Good Times at School

Do you pick up your kids from school or sit at the dinner table and ask how their day was?  How they did at school or if anything noteworthy happened at school that day?  Sometimes they may have a story to tell or if you have kids like mine they usually respond with "I can't remember, we didn't do anything today, nothing happened at all, or I just don't want to talk about it." 

This week they had a different story to tell.  It helps that the school is so welcoming to let parents come on campus any old time to check out their kids, see how they are doing and join in any and all assemblies and events.  So hearing that there was going to be an awards ceremony (Abby tipped me off because she said she was getting one) I thought I'd show up.  I'm glad I did because Walker got an award for Math and Abby got three for Reading.

Three days later the kids participate in a class swim meet/swim demonstration.  My kids in a swim meet?  These are the same kids who just last summer were taking swim lessons learning how to hold their breath underwater and use arms and legs at the same time. 

Abby did pretty well.  She swam the freestyle and the backstroke.  Walker did the class demonstration for the younger classes and also swam the freestyle.  The best part was that while they were swimming the rest of the kids chanted their names to cheer them on.  I was surprised by that but happy to see that they have been accepted by all the other kids in school.  Being an American in a prominently Maori school, I had my worries.

Talmage also started his first week at their school.  They have an early start program for 4 1/2 yr olds to get them ready for school.  It's one day a week for 1 hr.  Hey, if it's free and it gives him something to do then why not?  He likes being at the same school as the other two and they all get out at the same time so the older ones think it's pretty cool to have him there as well.  They are nice enough to even let Maddox join them.  What a great school and people they are!

See, here's proof that good things happen at school even if the answer your child gives to the every day question of "Tell me about your day at school" is usually "huh?"  You just have to sneak around school and spy on them and see what they are up to.

The Other Side of Heaven

This weekend we did a little bit of this and a little bit of that. We did some new stuff and saw some old things. Went new places and stayed around town. It was just a good fun weekend.

Friday we started by hiking and walking the Arapuni Swing Bridge with everyone. It was windy this time so it was a little scarier. It was still pretty cool to see.

Next we drove to Jones Landing. A lake close by that people swim, boat and camp at. We decided to barbeque dinner there. Mmmm it was good! The kids played around for a while and enjoyed the scenery. Really, NZ is just beautiful no matter what direction you look!

Saturday our little town of Putaruru was holding their annual Water Festival and A & P (Agriculture and Pasture) show. Basically it had a bunch of water slides, cow, horse and miniature horse judging, Axemen wood chopping contests, arts and crafts, fluid fashion show and of course food booths. It was pretty fun hanging out and with it being across the street from our house it was easy to just hop on over. Plus with the Mammoth Water slide begging the kids to take her for a ride well....

Must have been 6 stories high.

This kid gives it 2 thumbs up!

After that wild adventure and some time spent checking out these guys....

We got in the PMV and drove back to Mount Maunganui.  We played at the beach for the rest of the day.  The kids dug up water pools and played around until Walker wounded his toe with a sharp shell.  By then it was time for dinner.  Went to the other side of heaven where we "tried" to barbeque dinner. We had some nice chicken kabob's and sausages going. No more than 10 seconds after we had gotten them on the grill a seagull swooped down and got the sausages. They were all strung together so he got quite a full dinner that night.  Ugh! 

Dad cooking on the grill.

The other side of the Mountain.  More sail boats that beach front.

It started to get windy and cold so the kabobs never cooked right. 25 minutes later we threw in the (beach) towel and left. I'd have to say sometimes McDonald sure can hit the spot.

Who stole the cookies from the cookie jar?

Growing up in a family of 5 kids we were very close.  I don't just mean close like we got a long but that my parents had 5 kids in 7 years close.  With that we did a lot together and got in to a lot of mischief together.  Looking back now we have some great stories to tell.  After each story the phrase is uttered "man, we were weird kids."

One story we like to talk about was what I like to call "2 minutes in Heaven" although it was most likely to have been 30 seconds but to a 5 yr. old it could have very well felt like eternity.

