly upset Mimi. This is the bittersweet part - we are so grateful our girls are close to their cousins, but my does it make parting such a sweet, sweet sorrow.