My week leading up to Christmas has been, I don't know, somewhere between uneventful and significant - not sure which side of the pendulum I'm on, but I know that I'm happy to have two enticing weeks of family time stretching out before me.
I'm in the middle of planning what we are going to be doing. A couple of weeks ago I requested an entire month off work over Xmas/NY period, and when Jef said he was taking 2 weeks off I realised maybe I should have confirmed with him first?!? Even though we live in the same household and keep roughly the same hours we don't seem to catch each other (at the right moment) to plan these things out. I tend to operate around assumptions and intentions, a fact I know about myself and am forever wanting to change. Anyway, I drew up a planner in MS Excel today, and on it are events such as spending Xmas day at Mum's, Boxing day at Dad's, going up to Whangarei to see Jef's Dad and Margaret and spending Kien's birthday up there, NY's day on the farm, back to work 9th Jan (I changed my leave request to match Jef's), 20th or 21st Jan flying to LA....oh, did I not tell anyone I was toying with the idea of going to LA for a couple of weeks? Yeah, it is impulsive - I e-mailed my dear friend in LA last week and asked how she felt about us crashing their pad in January. I'm also intending on asking my aunt if she can put us up for a few days too (hey, Co Ngo, will you have us stay a few days in Jan?). So yeah, I've been busy in my head, but not really too busy externally.
We've also had a bit of a mish-mash on the weather front, and tonight in Auckland was no exception. But I didn't care - I had my heart set on getting a Thai chicken curry and picnicing at the park between Brown St and Richmond Rd. That's exactly what we did.
Under the grey clouds that threatened rain we laid our blanket and enjoyed the meal.
Kien (being Kien, and a toddler) was full of beans. He went on the swing, ran around, ate a few grains of rice, and ran around some more.
He was out on the footpath saying "hi" and waving at people as they walked past.I really like this park a lot; it is like having an old English garden to frequent whenever we want.
Kien saw a bee flying and tried to follow it. So he ran around looking for the bee, asking "where is the bee?", "where did it go?".
It's a thing he does at the moment. He'll be looking for something, ask "where did it go?" (and giving the same look as in the above pictures), and then he'll shrug and answer himself - "I don't know". It cracks me up every time. I just love his expression.
Adding to the theme of old English charm, as we were walking down the road there was this beautiful gate enveloped with flowers.
Kien likes to smell flowers.
I've been reminiscing over photographs from the last couple of years, and that come the 29th of this month my child will be officially 2 years old. Wow, two years...where did it go?
