Fairer weather

A busy Saturday followed by a slightly less hectic Sunday is how I'd describe this weekend. All in all it's been a good week, Noah enjoyed a trip to the library with daycare on Friday, and told us all about the books he and his friends had taken out. It was also show and tell day, and in the spirit of being creative we'd decided to take along some of the beautifully perfumed Daphne flowers from the garden. When we picked him up, we were informed by the teachers that they'd had to quarantine it in a cup and some gladwrap as apparently (and news to us!) it is highly poisonous. I looked it up on the Internet on Friday night and sure enough, the bark and berries are extremely toxic to humans and animals, and just ingesting a few berries (not that our little posy had any!) is apparently enough to kill a child....eek how bad did I feel! Oh well you can't know everything all of the time...! Noah also enjoyed a 'Wheels' day on Wednesday where all the kids took in something with wheels, whether it be a bike, trike, scooter, skateboard or dolls pushchair. We felt a little bad that Noah had the only baby plastic ride-on trike amongst all the other proper bikes and trikes....but that will be remedied when he gets his Glide2Ride bike for his birthday which we've had since before Christmas but have saved it till now so he's a better size to ride it. He didn't appear to be at all fazed by having a baby trike (he is still the youngest one there by nearly 6 months) and apparently he had a go on all the other kids bikes anyway!

Saturday morning we headed out bright and early to Porirua to do the shopping followed by a look around KMart - made a nice change from the Warehouse. We're in the market for a bike helmet as Noah will be needing one for the new bike, and are thinking that Nana and Poppa might be able to get him a mini scooter for his birthday too as he enjoyed having a little hoon around (albeit with Daddy holding the handlebars!) KMart on one whilst we were there. We've started collecting a few bits and pieces for his 'Little Einsteins' birthday party on 8th August, not that we can find any themed party items around so will have to make do with Daddy making a red rocket cake and putting some Little Einsteins pictures around on the day.

Then it was off to Paetahanui for little Maddison's 2nd birthday brunch for an hour, before whizzing back to town to catch up with the daycare crew for our first ever yum cha. It was a lot of fun to experience so many new tastes and flavours, although a little lost on the kids as I think the best bit for them was being able to run around and hide together under the big round tables we were sitting at!

Home for a short sleep for Noah (even I found myself in need of a half hour lie-down, no sleep forthcoming as I am useless at sleeping during the day but at least a rest for the body!). Then Noah and Daddy went up to the park to leave me to sand down some drawers and a bookcase we want to repaint for the baby's room. When I started I thought 'this isn't going to take long' but I was still going at it an hour later when the boys returned from the park and it was only when Mark told me to knock it off as it was dinnertime (and dark by this stage too I might add!) that I called it a day with 1 1/2 drawers to go. My arm and shoulders are feeling it a bit today but am glad it is done, we made good use of a still afternoon to have the garage open so the sawdust could escape outdoors rather than covering everything in the garage. And now to paint!





We had contemplated going to the Winter Carnival to see the fire burning and fireworks but one of the daycare parents very cleverly reminded us of how difficult it would probably be getting out of Petone afterwards (one road in, one road out). So instead we made our own fun and after dinner got in the car and took a drive (stopping on the way to pick up some icecreams) up to the top of Mt. Victoria to watch the fireworks from a distance. There were only 2-3 other cars up there and we had a pretty decent view of them without the worry of finding a park and fighting through the traffic to get home again afterwards. It was the perfect way to introduce Noah to his first ever fireworks as 7pm was a much better time than the usual 9pm start time for the annual Guy Fawkes show later in the year. Although I think we might be tempted to get some sparklers to do in the garden this year!

This morning we took our first walk down to the ducks in months, and it appeared they hadn't been fed in about as long as they totally devoured the bread we had taken along in what seemed like seconds. We then made a puzzling discovery of nearly a full loaf of fairly fresh bread in a bread bag in the bin as we went to throw our bread bag away so proceeded to feed all that to them as well (look out....gypsy family at our best!). We couldn't figure out why someone would have thrown it away with the ducks so close by, but at least we didn't let it go to waste. Then it was up to the park for a slide and a go on the flying fox before going home via the cable car museum. On our walk home, a police car pulled up alongside us and it was none other than Mark's good friend JP who is in his first year of policing so we had a chat to him for 5 minutes. Noah was most intrigued by the sounds coming from his police radio every so often. Fluffy and coffees with cheese scones for morning tea followed hot on its heels by bacon, egg and cheese toasties for lunch made sure that we renewed all the energy we had expended on our walk!

This afternoon we headed to Karori Pool for an hour's swim/aquajog with George and his dad Craig joining us. I seem to have done something to my foot which is rather annoying, and nearly couldn't make it home from the ducks this morning. It's been getting worse all week, and initially I thought it was muscular so have been rubbing antiflamme on and trying to stretch it out, but now there's a funny creaking, grating sound whenever I go up from standing up into tip toes so there goes my walking regime for the next 2 days. Luckily, my walking buddy Shannon is keen to go aquajogging instead so that'll be where we're headed at 6am tomorrow. It may be that its a pregnancy related thing in that I had a couple of weeks of no exercise when getting over the flu and have now overstretched a ligament or something, will be booking in to see the osteopath though to check it out as have always found her very helpful when it comes to long-term strains and pulled muscles that don't seem to heal on their own.

This has been the first weekend where both Saturday and Sunday have been fine in simply ages, and it has been so nice to see some blue sky! Here's a wee video of Noah on the flying fox at the park this morning...we had the park to ourselves which is a real rarity!