Curious Kiwi

Our New Year’s Day excursion.

Rachel took my pistachio nut shells photo and turned it into this cute cartoon. Great job Rachel!

Wednesday morning we drove up to Napier (about 3 hours north). After checking in at Kennedy Park, we spend the afternoon walking along Marine Parade. Thursday we spent the day at Splash Planet water park in Hastings. The kids had a blast. I got sunburnt.

Friday morning was spent at the National Aquarium of New Zealand and then up at Bluff Hill for a view over Napier. We spent the afternoon at the campground with the kids playing in the playground and having a swim.
Saturday morning we had planned on driving home, but decide to take a side trip up to Taupo. Had lunch there and then drove home via the Desert Road, but missed seeing the volcanoes due to the very low clouds and rain. Arrived home at 6pm, very tired but happy.

Be sure to view the map to see where we were.

1. at the Christmas Tree farm, 2. the tree, 3. the tree - decorated, 4. too many choices

We went down to the Classic Christmas Tree farm in Greytown to look for a tree. This is our first year as a family having a real cut Christmas tree. It was a beautiful day to wander outside. The tree farm had varieties of pine, fir, spruce, cypress… This is the tree we chose. An 8 1/2 foot Douglas Fir. The children decorated the tree with a bit of help with the lights and the parts of the tree that are over their heads.

on tabblo.com! - just a quick way to make a nice mosaic for my blog.

We’ve had beautiful spring weather the last few days, but today a southerly is blasting through. We’ve had over 2 inches of rain with high winds and temps in the 40s! Brrr! It’s not often that it gets this cold this late in October. Monday was Labour Day and it’s traditionally the day that everyone works in their gardens. It wasn’t the nice sunny weather that we’d gotten used to. We had some rain but it cleared up for part of the day, so I was able to get these photos of some of the new growth in our garden.

Today, however, these photos would be quite impossible. I was pleased to have taken them yesterday.