Did you know that our backyard is a jungle?

Ah, the imagination of a 3 year old!

Bella is soooo into pretend play now. One of her favorite things to do is pretend our backyard or anywhere with lots of greenery is a jungle. We put on our "binoculars" and look for animals in the trees. It always ends with the animals trying to get us and we run away and then look for more. It is really fun! Charlie gets into it too, as you can see from the video. He just follows us around an then screams and runs when we do. He also thinks that when we have our binoculars on we are playing peek-a-boo!

Bella's other favorite game is to pretend we are different people and the whole family joins in. We are everything from the wiggles and higgletown heros to the three little pigs and Mickey and Minnie!

My favorite one was one day when Bella said that we were Goldilocks and the three bears. She said that Bill and I were mama and papa bear and she was baby bear. When I asked her who Charlie was she said that he was Goldilocks!!! She calls us by name and it sounds so funny to hear Charlie referred to as Goldilocks!!!

The Princess at her castle

Hey all

We visited Larnach castle today which is about 13km north of our house on the Otago Peninsula. It is so beautiful!. The views we saw were so spectacular! Bella thought that we were going to her castle because she thinks she is a princess! So of course she wore her crown, as you can see in the pictures. We were able to talk her out of wearing her princess dress and high heels!!

The castle was built in 1870 by William Larnach. There are 34 1/2 acres of gardens surrounding the castle with a fountain and duck pond in the middle. The kids had so much fun running all around the gardens. We didn't go inside the castle this time because we went in the afternoon and Bella was tired and when she gets tired she gets fiesty and I did't feel like paying for any damage after she trashed the place!! we will save that for another day. There was one area of stairs built on the side of a hill with several platforms. There were views of the Otago Peninsula from each platform and they were so spectacular. One of the videos at the end of this blog is a panoramic view of the Otago Peninsula.

My baby is gone...

So Charlie is officially not a baby anymore....

...Apart from being a world traveller and joining a band(see picture above!)

he is behaving so much more like a little boy

Bill asked him to put away his guitar this morning and have breakfast.

He walked accross the room put it on the bookshelf and came to table for breakfast...now what baby does that!

He also is eating at the table with us and uses a plate and big boy cup!!!

I officially am baby free and proud of it!!!!

coffe at the park!

Some of the SC mamas have dreamed of a park where you can get coffee and snacks...
well I have found it!
You just need to come to New Zealand to get it!!

We were at the park today and someone asked me if I was from Canada. I said that I was amercian and he said that I sounded amercian but I wasn't loud like most amercians so he figured I must be canadian!!
Maybe we should say we are canadian from now on, apparantly kiwis don't think very highly of americans!

What do Kiwis do for Easter?

Not a whole lot!
Apparantly New Zealand is not a very religious country...alot of atheists.
There are no easter baskets, no plastic eggs, just a lot of chocolate, cadbury of course(cadbury factories are here in new zealand).

One of Bill's co-workers invited us over for a potluck on Friday. His name is Murray and when we told Bella we were going to Murray's house for dinner, her face just lit up....she thought it was the Murray from the wiggles!!!
We had such a great time. A lot of Bill's co-workers were there with their families so Bella and Charlie had a lot of fun playing with them.
Bella was her outgoing self and had everyone playing catch with her(adults and kids) and she was cheering everyone on!!
They had a Easter egg hunt for the kids while we were there. They hunt for mini chocolate eggs here....Bella loved it and Charlie thought we were hunting for balls!!!

Today is Easter and yesterday we were trying to decide which church to try out for service. We found a sunrise service on the beach and thought that sounded fun but it started at 7am and the kids have been getting up around 7:30-8. We decided to try a later service at a church up the street from us.
So this morning both Bella and Charlie woke up around 6:15 so we thought it was a sign we were supposed to go to the beach service. we piled into the car and got to where I thought the service was and no one was there...
Bill said "God if we are supposed to go the beach service show us what to do..."
We decided to go home. On the way home we saw some people walking toward the beach and one had a bible in their hand!
Bill pulled over and asked if this was a church service. An older couple waited for us and showed us where to go....there is no way we could have found it on our own!
God is sooo good!!
The service was nice, small. We are going to try their church next week.

