The water effect

At the family gathering yesterday Jef's cousin Doug's kid, Noah, and Kien did some science. Here's Kien's write up about it.

Philemon's birthday party

I asked for a 6 sentence story over the weekend. Jef helped him with it. I guess I can't complain. 3-4 word sentences are still complete sentences.

Diwali

Last week we were very lucky to have been invited to my friend from work's Diwali celebrations at her house. She took the entire day off and cooked an array of vegetarian dishes, including these delightful snacks called pani puri - so delicious.

Oh, look at me, stuffing my face...how embarrassing!

She said to not eat too many snacks to leave room for the main course. It was very difficult to do. Everything was so delicious. I could be a vegetarian if I could eat like this every day.

When it got dark we went outside and lit fireworks. The kids had a ball.

It was such a fun evening. Satnam and her family look great in their traditional attire. Next year she said she's going to wrap me in a sari for Diwali. Yes, please.

Mangawhai glades - part deux

Last Sunday we went up to Mangawhai again. Jef just wanted to get stuck in and clear out everything that shouldn't be there. I just wanted to lie around and do nothing, and maybe take some photos, and go to the beach and walk around the rocks. Kien didn't know what he wanted to do but anything that was interesting. We all got our wish.

On a clear day we can see the Hen and Chicken Islands from our property. Looking north in the direction of the township we see the Brynderwyns.

It was a beautiful day, and I settled on a blanket in the middle of our glade.

Jef and Kien got stuck in. Jef demolished the structures they had left in the forest, and Kien chopped down pittosporum that was growing wild.

In the end Jef cleared 2 structures, and in the process uncovered lots of spiders and wetas of varying sizes.

I took Kien to Te Arai Point for a quick walk around the rocks.

No 3G or 4G out there, as I discovered on our drive back to the property. I obviously didn't make a turn somewhere that would pop me just up the road from our property. Instead I drove along Oceanview Rd for ages, and a roughly 10 minute drive back ended up taking more than half an hour. I live and learn.

Making the most of a beautiful day

Re-posting since none of the photos came through - urgh, Google! What are you doing to me? When Picasa Web got shut down by Google and replaced by Google Plus and Google Photos its been so much harder for us bloggers. Hopefully I've sorted it out, but we shall see...

On Saturday we took the boat out for a few hours to fish and generally enjoy the harbour and the sunshine. Jef spent all morning/early afternoon cleaning the boat – Kien and I are so grateful! We motored out to a spot across the harbour where we saw some other fishing boats somewhere around Stanley Bay. We anchored up for a few hours and dropped the line over. It was a bit choppy out there, but not too bad. Kien was so excited - he's been saying he wants to catch his own fish on his own rod, because the last time he had something on his line the rod snapped.

We had a pleasant afternoon on the water, and as the sun was setting we decided to come back into the marina before it got dark. Auckland is so beautiful from this vantage point.

Coming in to Westhaven marina to our berth is very pretty, especially at sunset.

We are going to make the most of these beautiful weekends out on the harbour while we still can, and very soon we will be putting Cariere on the market. With our limited time it is hard to justify having a 28ft yacht and paying for a marina berth to keep it in when we can hardly use it. So I'll savour these times.

The fishing trip

2 weeks of school holidays and all routines go out the window! But we are back, and I'm reining this little dude in again. We are back to the points system for earning screen time - and here's his story, which is worth 3 whole points (and I'm being really generous by making a point worth 15 mins instead of 10 minutes set last term).

Our glade in Mangawhai

Finally, after 10 months of waiting for the title, we settled on the Tuesday before last, and we are now the owners of some acreage, grass, Totora and Pine trees. So last weekend, being the first weekend of actually owning our piece of land, we went up there and camped. We knew the weather was not conducive to camping, but we didn't care.

It was overcast, but not raining on Saturday, so up until about sundown we didn't get wet. We put up the tent and then went for supplies in town. Then we came back and settled in for the night. Despite the rain we had a good campfire going.

We went to sleep with the rain clattering on our tarp and the camp fire well and truly dead from being drenched. In the morning there were scattered showers in amongst sunshine - but all is well...I had coffee...

...and Kien enjoyed hanging out in the tent. Summer, here we come.