5 legged sheep

Yes, you read that right. This is a photo of a very freaky 5 legged sheep. See the bent leg coming out of it's chest? That's the fifth leg.

One advantage of me studying extramurally is that my schedule is a bit more flexible so I've been able to be a 'parent helper' on a few of Luca's field trips. About 2 weeks ago they took his whole center (the babies, toddlers, and preschoolers) to an animal petting farm about 30 mins away from town. Half the fun, was the kids getting to ride the bus together.

It's an odd place. This couple has a bunch of land, and a bunch of strange animals - your typical farm animals, lots of rabbits, chickens roosters, cows, pigs, goats etc and they also have emus, ostriches, peacocks, chincillas, and all kinds of other things. When you arrive they give you loaves of bread to hand feed the animals. I think some of the animals where donated to them, because some looked a bit ill or out of place (including the 5 legged sheep!)

Regardless, the kids had a blast, and the teachers and parent helpers where VERY worn out by the time we got back on the bus to leave.

These two little spotted piggies where my favourite animal of the day!

Luca and his friend chillin' in the double buggy.

Snack time! It's pretty cute to watch all the kids together - and suprisingly they are well behaved en masse.

James and I had taken the boys to this petting farm before, but we usually combine it with a trip to the Irish pub for a beer afterwards. Somehow I didn't think the daycare wanted to stop there on the way home.

Big pigs squeeling and playing in the mud.

The boys trying to take the chicken's eggs. Look at their white diapers peeking out from their pants. Cuties! Although I do wish Luca would learn to use the toliet, I will miss the bubble butt diaper look when he finally does. It's oddly kind of cute. Although I loved getting to spend time with Luca and Wyatt and watching them interact with their teachers and friends, it was incredibly tiring watching all those kids. I felt a bit guilty leaving them with their teachers in the afternoon after the trip so that I could go home and do some school work. I know those teachers must have been knackered!

Ice-Scream 2010

What do ghosts eat for dessert? Ice-Scream!

That was our halloween joke that we tried to teach Luca for trick or treating, but he didn't get it -he thought each house was suppose to give HIM ice cream. Ha ha!

No picturesque pumpkin patches over here. We got ours from the fruit and veggie weekend market - your typical small white/green pumpkins that people use for their roasts. Not the best carving pumpkings (they have really thick skin and flesh) but James was able to carve them after Luca painted them.

Wyatt is at the 'grabbing everything stage' and when I wasn't looking he managed to grab the pot of paint and paint my pants. Lovely.

For a country that doesn't really celebrate halloween, we had an eventful weekend. The holiday is definitly growing over here, and you can now buy decorations and more costumes bits and pieces at the likes of the dollar shops and the warehouse. We kicked off the weekend with a kids party hosted by one of the coffee group mothers. All the kids were dressed up, and she went all out with decorations, Luca loved it - even the 'scary' decorations.


Wyatt (the dragon) is being held by my friend Amy (she's due in a few weeks with TWINS!)


Saturday was filled with not 1 but 3 (yes 3!) Halloween party invites for James and I. The kids were whisked off to Jo and Bruces (yay!!!) and we made it to two of the parties. James was a witch doctor and I was a lady bug and then later a witch. One of the parties had a witches and wizards theme (how wierd is that? To have a theme for a halloween party?). Although we had a child free night, I can't bring myself to staying up late anymore, so although we had a good night, it wasn't a very late one. On Sunday we got to sleep in till 9am, and then get on with household things... How sad is that. The kids were away, and instead of just relaxing I have this urge to clean the house. James finished tiling the kitchen backsplash. Very satisfying to actually get something done on the house.
After a visit to pick up the kids from the beach, we got ready for trick or treating. This was the first year we had trick or treated in NZ. It was good to meet a few more of our new neighbors, but it was an intersting expierence. The kiwis obviously don't understand trick or treating etiquette. A few differences between us and America.

1. It's light out - because we are going into summer
2. People answer the door and look suprised, then run off to rumage through the kitchen to find you something. We got lots of granola bars and bags of chips...lol. Also some of the candy (gasp) is unwrapped. You go to someones house and they give you 3 jellybeans, or a gummy worm. That's NZ for ya! ha ha

3. Some people don't answer the door at all - which we found odd. We saw them in the window, they saw us - but instead of answering the door and just saying 'we don't have anything, but boy you guys look cute...' they just DONT answer. To me, that seems kind of rude - but whatever...
4. There's still some anti-halloween people (churches) out there and although the holiday is celebrated as a non secular holiday the media still has to report about the pagens and witches holding ceremonies on halloween (as if people in NZ need another excuse to hate the holiday).

Regardless of the differences, we enjoyed our trick or treating around the culdasac. There's only about 14 houses, so it was a perfect number. Poor little Wyatt crashed out after house #3, so I ended up carrying a sleeping dragon the whole time (he's getting heavy too!). We met some lovely people, and Luca now requests candy for breakfast. Uh, sorry little boy, don't think so.

Everyone thought their costumes were adorable (thanks Grandma Cassie!) and we look forward to more halloweens to come. I'm using every bit of self control not to gobble up 1/2 of Luca's halloween candy while I'm working on assignments. So very hard.

Springtime Wine

We took Erin and Ethan to the airport today, so I figured I better post a few more photos while they are still fresh in my head. On a very little budget, and a very little car, we managed to see quite a bit of New Zealand - in fact I'm exhausted.



If you've been to New Zealand, you know that most things are more expensive than what you'd find in the USA. The scale of economy and living in a politically neutral isolated island country will do that! The ONE thing that is cheap....WINE. And it's very, very good.





We travelled to the Hawkes Bay to do a bit of our own winery tour. It was a rainy spring weekday, so the wineries were empty (which means bigger pours - unless you're the driver...) I explored a few new places I had never been to before, and will no doubt visit even more when Dad and Fran, and my mom come over for a visit. There's around 30 different vinyards to choose from.

More Wineries - this one was one of my favourites!



We went to a Rural Days - a farming festival in Feilding (that's where my last student teaching placement was). Tractors, trucks, farm animals, bouncy castles, and farmers markets. Love this old liquor store sign. Very kiwiana.

On our way to the vinyards we stopped at the daffodil fields. I had read about these online, and had looked forward to going - AMAZING. Can't wait to take Luca, Wyatt, and James next year. There are fields and fields of all kinds of different daffodils and for $2 you can pick a bunch of 30. All the proceeds go to Plunket (that's our free postnatal and child development service in NZ...which rocks!) We arrived at 9am, and the daffodils had seen better days - but I still managed to pick a bouqet and put a few gold coins into the honesty box. The whole setup was just so cute. Okay so we don't have halloween pumpkin patches, but we do have this awesome daffodil patch. Love discovering cool hidden gems like this.

Sadly daffodil season is almost over...but you can tell there are a few left....and the smell was so divine - spring time!

This photo cracks me up. Erin jumping on the back trampoline,

and Luca with his hands over his eyes!

We have had a few days of glorious sunshine. Much needed as the past 2 months have been filled with wind and rain. The sun has made me feel better, windows are open, washing is hanging up outside on the line (ha...yeah, that was a new expierence for Erin too), and now that is is light at night we can continue our after dinner walks and hikes. I think I may even be motivated to start running in the mornings. Bring on Summer :-)

Bye-Bye Erin and Ethan - Thanks for visiting us, we'll miss you!