Kaying beautiful Waiheke

Here are just a few pictures of a beautiful kayak trip Dave and I took from our local beach. You can pretty easily get to some secluded bays and beaches, and the water was especially calm on this day.

Nikolas is one decade old today!

Happy happy birthday to my little monkey today. You are a perfect 10 in my book! We had a fabulous party for him with some fantastic kids. We rented the Waiheke Rec Center for a couple of hours, and the kids had a blast playing soccer and hockey, and then, get this, a new twist on the pinata. Dave taped up about 100 balloons to the wall with candy taped to the back of each of them. The kids lined up and tried blasting soccer balls (or basketballs) to hit the balloons. The balloons would (!)pop(!) and candy would fall down. It was a hit! The kids are at such a fun age. Just add balls and they have fun!









I made a chocolate cake (which Nikolas said was "brilliant"--- awwww!). We also had hokey-pokey icecream (it's a NZ thing) and home-made bread and carrots with hummus.














I'm so appreciative of the friends that our kids have made here. This group of kids are all awesome. I wish I had more pictures of the the ball sports, but I was too busy running around the gym myself. :-)























He also got some great presents this year. He got a lot of soccer gear and some great books. Grandma and Grandpa sent him a soccer outfit from Peru (which he is showing off here with Isaac's birthday Peruvian shirt as well), and a FIFA world cup soccer ball. The real thing, and HUGE hits!

All in all it was a great day. They played soccer in the morning (and by the way, despite what you may have heard, I did not commit a yellow-card foul in the pick-up game afterward! That was another mom!) And then we spent most of the day blowing up balloons and taping candy to each of them. Great day with great people! Happy birthday to Nikolas!

Jenn Britt, Fish Hunter

So I've been fishing seriously now for over a month, catching snapper in the low 30 cm range for the most part from the kayak. Today I convince Jenn that the weather is just too nice not to go for an early afternoon kayak / fishing tour on the north side. After about 45 min of paddling we find a secluded little bay and I let Jenn try some casting while I troll with the "milk jug" fishing line. I manage to catch a 22 cm youth on the milk jug with squid. Then Jenn screams that she has a "big one!". The pole is bent in a "U" and she reels in this whopper (48 cm, 5.8 lbs). It dwarfs my best effort of 29 cm, shown merely for reference (although I think he has better coloring than Jenn's giant)

P.S. pod of dolphins spotted in Surfdale on the way to yoga class!

The olive harvest

Oh, it's great fun to live in a different clime and harvest new things from our yard. Olives don't grow in Cache Valley, so where we used to pick plums and apples from our yard, this year we picked olives. We were up in the trees for about two hours, and then the boys carefully sorted them all out by size and type, each olive carefully selected, and some left for the birds to enjoy. We then took our harvest it to a local press who will turn it into olive oil for us. Yum! Can't wait!