CRACK

We went to Kelvin Strand the other day.  It's described as an 'undiscovered jewel' of a beach and it was quite lovely and had this sweet playground.  But then the tide went out and the beach turned into a mudflat in like ten seconds.

But that allowed us to find neat things.  Like a coconut floating in the water.

We think it was a leftover from Diwali.  It was such a neat coincidence that we came across it on this day in particular, since the boys had been playing 'coconut coconut coconut crack' in the car on the way over.  (It's a 'selection' game kind of like eenie-meenie-miney-moe.  It's been explained to me a few times but I'm still not 100% on how it works.)

Anyway, it cracked!

No, we didn't eat it.
  

Totally OWNING the monkeybars

Amiri is a champ at the monkeybars now.  He can alternate hands and everything.  He is actually building up calluses on his palms, he monkeybars it up so much now.

Here he goes!

Yeah!  NAILED IT.

And here he goes zooming through another time!

And yeah, man, it might be a bit intimidating to have an older brother with those kind of mad skills, but don't worry.  Arram can hang too.

They didn't find the precious

The hobbits found a hobbit-sized cave out in the woods.  A limestone cave that's been waiting thousands of years to meet them.

They thought it was so cool inside!

And then they came back out and we continued with our walk.

A few little glimpses around the house

Amiri and Arram are being the teachers and we are the students.  They were excellent teachers-- they read the whole book and asked us questions.

 Here is Amiri helping with the fruit salad by chopping up the watermelon.  Look at the concentration on his face!

Now and then Arram crawls into bed with Amiri and we find them all curled up in the morning.

 Bath times are best when they're full of noisy fun.

It's not a complete breakfast without an English muffin on my head!

Brown's Bay: Rangitoto in the distance, a round tummy up close

Although it might appeal to other age ranges too

I bought the boys squirt guns, the kind that work on simple suction power (slurp water up from the pool, shoot water 20 feet out at your brother).

Arram discovered they're pretty fun out of the water too, because they can do zerberts.



Funniest thing ever for a three year old.
 

Some pictures from Piha

Here's the road in.

Here's what the beach looks like from high in the hills we drove down through.

Here's Lion Rock.

Here's its other side.

Here's a bit of the fencing along the trail up Lion Rock.  You can actually climb it!

Pretty much the ultimate afternoon

For a treat, we walked to Anija's Fresh Fruit Ice Cream next to Sokol's fruit stand on Swanson Road.  Being on foot, we could have the fun of short cutting through the train station.

At the ice cream stand, you choose what fruit you want:  strawberry, blueberry, mango, passionfruit, or mixed.  Then, one of the members of Anija's lovely family grabs a square of vanilla ice cream and a frozen serving of fruit out of the freezer with tongs and drops them into the funnel-shaped apparatus.  A noisy moment later, your soft-serve cone is ready.

We spotted a park next door.  The boys, of course, have a personal life goal of visiting every playground in the city, so we made our way over.  They proved that they have become true ice-cream-eating professionals; their acrobatics didn't slow them down.

Arram's athletics

At the athletic day, Arram got lots of exercise running up and down a little hill with some of the other littlies.

Yes, that's his Lone Ranger hat that he's (still) wearing.  It's a bit floppier now. 

The Athletic Day

Amiri's school had their annual Athletic Day at the big track in town.  It was a beautiful day-- puffy clouds in the blue sky, just the right cool-side-of-perfect temperature.  The stands were very comfortable and filled with proud whanau.*

The big kids had a full day that even included high jump and discus-- and up to five events running concurrently which was a real feat of organisation, if you ask me.  The five-year-olds (being five-year-olds) were only there for the morning, and in between their playground time and a funny obstacle course, they only competed in two events.

First came the javelin throw.  Nerf javelins, of course.

 They were a long way away, but I think Amiri is the fifth-from-the-left kid standing up, the one with the javelin on his shoulder like a grenade launcher.

And then the 60 meter dash.  '100 meters is just too hard,' the announcer said.  Do yourself a favour and turn down your volume before watching this, or else my yelling is going to blow your ears out.



He came in last in his heat, but didn't he make just a spectacular effort?  I was particularly impressed with how he stayed in his lane and didn't lose his hat and have to go back for it, like so many others.

But this had to be my favourite moment of the whole day:  being blown a kiss as he and his class made their way to their seats.

*Whanau:  pronounced FAWN-ow.  It's a Maori term/concept that I really like.  It means 'family', but it's more than that.  It's your nuclear family, your extended family, your ancestors, dear friends, esteemed neighbours, and those who have come into your life and have become 'like family'.
 