Growing up, like any good LDS family we had our abundance of food storage stocked nicely in the basement storage room.  Each in its own category.  Grains, canned good, bottled fruits done the previous summer, meats, toiletries and household items.  Then there were shelves of the good stuff.  Packs of Jell-O, pudding, marshmallows, chocolate chips, spam (only the kind with the key on it for opening), and the life time supply of Jelly Bellies that the folks had won during their time on Family Feud.

Here's where it gets good.  (Might have the kids leave the room while you read this)  So the game goes like this.  All the kids stand outside the storage room while one person goes inside and shuts the door behind them.  You are given 30 seconds to eat as much food as you can in that amount of time before someone on the other side opens the door and yells "times up!"  My goal was to be the first one in to get the can of spam.  Not because I like spam it was because I liked opening the can with the fancy little key.  Then I just left the partialy opened can on the shelf.  Then we would tear in to marshmallows and chocolate chips.  We would open red cherry Jell-O packets and dip our fingers in licking them like lick-o-sticks.  Try to hide that evidence of red stained finger tips from the parents for the next 4 days!  All that delicous food to us was heaven!  Best game EVER.

It wasn't until about 4 years ago when we were telling this story again and my mom chimes in and says "WHAT?  You kids did that?  And this entire time we thought we had mice."  Well that made sense to us.  Avoiding the mouse traps added a new element of surprise and excitement to our game.

Bwzingzwrtzyaprza and flash forward to the past two weeks here.  I've notice a few empty chips sacks in the pantry.  Ritz packages left open and empty granola boxes left on the shelf.  Hmmm?  Who's been leaving trash in here?  Is it from the kids' lunch boxes?  Has Cordell been snacking before dinner and hasn't closed the packages?  Weird.  Then I walk in the kitchen after taking a shower where the boys were supposed to be watching a movie and I hear this noise in the pantry.  Ah HA!  I've found my little mouse! 

He's beat me at my own game!

The way I see it

Guest writer for the month is Abby and this is what she has to say....

Hi family and friends.  I'm having a good time in New Zealand.  Let me tell you what is happening with me so far. 

If you ever attend Putaruru Primary School beware, the pool is C-O-L-D!  I do like swimming every day but it's still cold.

I have met some great friends that I really like and are nice to me.  One of them lives right around the corner and we play a few times a week after school together.  Her name is Lucy.



Lucy and me in my backyard

I am in grade 5 here and in our math work they moved me up to 3 levels to the highest level of math before the kids to go jr. high.  That made me feel pretty happy.  I am still trying to keep up with my math work from California so maybe that helped.

I am learning the language pretty quickly.  Such as togs are swim suits, rubbish is trash, nappies are diapers, and felts are markers and others that I have to pick up on when I don't know what they mean.

New Zealand is very pretty especially our back yard.  I have liked seeing all the places we visit on the weekends.  We are having a lot of fun here.  I do miss my friends and my bed at home but I'll be back some day.

Until then I get to continue to enjoy the fun things at school such as a week at camp.  I'm sure my mom will wright about it again.  They take the classes to a camp where we swim, take walks in the bush; oh that's another new word.  Bush means forest.  We canoe, see glowworms, and learn more about the Maori culture and much more.  I'm a little scared but it will be fun to be with my friends.

I want to share one of my favorite days that I have had here and at school so far.

One day at school my teacher left the room and some kids started fighting.  Then we went to another teacher's room and she read us a Maori legend.  Everyone was talking during the story.  So when the story was over she made us all write an essay of what the story was about. We all wrote our stories and I was the first one done writing.  I showed it to my teacher who had come back into the room and she read it.  Then she said "come with me."  She went to find the teacher who had read us the story and told us to write the story.  She read my story too and after she finished she gave me a big hug.  Then she took my story to her room and said "this American girl got this Maori legend right and it was her first time hearing it."  Then she read it again to the entire class.

It made me feel like I could understand things even if I was different than others.  I also felt happy and proud to do a great thing on that day. 

