Christmas Eve

We have had such a special and memorable Christmas Eve! The day started with the delivery of a free grill - some friends had an extra they didn't use and dropped it by this morning. Then we had afternoon tea with our former neighbors and dear friends Adrienne, Lucy and Maddie. After tea we headed to church for the family service, then we went to the Wellington Hospital to do some Christmas caroling in the wards. The caroling was such a meaningful experience - we had a huge group of people show up to participate, in fact we broke up into two groups and they were still so big that sometimes the front of the line was singing a line or two ahead of the back of the line! These pictures aren't great because I whipped out my cell phone quickly while we were in hallways, I didn't want to embarrass any patients by taking photos when we were around them, but I wanted to give you a sense of the joy the girls felt in spreading joy to those less fortunate. I cried several times when I saw patients and/or their families getting teary as we came by their bedsides. We also sounded really good - the acoustics were actually fantastic which is probably why nobody ever gets any sleep in a hospital! We were honored to get to participate and I think this will definitely be one of our new family traditions.

A very Merry Christmas to you and yours! Lots of love from all of us!!

Christmas Baking

We actually haven't done a ton of baking this year, but we enjoyed what we did do! We made cookies to take to church to have delivered to the home-bound and others for a bit of Christmas cheer. Ellie was a great help with the decorating and it was lovely day so she could do it outside which made me happy!! Last time she helped me decorate cookies I think I found sprinkles every time I vacuumed for a month.

I also went to purchase a gingerbread house kit for our annual tradition of trying to make a gingerbread house but instead watching the roof slide off while Ellie and Josie eat most of the decorating candy - but they were astronomically expensive. SO, my sweet friend Alison with the "do-it-yourself" Kiwi spirit, offered to make pieces of gingerbread in the appropriate shape to do our own houses. She did, we made them, and the kids had a ball doing it. Their finished masterpieces had roof issues but we hadn't spent nearly as much on the process and as long as they could eat it the kids didn't care!

Video Flashbacks

I've finally downloaded video of our camera - most of it from last July when we were in America. This one is kind of long but it makes us all laugh, it's of Ellie on her very first roller coaster ride at Disney.

This is the girls and their cousins singing their Cousins Camp 09 theme song:

And finally, for today, here we are on a tramp with our little chatterbox girls:

Cinderella

Josie and Katie's ballet recital was Sunday at the Opera House. Josie was a "Sparkle" and Katie was a jester. Poor Katie had to be there from 2:30 pm as she was in both shows, but the rest of us enjoyed a lovely dinner in town prior to the show. We went to the 7:30 performance as that was the one that Josie was in as well.

This was our first year dancing with Mrs. Tarrant and the girls have enjoyed it very much. I liked that she let the girls sit in the audience, right in the front, and watch the performance while they awaited their turn on stage. I also liked that we only had one day of performances instead of several.
Josie is in the middle without her arms up but smiling away. Mrs. Tarrant says that Josie was "made for the stage" and I think she's right, the girl just loves to perform.
See her leaping front and center?
Katie's role called for more comedy than actual ballet and she delivered. She's on the left of this picture with her hands up.
It was hard to get a good shot as you can tell and after the show they were delivered to us sans costumes so I didn't get a cute shot of them all dressed up. I sent them to the Opera House in makeup and Katie's was immediately scrubbed off and Josie's would have been if they'd had time - who knew?? Oh well - they were beautiful nonetheless.

Things are winding down activity wise here for summer, which is nice, but yesterday I had to take the girls into town for a Musical Stars summer performance rehearsal and was blissfully unaware that it was premier day for "The Lovely Bones". It was blissful until I hit Ghuznee Street at which point I about lost my mind thanks to all the traffic. I've gotten spoiled here - I rarely, if ever, have to deal with traffic and so was surprised by the road rage welling as I sat without moving for almost 30 minutes. I dropped the girls, late at 3:45, and had until 5:30 to get them so I decided to go to a shop in town that is only usually 5 minutes away by car. I spent the next hour navigating the traffic due to the closed streets and never could get to my destination but did finally see signs as to the cause of all the uproar. I do hope it was a good event!

Hope you are all doing well and enjoying these last days in the lead-up to Christmas. Hugs to all.

