Erin's winning streak

I have been entering competitions with enthusiasm for about the last 6 months and I'm excited to say it's just now starting to pay off. There's a previous post of Ben playing the game "Pesky Pirates" that I won, but since then I have won a contemporary NZ fiction novel, an Australian novel, a pocket calendar, 2nd place in a photo competition (that results in a gift basket of goodies). The photo above resulted in a very cool book called "Get Growing. A New Zealand step-by-step guide to growing your own vegetables and fruit" which is geared towards children.

Invasion of the superheroes Part 2

The superhero theme continues in our house, and we're all getting into the spirit. Otherwise SuperBen continues to take the town of Wanaka by storm... Here are a few of the latest and greatest superhero photos.

Making bread

My boys have always been into helping in the kitchen and today's project was no exception. We were gifted a sourdough starter and decided to give our first loaf of sourdough bread a try. Josh thought buggy (the starter) was pizza dough, but was happy to help measure out the flour and knead the bread. His favorite part was rolling it over. I look forward to eating our creation, it's currently cooling in the kitchen.

Josh goes to school

Josh goes to preschool! Josh started this week at Ben's preschool this week and he was beyond enthusiastic. He cried when I picked him up after his first morning, "no go home mommy".

Invasion of the superheroes

Ben is currently in the midst of a full fledge superhero obsession. Thanks to a collection of costumes from the toy library and Nana's packages Ben has been able to channel his superhero powers into Superman, Spiderman and Batman. He is taking the town by storm!

Erin's homemade cards

I have been playing with paper my entire life. I have an entire dresser full of paper products in California and a large craft table with buckets of supplies here in New Zealand. I don't always get as much time to play with my paper toys as I'd like, but I always enjoy the time I do get. I was recently inspired by some new colorful card stock and have been so excited about the latest crop of cards. I've dappled in the sales of my cards, but have mainly

kept it a hobby.

After the latest output of cards I realized that I had enough in my stock pile to share some of the recent creations with the outside world. I was very excited this afternoon when I went into Jumping Tangents and Cathie and Kimberley decided to buy all 22 of the cards I had in my bag. Thanks gals for continuing to encourage my creative streak.

Summer

We were finally blessed with some real summer days, a month after the official start of the season. What fun it was to take advantage of some of the great outdoor activities in Wanaka.

Above are photos from our family hike up above Diamond Lake. Dan and I were very impressed with Ben's effort, a child who normally doesn't like walking at all. The boys traded off riding in the buggy for the first part, but Ben really rose to the challenge when we had him climbing up 153 steep steps to reach the look out point. There was definitely some whining, but all in all we were impressed and are very excited to think about future family hikes.

The photo above is the boys in the inflatable boat cruising around by Fisherman's Beach. Our house was so hot that we retreated to the lake for a picnic dinner.