This morning we sat down to make some birthday invites for the kids birthday. Nathan cut out some pictures for pasting on, Danielle found some stickers she wanted to add and I wrote them up. Danielle spent most of the day cutting and pasting and making many many cards!


We then headed outside and collected a bag of pears off our tree to take to some friends.

After lunch we went down to the playground, then to the library to switch books, then off to our friends for a quick play before heading home.

Nathan spent a lot of the day going through all his lego and constructing every kit following the instructions.

This evening I started reading Nathan On the Far Side of the Mountain which is the sequel to a book we read last year that we both enjoyed.

Yesterday was our last day with Simon at home before going back to work. So we decided to take a break from painting a couple of bedrooms and head to the city for the day. We first up visited some rock pools. Wish we owned this book (that I picked up at the library today and can see we'll be adding to our own collection) and knew what we were looking at at the time.

We discovered and checked out crabs, sea anemones, fish, cats eye snails, shrimps, and heaps of varieties of seaweed. I can't seem to identify one particular shell/black slimy thing though? Anyone know what it would have been? Found on the south coast attached to rocks, the shell is a bumpy oval shaped shell and quite deep and seemed to have fallen off thick, jet black, slimy things attached to the rocks?



We collected some sea glass - what a shame these days it all seems to be brown or white. I remember as a kid combing the beaches with my nana and coming home with a neat variety of blues, greens and yellows that she would use as glazes for her pottery.

After playing at the rock pools a while we decided to go for a ride on the cable car. So we headed up to the top and Simon and the kids took a return trip and the driver let Nathan push the horn.

What a week

Simon had the week off work, so we've alternated between blobbing out at home days and going out for the day days.

We headed to Petone one day and checked out the settlers museum, the artesian water site, asian bulk foods shop and a few other type of places we don't normally come across.


We went up country the other direction for the day which was a nice drive and eventually got to play at the cool big playground.

We visited with friends, had a few late nights with nannie and grampy coming to visit after dinner one night and friends come for dinner another which included bouncing on the trampoline in the dark with headlamps on (just as well for the safety net surrounding it) and basically running amok through the house while the parents yacked and caught up on life lol.

There have been many conversations about insects and trains. They've made cards and drawn lots of pictures, played the guitar, entertained us with the hoola hoop, told jokes, performed magic tricks, had out the brain box, tried out some finger knitting (Nathan really enjoyed doing this), cooked a few meals, watched The Dark Crystal and generally enjoying life.

An at home day

There was lots of...

lego
magnetix
drawing
peeling the bean pods and retrieving the beans
bouncing on the tramp

A bit of...

playing Reader Rabbit reading CD Rom
reading books
bouncing on couch cushions
playing the puzzles/cards/geoshapes as we tidied up the storage drawer

And we found another idea from our Earthwise book...

This morning we worked on processing our corn and tomatoes we harvested a few days back.

We then got out our Earthwise book and turned to the Autumn activities. Since we had a bunch of corn husks from peeling all the corn, we made the corn dolls (well, Nathan's was a bear lol).


They then made up a little game to go with them, made them some corn rocket ships, tied them on and they flew around space.

This afternoon I took Nathan along to the gym to see whether he wanted to join one of their classes. So he raced into and loved it so we'll be back. Danielle was keen too, but she'll need to attend a different class.

Today was one of those odd days that combined a bunch of stuff that just all happened on it's own. Love those days.

By 9am we were down in the garden collecting pretty much the "final harvest".




Then we sat down to read some more of our library books. We have been reading a collection of stories from the Milly-Molly-Mandy series. I used to love reading these as a kid, and it's amazing how it all comes back when you get back into it (including the cute little village map on the inside cover). I'm really enjoying reading about the sweet, innocent, good old fashioned fun that these kids back in the 1920's in a quaint little English village are enjoying. It's all very simple, but the simplicity still has a way of the kids being interested in the village blacksmith, the shop owner who cuts fabric, a simple afternoon of dress ups etc.

While making lunch Nathan brought to me one of the early reader books and was figuring out he could read backwards if he started at the end of the sentence lol.

After lunch we headed over to do a spot of housework and gardening at my mums before heading back home. Nathan jumped on the computer and started to play his Reader Rabbit Math CD-Rom. We've probably had this for about a year and he's been gradually working his way through it. I noticed in the past few days that he's been on it more and has worked out a few things that I thought might have been a bit too complex for him. Was neat to hear him calling out - hey, I figured it out! Unfortunatley his curious fingers had him checking out the control panel of the CD and he managed to wipe his saved settings, so he'll be back to the beginning again. He didn't seem to be bothered by that though.

After I had dinner cooking I played a game of Traffic Jam with the kids. It's neat that Danielle can join in most of the simpler games we play now and gets right into it. Nathan then brought out the basket of blocks and train track to turn it into a town. To which Danielle added cars.

While we were eating dinner Nathan jumped up and retieved some paper. He sat down and began to write while saying "5+5=10" (but written as 5=5 10). And continued on with some other problems he wrote himself out. Danielle drew a map of the house with our bedrooms, kitchen, bathroom and accessories.

Yesterday we went for a little drive in the afternoon to find somewhere outdoorsy to hang out for a few hours. I recalled a farm/reserve area that we hadn't been to for a few years so headed over that way.

We were just expecting to go for a little walk and for the kids to play in the stream. We didn't expect to see a group of very friendly free ranging chickens and a rooster come running towards us as a welcoming party. We also didn't expect to see a sign directing us to see some tame eels upstream a bit. So off we wandered to find the eels with the chickens running alongside us keeping us company.

We then headed to the stream, stopping along the way to read an information board with the history of the site and the battle between the European settlers and Maori.

It was lovely being able to sit next to an interesting stream, me crocheting a hat for Simon, Simon reading the local rag that was in the car and the kids just enjoying themselves (there would be a pic of Danielle, only she was rudey nudey lol). Being a Monday we had the place entirely to ourselves.