More pre-Christmas celebrating

Oh the end-of-the-year fun!! Those of you in the northern hemisphere probably don't realize it but down under we not only have Christmas in the summer, but it's also the end of the school year and therefore a time for all manner of shows and recitals and whatnot to take place. We are very busy bees. Katie and Josie have been preparing for their ballet recital tomorrow, Meggie and Katie had their end-of-the-year horseback riding party today, we've had several birthday parties to attend in the last few weeks and upcoming Christmas celebrations aplenty.

All that to say, these pictures are a bit old. We went a few weekends ago down to Kirk's - Wellington's (and I daresay New Zealand's) nicest department store. They were unveiling their Christmas windows and had all sorts of activities going on to celebrate. It was a rather gloomy cold and wet day but we went on into town to join in the festivities.

Upon arrival we heard some great B-52s music being performed by the Beat Girls so we rocked out with them awhile. The kids had a ball - and I did too - dancing in the street, literally! The girls had some impressive signature moves but it was hard to catch them on film as it was quite crowded.




After the performance we managed to get a picture with two out of three of the girls. The musical extravaganza was followed by a great show by a magician that kept the girls entertained for at least another 30 minutes so I got to have a nice, uninterrupted shop in Kirks while Daddy stood guard on the periphery.
Later that same weekend, I think, we went to the English classic "Dick Wittington and His Cat". It was done in pantomime and adapted for a New Zealand audience and we all laughed a lot and loved it - the girls even got to go up on stage and participate a bit. We went with our sweet friends the Sheppards.




I'm going to do my best to shoot a bit of video at the recital tomorrow and if I succeed I'll post the highlights here. Hope you have a great weekend!!

Tis the Season

We are getting into the Christmas spirit at our house! Last weekend we got our tree up, sadly it is an artificial tree because we are not supposed to have plants in this house (a clause in our rental agreement prohibits such things). I miss the smell of a real tree but in actuality this was a lot easier, cheaper and quicker. For the first time ever the girls totally decorated it themselves - Dugald put on the lights and I unpacked the decorations and they placed them all on the tree. Now our playroom looks very festive indeed!!

We also started our Advent celebrations - thanks to this fantastic house from the Knights. We open a door every day and there is a reading inside and there may or may not be some candy.
Ellie got to open the first door so I helped her read the activity paper and then Daddy read the Scripture reading to us.

I still find the mixed-up seasons a bit strange - it's not bad having Christmas in the summer. I grew up with fairly warm Christmases in Florida. The harder part is having a long winter without Christmas!! However, summer has yet to officially arrive here anyway.

Hope you are all enjoying this busy and festive time of year. xx

Wellington Christmas Parade

This year Meggie and Katie both represented Tarrant Dance Studio in the Christmas parade- Katie as a reindeer on Santa's float and Meggie marched as a Christmas tree right in front of the float. I did my duty as a parade marshall and I have the lovely blue t-shirt to prove it.

It was a rather chilly day - which kind of reminded me of Christmases at home, but the little girls were rather cold poor things. There was a great crowd despite the chill in the air - and the whole town was celebrating because the night before the New Zealand soccer team, the All Whites, had won their game against Bahrain to qualify for the World's Cup and they were leading the whole shebang.

Katie and her reindeer friends Pippa and Vita were adorable pulling the sleigh and Meggie was a crowd- pleaser as well smiling and waving as she walked along Lambton Quay.

We began our day at the dance studio getting into our costumes and t-shirts, then we rode on a bus to the parade start. I loved watching all the little reindeer on their way to board the bus. Riding the bus is still a thrill for my girls since it is a rather unusual happening, I tried to take pictures of them once we were on but they didn't turn out particularly well as we were all rather crowded. They enjoyed waving at pedestrians though and generally feeling a bit famous for a few minutes :-).
As you probably know Santa's float is the last part of the parade, so we had a bit of a wait in the cold before it was our turn. I was so proud of all the children - they kept smiling and did their very best to keep warm.



I mean really, who doesn't love a parade? We had a ball and are so happy to be a part of this great city and it's celebrations. xx

By the way - Katie's updated her blog a bit - check her out with the link to the right.