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.

Catchup

Yeah, its been ages. We've done a fair few things and all the photos are sitting in the cloud waiting for me to process and do something with them. We've been to Las Vegas and back, stayed with our friends in LA, checked out the Star Alliance lounge in LAX, saw a Blue Man Group performance, trekked to the M*A*S*H filming site, watched a Guinness World Record holder bubble blowing performance, frolicked at the mouth of the harbour in Whatipu, bumped into Christoper Luxon at the AirNZ engineering day, taken Kien to his first ever team sport practice...but the words ain't coming easily enough let alone the inclination to sit down for an hour (or three) and recall and write and edit. So the posts will come in drips and drabs, and completely out of chronological order, but hey, doesn't matter so long as it happens. This here blog has been the only consistent record of what we do/what Kien's life consists of. The only reason I remember most of Kien's firsts is because we took pictures and I wrote about it here. Otherwise it would have just been some random photos stuck on the hard drive somewhere.

Mt Wellington

We like volcanoes, and luckily Auckland has plenty to choose from when we want to have a quick walk. On Saturday we chose Mt Wellington since it was close to where we were and where we were going. We walked the perimeter, and then we went down to the crater. There's still plenty of scoria down there - amazing that after 10,000 years!

Second cousins

Michelle and the kids were in Auckland this weekend, so we went over to see them. Michelle and I walked the kids to the beach/park, played on the playground, collected feijoas and hibiscus, and the only photo I took was them sitting on the berm across the road from Rod and Gun's place.

Cycling in the rain

Well he did. I just walked...and ran after him when he sped away so quickly and didn't wait for me. I'll remember next time to put on my running gear. The kid can ride. Fast!







We parked just after the bridge between Judges Bay and Okahu Bay, and went all the way to Mission Bay and stopped for him to have an ice-cream before turning around.

Football

He now belongs to the Western Springs Association Football Club (WSAFC). First team sport for him, and its been...interesting? (I've got so many thoughts that I can't even process right now about his performance). I love their uniform. The kids all look so cute out there.




Right, I need to get off my behind and go out and get some much needed vitamin D.

Christmas this year

Working right up until Christmas Day ain't fun, and lots of people in my office did it this year, including moi. I took Kien in as a treat (for whom I'm not entirely sure).

On Christmas morning Kien woke up and for some reason thought Santa was coming that night. He wasn't even interested in looking downstairs for presents. We had to prompt him. Once he saw the pile though it was all on.













Show us some teeth, will ya? Ah, that's better.



We want to my dad's for lunch - a typical Vietnamese feast of baked fish which we had in fresh summer rolls with herbs and dipping sauce. After lunch we celebrated an early birthday for Kien which we do every year since dad used to only have 1 day a year off from working, and that's on Christmas day.






Then it was off to Grandma Gun's and Rod's place in the late afternoon. Good to see second cousins getting along so well after not seeing each other for a while.







Thomas is a big boy now and will be off to school next year. I love his long locks.



That wraps up another Christmas. It seemed more rushed this year than previously. But then again I think this year seems like a rush!

Jumping and riding on hay bales

One week on and I'm processing the photos from the farm and they make me smile. What a fabulous weekend it was. It was such a treat to be able to have these experiences, and Kien is so very lucky to have an extended family that span several generations with connections to this farm. 100 years occupancy for the Cole family on this farm in Te Kopuru - Kien's great great granddad came from Nelson to settle here, and it has stayed in the family ever since. We've always enjoyed visiting here.

We arrived on Friday night and set up camp out the back in the garden. After a pot luck dinner/good old fashioned BBQ, most of us climbed onto the trailer towed by an extremely powerful tractor for a tour of the farm.

Flax darts at the beach

The following day we headed out to the beach.





We stopped for a bit of flax dart throwing.





Kien spent ages making his very own.



Then we went down to the beach.





On the way back up the track we were all a tad too heavy for the tractor to take a corner going up the sandy track, so we hopped off to lighten the load.





All aboard again, back to the farm we go.

Hangi

We were in for a treat! Karen had organised a feast for Saturday night in the form of a hangi. In the morning "The Hangi Master" Richard dug the pit as we were heading to the beach.



When we got back he lit the fire.





After 3 hours the food went down, and then 3 hours after that the big reveal.









Delicious!

Racing and jumping on hay bales

I love running on hay bales, and so does everyone else! The kids and I had races back and forth. It was so much fun.















Fabulous sunset on Saturday night.



An even better blood moon.



It was a truly amazing weekend, and now I'm sifting through all the footage I took to try and piece together something that resembles a documentary (or similar). SOOOO many gigabytes worth of data to be processed. It makes me smile listening to some of the stories :-)