Peter Pan

I took my little ballerinas to the St. James theater last week to see the Royal New Zealand Ballet perform Peter Pan.

The theater is absolutely beautiful inside and the girls felt very special getting to stay out late on a weeknight.
We splurged and bought a program and Katie read it to Josie while we waited on our friends to join us. Alison had booked the tickets for us and another friend Debbie was also joining us with her daughters. We had fantastic seats - front and center and so close we could see them breathe, perfect!

The ballet was amazing - the staging, the dancing, everything was wonderful. The girls were enthralled. They were also excited to get an ice-cream at intermission! Here they are with Pippa:
It was a great evening and inspired the girls to greatness with their dancing - mission accomplished!

Halloween in Karori

I think I mentioned last year that Halloween is not celebrated with nearly as much enthusiasm - or one might say commercialism - here in New Zealand as it is in America. It's difficult to find much in the way of costumes for sale (and the ones you find are expensive to buy and cheaply made) much less decorations and whatnot. The fact that it is technically Spring here also factors in - when it doesn't even get dark until late it gives the whole trick-or-treating experience a different feel entirely.

Our sweet friends organized a family picnic this year - we all brought treats and had dinner together and played at the park. While the girls were slightly disappointed to miss out on the buckets of candy their parents and teeth were not! We made apples dipped in chocolate - I originally thought I'd do caramel apples until I realized that the only way I know how to do those is to melt down caramel candies and as far as I know they don't sell those here. I also had ideas for cute things involving candy corn, but they don't sell that either. So, since I'd waited to very close to the last minute chocolate apples it was!

The girls wore their "scary" pink shirts our sweet friends in Texas sent us - I got a pic of Ellie in hers before she joined everyone in coats as the sun headed behind the hills.

The apples were a popular item - even being eaten during the very competitive sporting events.






At the end of the evening everyone was happy and I think their longings for Halloweens of old was no longer in the forefront of their minds!

iPhone Pictures

I so totally love my new iPhone - Dugald got it, along with several other lovely things, for me for our anniversary and I just love it. Some women love jewelry, some travel (ok, I really love travel too), some spa treatments, some quiet time alone - but of all those things I think I love toys the best. However, and this is kind of a big one, I'm pretty illiterate with most technological things in our household. The iPhone is great because it's fairly user friendly so straight out of the box I could take pictures, check emails, read and post on FaceBook, Skype my family and find lots of applications to download - games for the kids, games for me and Dugald, recipe helpers, grocery lists, calorie counters, exercise trackers, you name it. It's all good, except for one little problem - I'm a bit daft when it comes to iTunes (which the iPhone uses for applications and updates). I've managed to complicate my life by having two macs - a desktop and laptop, and two iTunes accounts - mine and Meggie's - and I've mixed them all up and have the wrong ones on the wrong computers, yada yada yada and the more I google instructions on how to sort it out the more I mess it up because I don't really understand the instructions. GRRR. Really this is a long "the dog ate my homework" excuse for taking so long to update here - I had pictures on my cool new iPhone that I wanted to post here and I couldn't figure out how to make it all work. Until today. Today at last I managed to upload the pictures - but to the wrong computer of course because the iPhone uses my iTunes. I am currently sitting all scrunched up at my children's desk using the computer that has my account on it. Nevermind. . .

Here are the pictures - Dugs and I had a lovely overnight at the Bolton Street Hotel, one of Wellington's best. It was so sweet - when we got in the room he'd arranged for there to be flowers and bath goodies and a book I was hoping to purchase about New Zealand villas:

I am embarrassed to admit that I got him Jaffas (his favorite candy). I was thinking the night away at the hotel was our gift to one another. Oops.

We had a wonderful time - we shopped and ate yummy food in grown-up restaurants and cafes and generally enjoyed each other's company without interruption for 36 hours. It was blissful. However by the second day I was missing the girls - just wondering how they were getting on and if Delaney was surviving. I said to Dugs over our scrumptious and leisurely lunch that I'd really love to pop in and see them, get a cuddle and leave but that I knew it would never work. Well, what do you know but ten minutes later we're walking up Cuba Street and I suddenly hear shouts of "Mommy, Daddy!!!!"
It was perfect - I got a cuddle from each of them, Delaney reassured me that they were having fun, and we still got to have many more hours free, such a blessing! Thank you, thank you, thank you Delaney!

Our last meal before returning home - my happy hubby:
He really spoiled me and I loved every second - thank you for an amazing anniversary, I love you honey!!

Hope this post finds you all well, we are finally enjoying some warmer temperatures and sunshine and I am so grateful!! I have more pictures in the queue so check back soon - hugs xx

Katie the Fashionista

Marsden is a private school up the road from us here in Karori (and also where most of our nieces go to school) and they had a fashion show on Thursday night. The evening was organized for the girls that had taken sewing over the past few terms to model the clothes that they had made. There were also a few dance groups that performed. Our friend Alice McDouall made an outfit for her sister Vita to model for the show, but unfortunately Vita was sick so Katie stepped in and modeled it instead. No stage fright whatsoever - Katie had a ball!

The girls who'd made the outfits came out hand-in-hand with their models, walked around once, then did a little dance.


Once the entire group from that school year had finished the whole group got together for a final dance. Alice's group was instructed to make children's clothes, but we also saw pajamas, skirts and teen couture.

