Family Ski Day

We all survived our first day up at Cardrona! (I went up by myself yesterday, but today was the a family of 4 adventure). It was a true treat to rise above the inversion layer in Wanaka and spend some time in the sunshine. The boys were really excited about the magic carpet when we first got there. Ben is fairly cautious and doesn't quite know what to make of skiing (I think that's code for he whines a fair bit). He's spent plenty of days on the snow, but being Ben he's not that go-go-go on something that he's not 100% sure about. Josh, on the other hand, was whining from the first run that he wanted to go up the chair lift. Dan and I managed about an hour or so on the magic carpet before we'd truly exhausted all parties. Dan went for an hour of skiing on his own and the boys and I refueled in the lodge (plus took the season pass photos). After our snack we somehow managed to get back up to the magic carpet and put on all of our skis before Dan reappeared. I was exhausted just by that effort. After a number of melt downs we decided to split up- I took Josh up the chair and Dan & Ben stayed on the magic carpet. Josh is a speed freak. He giggles and asked for more the entire run down McDougal's. My legs were on fire, supporting the weight of a 2 1/2 year old with skis and boots on is not easy. After a few crashes we managed to track down Dan & Ben at the bottom of the poma lift. Josh wanted to keep going and I needed to rest my legs. In the end we lasted over 3 1/2 hours at the hill. It was a major effort, but I think we're all game to do it again next weekend.

Fire Fighter Josh

Josh was pretty excited today because the fire department came to visit playgroup. He dressed up in his super cool fire fighter outfit and went to go check out Wanaka's brand new fire engine. Unfortunately he was a bit scared of the fire engine, too big? Too many buttons? I'm not sure. So we went back inside and he drove the plastic car.

Ben & Josh, pop art style

I don't think these photos need much explanation, but all I can say is I had nothing to do with this photo shoot. I was busy trying to tidy up the house and Ben was in control. Perhaps I shouldn't of taught him how to operate Photo Booth?

Quality Time

Ben and I are half way through our Tuesday afternoons just the two of us and yesterday gave me a very valuable reminder about quality time. We had had a day with many meltdowns, both children falling apart over what I would consider fairly trival things. After we dropped Josh off at preschool Ben and I went to the local climbing wall together. While we were leaving we were talking about where we could go for a hot chocolate and we decided that we'd go home so we could do the art project from the library book. Ben was so precious and graceful and appreciative of my time. It only took 45 minutes of my undivided attention to get the wonderful child that I know and love back. Note to self- when it's all falling apart, spend more one on one time with the child.

Gingerbread Kiwis

In honor of our newfound citizenship my friend Debbie gave me a Kiwi cookie cutter. I decided to break it in today with a batch of gingerbread Kiwis (I figured we should make brown cookies for a brown bird). I will confess that we used the American gingerbread recipe which calls for molasses instead of the New Zealand version that calls for golden syrup.

100% Kiwi

We're a 100% Kiwi family now! The boys were both granted New Zealand citizenship when they were born here (after Ben was born they changed the rules and one of the parents has to be a NZ citizen or have permanent residency to give the child citizenship). Dan wanted to have citizenship like the boys, so after we reached the length of time of living in New Zealand required we applied. Here's a photo of us after the ceremony.

For the very cute video of our day, please click on or cute and paste the following link:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BIGbNrsTZnM

Science Afternoon

It was a full fledged science fair at our house on Tuesday afternoon. Ben and I continued our fun Tuesday afternoon program (Josh is at preschool) and this week we invited Hazel to come join us. The theme was science. We started off with our volcano and did a few cool experiments from the Disgusting Science kit (Ben's favorite was the slimy buggers) and then we did a few others from the Mind Blowing Science Kit (my favorite was the underwater volcano eruption that changed colors). Then Ben & Hazel decided they wanted to do their own experiments. It was wonderful to watch them come up some great ideas, a little of this, mix that and their excitement and awe was just awesome. We made a mess and by the end of our science afternoon Ben was so excited he couldn't sit still, literally bouncing off the chairs and the walls.