Holiday Update #1 : KL-Auckland-Christchurch

Thursday 14th June ...  seems ages ago now actually!   Aaron didn't go to school on his last day as we had another appointment at the hospital for his finger.  The nurse checked it and dressed it, gave me a pile of banages and back home we went to finish packing.

Lyndon got home from work after lunch and there was the usual mad scurrying around tidying up before we headed to the airport.  We flew to Singapore and from there to Auckland.  The kids were pretty good on the flight.  Samuel watched an animal dvd rather than the entertainment system on the plane.

Aaron and Maddison watched movies and played games (and yes that is Maddison picking her nose!).

Samuel had a good sleep and around midnight Malaysian time we encouraged the other two rascals to turn off the movies and try and sleep! 

Our plane unloading in Auckland.

We got into Auckland on Friday morning about 40 minutes early, to a very different temperature than what we left in KL!   9degs!   It was cold - especially when we were bascially still in summer clothes.

After getting our rental car we headed McDonalds where we met some friends for lunch.  After that we went to our motel and the kids and I chilled (we kept warm by getting into bed with the electric blankets on!) for the rest of the afternoon while Lyndon visited his old workplace.

Saturday 16th was spent catching up with friends.  Unfortunately I didn't get my camera out for our visit with Penny :-(  Feel bad about that.  The kids had fun together and Maddison wrote her name on a piece of paper for Penny's daughter so she wouldn't forget her and would miss her!  heheee

In the afternoon we visited some other friends who have kids similar ages to ours.  Maddison and Heidi had such fun together (2 months apart in age).

Sunday and Monday were busy enough too.  Tuesday morning we managed to squeeze in an appointment to view our home which we are renting out.  Nice to see the tenants that are in there now are keeping it really tidy.  Tuesday midday we flew to Christchurch ... and of course there always seems to be a little bit of drama when we travel!  We got ourselves up to the boarding lounge and the kids watching a dvd and Lyndon asked me where I put the kids and my passports!  Sorry I don't have them!  Well he didn't either!  So he left in a mad scamper to try and locate where they might have been left!  THANKFULLY he found them in the trolley we had used for our luggage, still sitting in the basket.  So so lucky!

We got to Nana and Grandad's in the afternoon and the kids had super fun exploring outside, building Jenga towers out of kindling and inspecting Nana's toy cupboard. :-)

 The mountains were really beautiful all covered with snow.

Maddison helped Nana in the kitchen peeling carrots one day.

 They had great fun with cousins J and B.  B and Maddison are the only girls amongst the cousins (they have 7 boy cousins and 1 girl) :-)

 Aaron made a "gun" from a fence post hinge and a bolt he found in Grandad's shed!

 J and Aaron made masks together :-)

Unfortunately we didn't do a lot of visiting because I came down with a very nasty bug on the Sunday.  But when I was back on my feet and feeling better we went with Nana to the Antarctic centre one day. It was awesome!  I really recommend it even if you go just to see the 4D movie!  Fantastic and really really well done.  :-)

 Aaron and Maddison wanted to go into the snow room ... so we put several more layers of clothes on them and in they went.  Samuel was determined to come too ... -15degs!  They had a great time on the slide, but Maddison got cold fingers really quickly from holding the sides of the slide.

 Samuel zooming down the ice slide (man it was slippery!)

 Maddison at the top of the slide.

 Samuel zooming down again ... his legs were airbourne heehehe

 Aaron's turn.

 Aaron and Samuel in the igloo just before we got back into the warm.  Aaron's face sums up how cold it was!

 We spent a while watching the little blue penguins swimming and doing their thing.

After our visit there and lunch we headed to play mini golf with J and B.  None of the kids had played before, so we just let them at it and had a good laugh at their expense :-)   B was very stylish with her handbag over her shoulder!  (she's a few months older than Samuel).

 It didn't take Samuel long to ditch his golf club and just run about like mad!

 I seemed to spent a fair bit of time in the bushes looking for Aaron's rogue golf ball!

 Maddison and B sat and sang nursery rhymes together for a while :-)

 Aaron and J were very busy "playing" golf ... although this water feature took up a great deal of their time ... rolling their balls through the tunnel over and over again!

 At the end of that busy day I looked like I had been pulled through a gorse bush backwards!  The result of the wind and Samuel pulling at my hair all day!

 Any chance he could, Samuel would put on his boots, crocs or whatever he could find and dash outside.  He got to be quite sneaky at it!  The first few days he really fought putting on so many layers of clothes as he just wasn't used to it, but he soon learnt that he wasn't to go outside without his jacket and hat on.  He loved exploring Nana's garden.

 Visiting the dog kennels.

 Kicking a ball.

 Clapping for himself when he connected with the ball :-)

Nana had a mask book which Aaron and Maddison coloured and cut out - one day they went out to catch some birds!  They were fascinated with the little wax eyes that were eating the crab apples in the garden.

 Big discussions on how their "plans" were going to work.

 As you can imagine their plans were extremely unsucessful hehee ... so they came inside and made a hut around the fire.  They said they were camping and the fire was their camp fire.  So they had their snack around the camp fire that day :-)

Good job couch cushions are quick to put back and make the place look tidy again!

Now we are at Grandma and Grandad's in the deep south ... but that is a post for another day.  Thanks for visiting and apologies for the photo overload!  ;-)