One of the dance groups that performed included our niece Vita Morrison - she's in the middle back of this group and she and her group gave a great performance.
Vita also was a part of the group that made skirts and she looked gorgeous modeling the one she made.
The oldest girls made and modeled "Teen Couture" items and for the most part they were lovely. I was slightly anxious however when one of the girls came perilously close to a wardrobe malfunction! We were all anxious but thankfully disaster was averted as she was aware of the issue and kept tugging up her strapless top. She either made it too big or has lost weight since constructing it, either way it was a bit uncomfortable for awhile. All in all though I was very impressed with what the girls made and I was really proud of Katie for jumping in at the last minute - and she had tons of fun doing it.

Lots of love to all -xx.

Katie's Grade 2 Ballet Exams

It's that time of year again - Royal Academy of Dance ballet exams. Katie had to be at the studio at 1:15 pm on Friday to get her hair done and have a short practice before it was her turn to go before the examiner. We just finished two weeks of school holidays here in New Zealand and during the second week Mrs. Tarrant had scheduled three days in a row of intensive preparation for the girls which served Katie very well. Katie is a lovely dancer but her seven-week vacation in the States had cost her some valuable preparation time so it was good to have a week to really focus and prepare.

Of course we all went and it was cute to watch Meggie and Ellie do plies with Katie as she warmed up. Josie was busy doing pirouettes in the middle of the floor so I missed getting a picture of her, but she was there too. I think she has a mini-exam next week.

Mrs. Tarrant, the studio's owner, fixed all the girls' hair. Katie looked lovely so I played amateur photographer while she posed and practiced.





I love this next picture, you can click on it to see it larger.




The children taking the exam went in in groups of four, this is Katie's group - Grayson, Deborah, Katie and Catherine.




Katie thinks she did her best, we weren't allowed to watch but she seemed happy and confident when she came out so it was a good experience for her anyway! After she finished we all went and had a coffee/fizzy drink to celebrate and then headed to Meggie's first summer netball game. I had to laugh when we got to the game and we were all bundled up in scarves and parkas to think that this is the "summer" netball team!

We are all doing well - we've had some beautiful days interspersed with cold and wet ones, today being the latter. We've completed our first week of our new schedule and so far it seems easier. We've dropped our homeschool swimming and Musical Stars for this term and moved to swimming with the Karori team and also signed up for a term of tennis in Karori. We'll get back into horse riding and gymnastics next week, thankfully those are only fortnightly since we have to drive pretty far to get there. And we still have ballet for two of the girls! I'm amazed that we still manage to get everyone where they need to be and when they need to be there (for the most part) - thankfully they can walk to a lot of their things and I carpool to others.

Dugald is still quite busy at work but things are going well. I'm still swimming once a week, sometimes twice, and trying to fit in some exercise time at home and some walks with friends now and again. Mostly life has been a bit quiet around here - which is good!

As the weather improves we hope to see some of you Americans making the trek over here, we'd love to see you!! xxx

Look what Sarah sent us!

Our friend Sarah from www.butterflychaserphotography.com sent us this fun composite of photos she took while we were in Tyler. Thank you Sarah - we LOVE them and you too!! xxx

Art and Such

We haven't had a lot of news to report from our little corner of the world. Despite two threats, thankfully we have not been hit by a tsunami. My heart goes out to those suffering in Samoa and the Philippines. We've had a much needed quiet week and managed to catch up on our school work as well as enjoy a few play times with friends.

On Thursday afternoon the girls and I met our friends the Sheppards at the City Gallery's Yayoi Kusama exhibition. I'd heard and read good things and it seemed like a child-friendly exhibition so we headed over to view it and we were not disappointed - it was fun! We were smiling before we even entered thanks to the polka dots all over the exterior of the gallery.

The girls had a hard time choosing their favorite work - there was a room where you were closed in and stood on a narrow platform surrounded by water and mirrors on all the walls with colored lights dangling from the ceiling, that work was appropriately called "Fireflies". The gallery says of the artist, "Kusama is renowned for her lifelong interest in visual perception and sensory experiences, her fixation with repetitive patterns and forms, her iconic use of dots and her dizzying installations. Mixing Op Art, Pop Art and sculptural practice, her all-enveloping room-installations, mirrored to infinity, are hallucinatory, surrealistic, and utterly unlike anything else you will experience in the world of art."

Later that afternoon we picked up Dugald from work and headed out for a family date to one of our favorite Japanese restaurants. We were celebrating Josie and her decision two years ago to become a Christian, so we let her pick where we'd eat and even let her talk us into sitting on the floor rather than at a regular table. I had my camera with me so we took a snap of me with Jo to mark the occasion.
Not wanting to be left out, but willing to ruin the shot by sticking out her tongue, Ellie jumped in to the picture.
Katie couldn't be left out so she ran over and practically tackled me in order to make it in before Daddy clicked the shutter.
All of this was very disturbing to Meg who would rather have been invited into the picture.
Once I realized her displeasure that is, of course, exactly what I did, and finally we had a nice shot with smiles all around.
After dinner we capped the evening with a yummy gelato from our favorite stop, Cafe Eis. While there the girls and Daddy were joking around and decided to try out their very best mad faces. Once again Ellie just chose to be silly, but we all know she can do a pretty scary mad face when she wants to!!