Perfectly fitting

We spent Sunday afternoon at the museum.  Fitting that we chose the War Museum (it also has natural history, NZ history, and art) on Veteran's Day, or as it's known here, Armistice Day.  Before entering, we took a moment to view all the wreaths left at the war memorial, including one laid by Prince Charles just an hour before.  (We hadn't known he was going to be there.  Imagine if we'd been a little earlier and blundered into that!)

When we entered the museum, we were greeted by some beautiful classical music.  It sounded as if it were being performed live, so we made it our first mission to locate the performers.  We dashed up the stairs and found them in the Hall of Remembrance.  Their voices were simply amazing with the acoustics of the huge atrium.  What surprised me was their ages-- some of these girls couldn't have been more than seven years old.   Their soaring, innocent vocals were a perfect contrast to the realities of wars on display in the halls of the third floor.


 

Curbside shopping

One of our neighbours cut down a tree in their yard, whacked it into firewood lengths, and left it out for anyone who wanted it.  So we swooped on it, and here it is drying in our hot garage.  We'll have some nice campfires in our backyard on mild summer evenings, pretty soon.

An exfoliating afternoon

We took another day trip to a west coast beach; this time out to Karekare.*

The trail from the carpark to the beach was guarded by one fierce dude.

Almost immediately, a rocky stream-bed tumbled across our trail.  There was no bridge.  Well, hmm.  A moment of indecision, and then we took off our shoes and socks and forded that bad dad!  I made two trips to carry the boys.  It was so cold!

Once we were across and back onto the sandy beach trail, we saw the surf club,

climbed the dunes,
 

admired the cliffs,

and poked about in the sand.

We walked all the way down to the water-- this is a very large beach.  And then the wind came up.

And the beach became boisterous indeed.



It was the kind of wind where you get buffeted and have to stagger to regain your footing.  And that sand?  It's the kind that's made of metal, so... this was essentially a shrapnel barrage, you feel me?  I was glad I could roll down my pants legs and get some protection.  Obviously, this was no place for little boys who are low to the ground.

So we turned right around and headed back.  Grandpa put Amiri on his back, I carried Arram in my arms, and Grammie carried all our backpacks.  We tromped steadily through the sand back the way we came, trying not to think too much about how it was just such a large beach.  All the way, the boys hid their faces against us and we adults were very glad for our sunglasses; if anything the wind got worse as we went and our shades were more necessary as protection from the sand than from the sun.

We'll go back, but I think we'll check the weather report first and go on a day when 'calm' is forecast!

* Pronounced 'carry-carry'.
  

Zoom!

Any rainy weekend, the boys can be counted on to beg to be taken to West Wave.

Amiri thinks the splash pools and the hot tub and the wave pool are fun and all, but for his money it's really all about the big slide.  I went down with him the first few times, but then he wanted to go by himself as long as I would wait at the bottom to catch him.

Before he's even out:  'Can I go again?'  I love it.

It's possible he likes it; what do you think?

 

Arram will spend hours sliding too, but is less of a thrill-seeker than his big brother.

The Redwoods of New Zealand

We went out to the Cascades park in the Waitakeres this weekend for a walk in the bush.  All this was only ten minutes away!

The Cascades has some of the biggest Kauri trees in the region.  See the big trunks behind Amiri?  That's them.

Here are some of the big trees we saw.  Yeah, imagine these floating on that little creek I showed you with the waterwheel.  Jam Dam, indeed.

There was even one that was so big I couldn't fit it all in one frame.  It's 1,000 years old, and is likely to live another 1,500.

We also went over a neat bridge and found a cave-ish rock formation.

When we were done with our long walk, the boys collapsed in exhaustion.

And there was another picture frame!

Independence Day

Arram is done with diapers.

I am still a little afraid to say it right out loud, lest I jinx everything and we go tumbling all Snakes and Ladders style back to square one.

But I think it's actually going to happen, for real this time.  I think he's turned the corner and made his own decision.  Sits on the big toilet and everything.  Takes himself off to the bathroom sometimes, pants-down, pants-up, washes hands, the works, unannounced and unsupervised.

As much as I sometimes wish I had a crystal ball to see into the future, I think that much of my enthusiasm on this excellent day would have fallen a bit flat if I'd known I had 1,057 days of diapers ahead of me yet.

But we've made it now, to the end of this long road (and merging onto another bigger one!)  The excess diapers in our house are now being used for much more palatable purposes.