Happy Halloween!

I love living in Wellington, every event is made to feel special and individual, everyone is happy, smiling and content in each others company no matter the event. It's just fantastic!

Starting our day today Bethany and I went to our good friends house to see Denyse, Beth and Maddie. We had a lovely morning, with the girls playing so fantastically together. I have never seen Bethany get on so well and so calmly with another child. We had a lovely morning and the have the most amazing view from their deck (which of course I had to take a photo of!).

This morning we were also excited to watch my gorgeous friend Monique on the Good Morning show. Monique is an actress and a children's entertainer, along with her friend Paul they are Zappo and Zappolina. I am so excited for her as she has utterly amazing talent. The TV show was to promote the fact they were doing a show tonight at Capital E for Halloween at the Medieval Madness. I was so excited and Bethany was really excited to see her 'magic' friend on the TV reliving the story of how Monique found money behind her ear!!

Then this afternoon I was got so excited at the idea of getting a pumpkin....but I couldn't get one! There were none to be seen anywhere and the supermarkets were sold out. Damn!

However though it didn't really matter as we came home and Bethany opened some special presents from our family back in the UK. Grandma Dawes sent Bethany a fairy pumpkin dress (which is just fabulous!) and Grandma and Grandad Lee sent Bethany a ghostly chocolate lolly making kit, a Halloween torch and some ghastly face paints!

We then headed down to the city to Capital E where they had the most amazing Halloween celebrations. A whole area filled with special Halloween effects, props, people in costumes, face painting, trick or treat doors (with real scary people behind!) and a huge scary maze.

However the best part was going to see the magic show by Merlin and The Lady of the Lake (Monique and Paul!). It was brilliant, Jeremy came with Michael from work (Monique's husband) and we rudely (but rightly) took our place at the front on the queue....don't you know who we are!!!?

The show was fantastic, and poor Monique and Paul would be on all night, we wished them well. Can't wait to hear from her and see how it all went. Anyway, I digress, we had a fabulous time, Bethany saw loads of her Kindy friends and we bumped into Chez Lee!

We have had a wonderful spooky day. My memories stirred as I remembered the fun I had as a child, over the next few years we will make more effort to celebrate with Bethany. Some people think it is a waste of time but it's a fun time and one that should be made as magical as possible for our little souls to keep with them forever just as we have.

Crocodile or Tuatara?

A Little Experimentation Type Thing

When I was younger (a lot younger) I built myself a house out of Lego. This house had a garden, and in that garden was a perfect lawn of grass. Well, it wasn't grass, it was cress.

Now that we've bought Bethany some Lego, I thought we'd build a house and do the same thing. A trip to Palmers Garden Centre meant we stocked up on the cress seeds, and after destroying the current plastic creations to reclaim the blocks, we got started.

Now my building experience isn't much, but I'm probably more qualified than the guy who started our house extension a few years back! After about 10 mins we had a house, a garden and we were ready!

All that was left was to sow the seeds and water them a bit more.

So after 24 hours we have a few shoots starting to come through, and in a week we should be able to mow it!

The Last Few Days...

So as you know from the previous post Grandad Dawes has now left for his home in the UK. Its been amazing having here, we have had the best time not only with him but enjoying all Wellington has to offer.

So we will go back in time a little and update you on what Grandad did for his last few days here...

Tuesday was pretty much 'business as usual' as I had Megan here with us. So we decided to use the hot but very windy morning with a walk around the area. We started with the walk around the block which heads up the road and down some crazy steps at the other side. The view over to our house is a fantastic one.

As we were down that end of the street we decided to take a walk around to view a 'metal paradise'.

A sculpture artist called Carl Gifford (known as the artist 'Carlucci') has created some of the most amazing sculptures from anything the land has to offer. We spent some time down here viewing the work, but to be honest we didn't stay very long as a busy road and two small children don't really mix!

On the afternoon we spent the afternoon at Kindi. Bethany dragged Grandad round meeting everyone - he met some mothers even I haven't yet! Each time saying 'hi, meet my friend Grandad'!

It was a really nice time at Kindi, at mat time the children were all introduced to Grandad and they even sang him a welcome song in Maori. It was so lovely.

And of course you know it was my birthday too this day so it was a great day followed by an even better night out.

Wednesday was a busy day despite not really knowing what the weather would decide to do. So we headed off to the Zoo where we met Jenny and Victoria. We had a wonderful walk around, it always is an amazing place to go, somewhere where you can take your time and admire all there is to admire. The weather was good to us and the sun shone happily.

After lunch at the Zoo we headed to a play area and it was no sooner time to go collect Mr D from that place he calls work!

Thursday Michael was off work so we started our day with a trip to Raumati Sands and up to The Southward Car Museum.

We had a nice time leisurely wandering around, but the highlight was definitely the 'crazy mirrors'. We had the best time making ourselves laugh and creating crazy body poses!

Bethany however was a bored as can be, typically she then perked up, she saw something she recognised, and despite her only visiting this place just twice she made a big deal out of it telling all the other visitors that we go there 'all the time'...it was the McDonalds car!

Afterwards we stopped off at Raumati beach where we showed Grandad where we stayed when we first arrived in NZ. Then onto the utterly amazing beach for some fantastic picture opportunities.

As it is that we never waste a minute we also decided to drive back to Welly and head to the Botanical gardens. We had a walk through the gardens, past the duck pond and onto the play area.

It was then one hell of an uphill trek to the Cable Car where we hoped to take a ride to the city. However it was out of action for maintenance, which was sad as we were looking forward to the ride, but we did get some amazing photos...

Friday was Grandad's last day, there was a few things he wanted to do such as visit a few more gift stores for all those lucky people back in the UK, and so we headed to the city but not before stopping off for Bethany's swimming lessons.

Parking in Courtenay we took a lovely stroll into the city stopping off at some fantastic shops on the way. Then it was a fab walk through the civic square and onto the Brewery Bar for a well earned drink and reflection on Grandad's visit.

Grandad started to pack and when he went to open his case, guess what he found inside? Poor little love....who knows what goes on in her little mind!

We have really enjoyed Grandad being here, it's always an exciting time to welcome your family into your new home and new life and show them what you have done for yourself. We hope Grandad was suitably impressed.

Saying goodbye however is never an easy thing to do, it's always in the back of your mind and for me it consumes me. I go over everything we have done and hope that all the memories will be good ones, I hope that the stories they tell to others are good ones, but I also hope they think we made the right decision in life.

Thank you Grandad Dawes for staying with us, for being so overly generous and for sharing our amazing life here in beautiful Wellington. We miss you already...