It was hard at first being here but I am getting used to it.  As Annie says "I think I'm gonna like it here!"

xoxo,

Abby

Gardens, Birds and Worms

I have been amazed at the beauty that I've seen so far in New Zealand.  Just the simplicity of driving down the road on the way home from my 20 minute drive from the grocery store still takes my breath away.  "Am I really living in such a beautiful place as this?  Must I really leave?  Can I find this serenity in the states?"

Then we visit three different and amazing places today that testifies of God's amazing creations that took my breath away.  I have to say I was a bit speechless a few moments at what my eyes took in.  No pricey (or mid-priced in our case) camera could EVER really capture the majesty of what laid before us this weekend.  Unfortunately, at one specific case they did not allow camera's in at all and that I respected because it needed to be preserved the best way possible.

We started Friday night by going to  the Hamilton Gardens.  We thought we'd walk around for about 30 minutes or so checking out some nice plants and shrubbery but boy were we WRONG!  We  walked in and were immediately engulfed in walls of greenery and oh the smell of earth that surrounded us.  We got lost in the paths instantly and followed them around for a good 3 hours and only covered half of the grounds.  It was beautiful in all its entire splendor.  There was one thing that was pretty funny but maybe only because we were American. (You'll see) 

They had a "Paradise Garden Collection" area where they featured gardens from a variety of places.  Job well done.  I know where the next place I'd want to live/decorate my home like/have a backyard party decorated after.  What's your favorite?

English Flower Garden

Japanese Garden of Contemplation

Chinese Scholar's Garden

American Modernist Garden

Italian Renaissance Garden

Indian Char Bagh Garden

Saturday we woke up early and took a long drive to Ortorhanga where they have the largest private collection of native birds.  And you know what that means?  Kiwis!  They had a lot of great birds to see and of course the Kiwis were the main reason for our visit.  We had seen them before on our last visit to NZ but these ones were huge and amazing to watch eat among the leaves and trees.  They really are a beautiful bird.  I just still don't get it how they can function without any arms/wings.  Just two legs and a beak.  Hmmm, I'll ask God about that one later. 

We watched two Kea birds be fed by a trainer and man are those things smart.  Beautiful and smart!  What a catch in the bird world.  Smarter than my two year old who earlier in the day put his finger in a fence and got it bit by a orange beaked bird.  Sad, but it was the highlight of that outing for the kids.

Kea Bird

Darn bird that bit Maddy

Next we made our way down the road to the most incredible, beautiful, spectacular, unbelievable real sight that I've ever seen.  We visited the Waitomo Glowworm Caves.  I have to say that we saw a lot more than just glowworms though.  In the tour they take you down in to the deep caves of limestone, stalactites and stalagmites before you are deep enough to reach water and the underground of earth to see where the glowworms live.  Along the way you see caverns, tunnels and a cave "cathedral" in which performers such as the Vienna Boys Choir come and sing.  Visiting Opera Singers to sing Christmas Music here as well.  Can you imagine?  WOW.  Then you  move on and learn of the life cycle of the glowworm, they turn off the small amount of lights and then there they are!  Hanging like small threads of silk and glowing like stars in the dark.  Colors of green, light blue and white light right above our heads.  It was breath taking.

To get out of the huge cave that we had just climbed down in to and walked around in they put us in a boat and they floated us out through a series of rope pulling that lead us around more tunneling in the dark.  As we floated the only light that shined above us were hundreds of little specks of lights of glowworms.  It looked like we were looking up in to the night sky and looking at a full night of stars.  Just beautiful.  Just lovely.  Just AAAH.

Glowworm Cave

"Cathedral"

At one point in the cave I turned to my kids and said, "Hey you guys, this stuff is real!  This has been created by God.  He put this here.  This is not Disneyland and it was not made to look like this by some person.  This is all real."  Just then Walker says "Ya' I was just going to say that this place looks like the Indiana Jones ride."  Oh how our minds have been tainted.

