Back On Track

The rainy weather finally let up this weekend so we got ourselves geared up to do some exploring. First up: Butterfly Creek on Saturday. This is kiddie heaven with a large petting zoo, butterfly house, aquarium, and a great play area. I'm not sure who enjoyed it more: Georgie, who loved seeing all of the animals and trying to imitate their sounds, or Scott and I watching her taking it all in. Her favourites: petting the new lambs, playing with some young kids (of the goat variety) and clucking with the chickens. We'll go back there for sure. We stopped at a winery for a quick tasting on the way home...Scott's treat for the day.

We made our way to the west coast beaches of Auckland on Sunday afternoon. It was definitely worth the windy 1 hour drive to get there (this says a lot considering I was green with motion sickness by the time we arrived!). Karekare is a beautiful and amazingly undeveloped beach which was made famous in the filming of The Piano. We explored the untouched black sand beach and watched the pounding surf. There are several good day hikes in the area. We walked a short distance on one of the tracks which lead to the impressive Karekare falls.

We followed the coastal drive further west from Karekare to visit Piha beach and were rewarded with spectacular coastal views along the way. Piha is a beautiful but very dangerous beach, well known for it's wild surf and dangerous rip tides. Despite the risk, it is a popular surfing area and there were a few young guys (?fools) trying to catch some waves while we were there. There are more great day hikes here that we didn't have time to do this trip, so we're already plotting a return visit.

All in all a great weekend. Next up - Scott's birthday and a visit from Michelle and Chris MacAulay this week. We're looking forward to seeing some familiar and friendly faces!

A Picture Worth a Thousand Words...

I've been a blog slacker recently. It's one part laziness, one part lack of inspiration, and one part dealing with a sick munchkin (this sickness only lasted one week, but felt much longer). Re: Georgia being ill: nothing serious. Just a nasty fever, cough, and more snot than I imagined could flow out of a 10 month old, but it meant we were pretty much house bound for a week. My mental health was in serious question by the end of this period, so I'm happy to report for all of our sakes that we are up and at em again. Here is the picture to prove how miserable she was...

Otherwise, things have been quite ordinary these days. I think we were feeling travelled out after our move, so we've been laying very low for the last few weeks. I also sometimes try to live in the illusion that we are on permanent vacation. Sadly, this is not the case: there are second hand beater cars to buy when you realize that you can't cope with being a one car family, there are knees to fix, and the day-to-day running of a house, I'm sad to report, never goes away. On a positive note, the recent down time has allowed us to get into a nice routine, and for Georgia and I, that means lots of activities during the week. She is now 10 months old, and really benefits from more structured things to do. Our schedule, as it stands now - Monday: playgroup, Tuesday: daycare at the gym while I work out, Wednesday: swimming lessons, Thursday: storytime at the library/music group, Friday: another playgroup. We've also recently joined the community's toy library...brilliant concept. Do these exist in Canada? If not, great business idea.

Healthy again, and demonstrating how she wants to spend all of her waking hours these days. Our backs are killing us...