We weren't allowed to feed these fish

...so, have some fun feeding the little virtual fish I've added above!  (Edit 1 Feb:  the fish have moved into a smaller tank down on the right side of your screen.)

From Eden to Everywhere

At the top of Mount Eden (the highest volcanic peak in the city), there's a neat brass monument.  It's circular and looks something like a sundial, except that instead of hours of the day it has names of international cities, with arrows and distances.

It pointed the way back to North America, way off to the northeast.

We circled around the crater and from this point, across miles and miles, we're facing approximately back home.  Can you see us waving?

Have you ever played with a Sensitive Plant?

Sea caves!

Bethells Beach is also fun because it has sea caves.

And you can walk right into them.

All the way until they come to an end.

They have roots extending in through their roofs.

 
Which is understandable, of course.  The roots are just trying to stay out of the quicksand.

An afternoon at Te Henga

We went to Bethells Beach* for the afternoon.  I picked that beach because it's a short drive.  A place that's easy to just pop on over for a whim of a swim.   However, upon seeing the rough surf that day...

...and that the Lifesaving Club had apparently turned up en masse to pluck out the drowners...

... and that even the rescue helicopter made an appearance...

...we decided to leave the water play for the grownups...

...and just enjoy the scenery.

Besides, we had the whole river outlet to play in!



And lots of tiny private beaches that we could swim to.

*The Maori name Te Henga means 'The Sands', which makes me giggle because it's the Captain Obvious of beach names. 
 

This is what happens most afternoons

Now that the holidays are over, the overstock turkeys have gone on sale

For this price, you could get a turkey the size of a Labrador Retriever (or a moa!) in the States.
  

Look at these moas. Look at them!

I watched a programme on TV the other night, 'Primeval NZ' or some such.  They described how New Zealand separated from Gondwanaland a zillion years ago and drifted around in the wide ocean, mostly sank, volcanoed and earthquaked itself silly, and then decided it needed a little more space from Oz and surreptitiously started this slow sidle off to the east.

Throw in a few ice ages and I suppose it's not that much of a stretch to understand how the all the mammals hitching a ride off the mega-continent died off until pretty much all that was left was just earthworms, amphibians, and insects, freeing NZ up to become this exclusive birds-only club.

One day some birds flew in from across the proto-Tasman, decided this would do just fine, and got right to work adapting to their environment.  They diverged into two distinct species, both of which independently became flightless but followed rather different evolutionary trajectories:  the kiwi and the moa. 

Kiwis are rare today, and moas are of course extinct (and presumably tasty, as their demise coincided nearly perfectly with the arrival of man).  But they left some very cool remains.

Here is a model of a giant moa--nine feet tall!

This is the heavy-footed moa.  He's about four feet tall and is probably my favourite display on this entire floor of the museum.  He makes me think of jackalopes or the Feejee Mermaid, because he looks so absurdly disproportionate that I halfway reckon he's actually made of two different birds kind of stapled together just to have us on.  I like thinking about what it would have been like to turn a corner and find a flock of these glandular emus stomping toward you.  (Dibs on the drumstick!)

Speaking of, here are some drumstick bones.  That itty-bitty one at the top is a regular chicken drumstick from dinner, for comparison.   Then we we have the moa bones, from top to bottom:  coastal, slender bush, stout-legged, heavy-footed, and giant.

Surely you can see the family resemblance in their cousins the kiwis.

 

A climbing good time

What, you want me to climb up this?

OK, I'm up.

I can climb too!

See?

PEAS WeGrewSomePeas

Grammie has done some intensive gardening in our small patch of earth, and shortly before Christmas Arram helped her pick a big bowl of sweet peas.  When was the last time YOU got so excited about peas?

He learned how to carefully open them.

Not like that!

 

He ate fresh peas by the handful!

Christmas fruitcake is available for purchase at all the cafes, totally non-ironically

Celebration of Excellence

Speaking of awards, here are some little videos that I shot at Amiri's school's annual awards ceremony.  It took place after school hours, and it was a nice evening-- he and I walked there hand in hand, just the two of us, and we even got an ice cream.  Afterward, we kicked off our shoes and played barefoot in the park.

The ceremony was mostly made up of the usual reading-of-names and winners-coming-up-to-accept, with the preponderance of attention devoted to the 'graduating' sixth graders (as is only fair).  But they had also prepared some entertainment for us.  Here is one of the musical interludes where the children, who had been seated on the floor of the gym, stood and turned to face their whanau.

Amiri's little face is obscured in a sea of little faces here, but while 'live' I could make out his very earnest performance of all the words and motions, and I told him afterward how proud I was of him.  (On the way in, he had confided to me that he was nervous about remembering everything.  Sweet little boy, he wanted to get it just right.)  He is standing to the right of the white projector, kind of just above the guitarist's head.



And at the close of the ceremony, the sixth graders were farewelled onto their next stage of life by exiting through a gauntlet of shirtless, enthusiastic (and fifth-grade and younger!) haka warriors.  Kia kaha*, kids.



* 'Stay strong.'   A term of affirmation, encouragement, and approval.
  

Round and round and round we go

Here they are at another birthday party, or as they like to call it, another opportunity to wear their costumes.  Their disguises got them lots of smiles at Victoria park on this beautiful December day.

A 22-degree halo

The boys requested we go to the playground at Amiri's school this morning.  While there, we noticed that the sun had a rainbow around it!  We learned it's caused by ice crystals in the high atmosphere.

I took a bunch of photos and made this composite of them.  The black stuff in the middle is where I was holding up my hat against the sun, so as to not over-expose my photos.

(Someday I'll have a higher-quality camera than the one integrated in my phone... but that day is not today.  So I do what I can.)
  

A fine way to start the new year

Here's what we've done this year so far:

--We all rang in the New Year whilst asleep; just shows you what kind of party animals we are.  Apparently there were noisy fireworks at midnight but I, personally, was unaware of this.

--Coffee and playtime (which was something about hammerhead sharks... I don't know all the details...but it involved pillowcases over their heads so you know it was serious).

--Skype with our Aunties over breakfast.

--A nice walk down the street.

--Couch fort-building.

--A trip to the beach off Pt Chev with our neighbours.  Back home when Arram's teeth started to chatter.

 

--Lunch was a selection from among peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, duck confit, and paneer makhani over rice.

--Chatting with friends.

--Precision bike-riding on the patio.

--Toasting of hides in the warm sun of the backyard, amidst pretend ice-cream and hot-dog truck industry.

--Measuring:  Amiri is 116 cm and Arram is 104 cm.

--Into the splash pool.  Squirt gun fun.

--Mama brought out a basin with rose-scented water and attempted to give herself a pedicure in the sun.  Two boys suddenly also needed pedicures and demanded that Mama make room for their feet too.  The water got full of grass and mud and had to be changed.

--Break for a mac 'n' cheese snack.

--Later we'll watch Snow White and OOOOOH it'll be so scary!

Not bad, not bad at all.  It's been a full day, especially when you consider that the ball hasn't dropped yet in New York.