Happy Valentine's Day

Valentine's Day was pretty fun and interesting.  I soon realized that it is not commercialized here in New Zealand when I didn't see heaps of heart shaped candy, balloons, soaps, or anything red and pink exploding all over the store aisles.  If you weren't to know what day it was (thanks to my handy calendar) you wouldn't even know there was a holiday among us.  No real mention of it at school or at any store until the day of when they started pushing some random perfume at the checkout stand.

I was going to have to be creative in order to not disappoint the kids this year.  I didn't have 3 Targets with in a 6 mile radius to load up on unnecessary decorations, candy and bags to fill with treats and toys only to be forgotten until Easter when I was to please them all over again.  Isn't that what we do as moms?

This is what I came up with this year.  Not feeling so crafty and to par with what I know I could have done with my normal supplies back at home.  Then again, I don't think we're in Kansas anymore Toto.

Paper cut out hearts taped on the wall.

Heart pancakes for breakfast.

Walker helped by decorating his lego figures with Valentine's vests and a loincloth.

Enjoying Valentine's breakfast while Maddy still sleeps.

Valentine's dessert.

Chocolate Cake and Raspberry Lamingtons

Then after dinner and dessert we exchanged Valentine's gifts.  Abby went first.  She had been working all week on personalized letters for everyone in the family.  It was so kind and thoughtful of her and we all appreciated her efforts.

Then Walker passed his out to Mom and Dad.  Lovely letters to each of us followed by gifts he had made.  Shells from our beach trip that he had drawn personalized pictures on.  He had wrapped them in towels for us to unwrap.  I love the thought and effort that went in to his gift as well.

Then I passed out the rest of the families gifts.  I guess it works when you know your kids pretty well.  The boys got a new lego figurine and a candy bar.  They also got a chess set that I'm sure will keep them busy the remainder of their time here.  Abby got nail polish and a candy bar as well as some NZ stickers she can use for writing letters.  They all got a small canvas picture to paint that we can do on a slow Sunday afternoon.  Dad got candy and a new shirt.  So at the end of the day I think I was able to pull it off pretty well. 

Now on to Easter.  I haven't seen any plastic eggs yet and in America these would have been put out about a month ago so I'm thinking I need to start to hollow out eggs, do paper mache, hard boil about 50 eggs or maybe just get wads of paper taped up tight to look like eggs. We have a huge yard that the kids can have a hay day finding stuff in.  Any ideas?

Beach Time

Our original plan this weekend was to drive to Mount Maunganui and hike the base of Mauao.  It is a small mountain and as Maori mythology goes, it was once a nameless mountain that stood inland.  It came to rest in its current location after falling in love with a nearby mountain named Puwhenua.  When she did not reciprocate, Mauoa was so upset that he called upon his fairy-like friends to drag him towards the coast and help drown him in the Pacific Ocean in the darkness of night.  He made it to the end of the peninsula, but at that moment the sun rose.  His friends, being night creatures, were forced to flee back to the forest, and left him stranded there forever. 

Mauoa is at the very end of the peninsula and there is beach on both sides.  One side seems to cater to sand volleyball, surfers and sun bathers.  The other side held sail boats, barbeques and beach camping.  It is a beautiful beach town that is full of beach homes, apartments, eateries and shopping. 

So drove to the base and couldn't really seem to find the entrance.  Plus it was super hot and we were hungry for lunch.  So instead we decided to forgo that plan and hit the beach instead.  There we had a beach picnic, played in the water, walked along the beach front and found all sorts of fun discoveries like baby muscles growing on rocks and the most perfect seashells we've ever seen.  The scenery at this beach is amazing!

   

Scenery in the ocean

Mauou on the left

Completely flat shell

Perfect shells were everywhere!

Then we walked around town for a bit and found a great family restaurant for dinner.  What a nice way to keep the family occupied while dinner is being cooked.  So many fun things around each corner in NZ!

 

Then to finish off the weekend we relaxed by going to Church at the Tokoroa Ward for the second week now.  It's been great.  They are soooo kind and welcoming.  Spirit was great and they are nice to involve us in the lessons and activities already.   

Just the start of a 4 hr puzzle