Rolling with it

Despite how impromptu some of our family adventures may look, to be honest we're not really known for just rolling with it. I like to plan ahead, weeks, months, even years sometimes, and when things that have been planned don't quite turn out how I planned, sometimes I don't find it that easy just to roll with it.

So the weekend was an unexpectedly wonderful time of doing just that. Rolling with it all.

We'd planned a trip to see our friends Tracey and Dayne in the Hawkes Bay a few weeks back. And due to other commitments we ended up changing the date to this weekend. Which was fine, we rolled with it.

One of the things we all wanted to do was go to Splash Planet, a whole day out experience at the water theme park in Napier. Trace and I had been emailing earlier in the week and the long range forecast was looking pretty good for Saturday at that stage.

So when Noah woke up in the middle of the night on Wed/Thu complaining his throat really hurt, that part of the weekend was suddenly not looking too likely. As a precaution, we shipped him off to the doctors Thursday afternoon and got some antibiotics (not that we've actually ended up using them). We held fire till Friday morning to make a decision on the weekend to see whether he was firstly well enough for school and thus we concluded also well enough for the trip, and in the end decided we were good to go.

We jumped in the car at 3.30pm, hoping to be in Havelock North by 7.30-8pm. Ah the best laid plans. I think in the end we must have stopped six times on the way, 3 wees on the side of the road for Mylo, 2 petrol station wees for the rest of us, plus a stop at Pak n Save Masterton to get the rest of our picnic dinner. So we were a little later than planned - but hey, we rolled with it.

This weekend was also a first for us, we have never shared a room with both the boys before by choice - they're noisy blighters! But this weekend we all camped out together, us on a double bunk bed, whilst Noah was above us in the single bunk and Mylo slept on a mattress on the floor. And you know what? We rolled with it, and it worked out just fine.

We woke to drizzly rain on Saturday morning, so the 'do we, don't we take Noah to Splash Planet' question was actually thankfully answered for us. Thanks to the joys of the Internet and a recommendation from friends Tracey sorted out some indoor fun for us at the Faraday Centre of Science and Technology in Napier, where all manner of hands-on gadgets from today and yesteryear could be played with, jumped on, wound up, driven, rung, tested etc. An absolute goldmine of fun for the kids, big and small.

We rung the bells to the tune of London's famous Westminster chimes, got traffic lights to work, rung up pounds, shilling and pence, found old style space invader games that really worked, and whispered secrets to each other over the airwaves.

Tracey and I were both feeling our years after we found this typewriter amongst all the other gadgets. We both learnt to type on one of these and now it's considered a museum piece? Eeeeek!

Afterwards, we headed back to their place via Silky Oak Chocolate Shop and Cafe where the kids were served up some fantastic looking kids plates and hot chocolates. If I hadn't already ordered a muffin and coffee, I'd have been sorely tempted to nick the plate for myself!

Later in the afternoon we headed down to Cameron and Mikayla's school to burn off some energy. And burn we did. With some fierce football, scooter races, chase and tag, tree climbing and general mayhem.

Tracey and Dayne have only recently moved from Havelock township into 'the farmhouse' but oh we could see the appeal - the peaceful quiet and the rambling orchards are just heavenly.

We fed the chickens, and rambled on down through the hundreds of fruit trees, picking plums straight off the trees to eat along the way. Someone enjoyed their plum a little too much wouldn't you say!

Then once the kids were bundled into bed exhausted in the best kind of way after the best kind of day, Dayne served up an incredible butter chicken curry with poppadoms. It would be fair to say all bets were off on the diet last night, as I'm pretty sure between the yummy food and 4 glasses of wine, I used up about a whole week's worth of points in about 2 hours! But you know what? It felt good to just roll with it.

Sunday morning, laden down with Black Doris plums and nectarines from the orchard plus a couple of Dayne's famous smoked trout, we were up bright and early to drive home in order to make it to Noah's swimming lesson at lunchtime.

Followed by Mark's indoor footy game mid-afternoon.

This evening Mark even made a last minute decision to take both boys to the stadium to watch the Wellington Phoenix play football at 5pm, with Wholly Pizza takeaway pizzas on the menu for after. So rolling with it a little longer it would appear the diet is back on.....um.....tomorrow morning!

Another packed-out, sold-out, all-singing, all-dancing weekend.

And, quite frankly, where rolling with it was the best way to play.