End of term 2 already

Wow, half a year down, and the end of term 2 for Kien. He's had quite a good term, and came home with a couple of certificates in the last few weeks.







I've also established a way to make sure Kien does his own keyboard practice and I don't nag him. We write up a contract together and negotiate how many points the practice is worth. Then it's up to him to hold up his end of the contract if we wants those points. It's been working very well.



Last weekend we were out and about and decided to stop in at the Auckland Domain for a bit. Always a good time here.

Bike ride around the city

The other weekend we went for a bike ride around the city. It was great that most of the route was on bike tracks, and I'm looking forward to the future when we'll be able to ride everywhere in Auckland without fearing for our lives with getting hit by cars on the road. The bike track at Spaghetti Junction is smooth and nice to ride on.







There are a number of forks on the track and we took the one the leads to Quay St and back through North Wharf.







The light was so great when we got to the bridge. We stopped for Kien to have a runaround.









Then we rode home via Victoria Park for a climb and a dangle.

Kien plays Skip to My Lou

This year I got Kien a new keyboard teacher who comes to the house every week for 30 minutes. Its been so great! Kien has made tremendous progress with his reading of both the base and treble clef. I've only ever learnt on the treble clef, so its been a learning curve for me too.



He's just finished learning this piece. He insists on memorising his music, which the teacher says he doesn't have to do, but Kien thinks its a lot easier to play if he can commit it to memory.

Visiting the museum

I swapped my day off to be Wednesday last week due to the teachers strike. Kien had his buddy over for the day and I took them to the museum. We had stopped to grab some sushi so we could have a no fuss picnic lunch.





Kien loves to climb. He'll climb anything and everything that looks climbable, and dangle or jump off.







We spent at least a couple of hours here. We explored all our favourite exhibitions, especially WWI and WWII areas. The boys pretended they were fighters, intercepting enemy intel and calling in reinforcements. They ran around and verbalised everything that was going on in their brains.

















Always a good time at the War Memorial Museum, especially with boys who love it as much as I do.

Weekend in the bush and at the beach

What a fantastic weekend just gone. We went up to Mangawhai and friends came and hung around with us.

We drove up late Saturday morning and arrived in the village around 1pm. We try to get here before the butchers close so we can pickup the most delicious meat for the BBQ. Unfortunately they are so popular that they ran out of Jef's favourite, chump chops. We picked up some pork and fennel sausages and some peri peri hot wings instead. Went to our local beach on Saturday afternoon.











In the late afternoon our friends were at our property so we made our way back there. Now, Manon, a.k.a. waldokiwi, can take some seriously good photographs. Thankfully she is more than happy to share, and she puts me to shame with how keen she is with her art. These photos all came off here camera, and without these, I'd have nothing to show for this weekend.















































No words required - the photos says it all.