After church we had a small easter egg hunt at home, with chocolate eggs. bella loved it!!!!

Hope you all had a wonderful Easter!

bill's first post

some new slang:
- good on ya
- have a cuppa?

honestly, much of the slang we have yet to decipher.

the locals keep saying the daytime warmth will soon disappear. We don't want to believe it.
It is so beautiful here. This will not be our last trip here, in case you can't make it
this round.

surfahs - the water is 4-5 degrees F warmer than SC. Good thing I bought a new 5-4-3 with

a built in hood! Non-surfers - it feels like doing 100 pushups in a sauna. The suit will be great 4 months from now.

love,
bill

Driving on the "wrong" side of the road

So I did it...
I said I wasn't going to but I did it...
I drove in New Zealand.

The house we are renting is smack dab in the middle of two big hills. I have tried walking them both and although not too bad would be hard to do it everyday.
I got some funny looks when I was walking up and down a fairly steep hill with the kids in the double stroller and Bella's bike balanced on top!!

So for the driving...
It wasn't too bad.
Before we set out I told Bella and Charlie that I had to concentrate on driving so they couldn't ask for new music, ask for snacks yell, scream or really even talk to me and they handled that pretty well!
I mapped our where we were going, dinosaur park, and we made it there!!!
Today I even drove to the market by myself!!!
We have only been here for one week, who knows what can happen in the next 6 months??!!

Bikes, Butterflies and Botanicals

So we bought Bella her first two wheeler bike, with training wheels of course, and she is doing so great with it. There is the coolest park here that the locals call dinosaur park because there is a big dinosaur slide there. We have been there three times already the kids love it. There is also a mini roadway for the kids to ride their bikes complete with stop and yield signs and speed bumps! Bella loves it and does really well! I will send pics soon...

For the butterfly portion....
we went to the otago museum a couple days ago and they have this super cool exhibit of butterflies on now. There is an area that they have turned into a rainforest and you go in there and there are hundreds of butterflies flying around. If you are still enough they will land on you. Bella really wanted on to land on her but anyone who knows her knows that she would never get still enough!!! But she just loved it!

We visited the dunedin botanical garden yesterday and it was so gorgeous. So many different types of flowers and plants and an area where the kids could feed ducks. Bella wanted to have lunch near the ducks which proved to be a bad idea. the ducks were getting so close to her and her sandwich and were looking really hungry that we decided to move...
at the new location charlie was eating a cookie and held his hand out the side of the stroller for a second and a duck came right up and snatched it away, we were lucky that is all it snatched!

Charlie fell down the stairs of our backyard deck yesterday onto concrete and has a big bruise on his forehead....his first one ever!
more later.....

same 'ol problems....

So we went to a store called the wharehouse which is like Target a couple days ago. I ran in to get a few things and Bill stayed in the car with the kids. I was in there for about 15min and ran into Bill and the kids while Bella was in the middle of a full blown tantrum....yikes!
Bill said that she lost it becuase he wouldn't let her ride her bike in the busy parking lot...how dare he! It was so embarassing...she was wailing her head off all through and out of the store

it just goes to show that you can leave the country but nothing really changes......

We made it!!

So we are here!
The flight was pretty good although there wasn't much sleep going on.
Bella had access to her own T.V. screen that ran a two hour loop of playhouse disney which I think she thought has to be watched continuosly!! Her eyes becaming glazed over after a while but she was quiet!!!
Charlie is so used to sleeping laying down in his bed that sleeping in his carseat or being held did not work well for him, but we managed.
We landed in Aukland and were making our way to our next flight and Bella said now we are gong to New Zealand. I said that we were already in New Zealand and she said then where are all the penquins!!! So funny! She must have thought they just waddle around all of New Zealand.

Our house wasn't ready for the first two days we were here so we stayed in an apartment on the beach which was nice. But it was a two bedroom place on the third floor with no elevator!!! Just so we didn't feel too homesick, I guess!!

Our house is so nice. Bella is enjoying having her own room and really enjoys going in there and closing the door and leaving Charlie out in the other room!!!
Both kids are really liking the big backyard we have and I am too!!!
I will write more soon!
Take care all