The Christmas store, with Nanny

We met up with Nanny Cushla last weekend and she showed Emily around the Christmas Store at Kirkcaldie and Stains (a big department store in Wellington). They have Christmas displays with marionettes in the windows and lots of stuff to make Emily's eyes go wide!

Our lil gardener

Emily watering the grass at school. I can just imagine the frustration of the poor flowers awaiting their watering but watching the grass get fed instead!

Ah, we love spring weather

Some days like today it's raining, some days it's a stunning day on the coast. We love you spring, especially on a Wednesday evening ride!

Full tribe bike ride

Loaded up the "family" bike for Cameron's first ride, epic effort. All good fun apparently.

Cameron's interview

Cameron's interview from Candace K on Vimeo.

Guy Fawkes

Couple of shots from Emily's second Guy Fawkes , great fire on the beach with some crackers for good measure.

Emily is starting to get into our MTB adventures, though it's hard to get any photos of us actually riding along.

 Our riding is more about the stops for snacks, but we are adding distance between the snacks.

Below is the "snack" turn around point on our biggest adventure yet, a solid 10km.  Emily was super keen to point out all the poo on the track which came from peacocks apparently!  Sometimes one cannot explain what goes on in a two year olds head.

Our beautiful baby boy....no longer a baby

What's been going on?

Hard to believe we haven't updated since we came home from our trip. Since then we have had a wonderful weekend away in Rotorua with some good friends, had a "Ladies Night-IN" which coincided with Bryce having a sleepover adventure at our friends house with both our kids, and been back at work teaching just one day a week. Needless to say, it's been pretty busy but lots of fun.

Cameron is a ball of energy now, which shouldn't surprise anyone after seeing how energetic he was in utero. He has trouble falling asleep now, because after he is put in his cot/crib he pulls himself up and stands. Unfortunately for him, Cam has not yet figured out how to sit down again. So he is often upset, anywhere around the house, having pulled himself up but not being able to do anything else after that, but stand. He is a 'standing' maniac. 

Emily has learned that making people laugh is a fun thing to do. She is always trying to switch words around in sentences and doing poses with her body to try and make us laugh. The other day she found a tampon hidden in one of my drawers, and was using it as a microphone for her musical performance.


She trumped that performance a few days later while I was giving Cameron a bottle in his room. Emily has been told that when Mommy is feeding Cameron, we need to be quiet and it is best that Emily does not come into Cameron's room but plays or reads in her own room instead. This works maybe 60% of the time. On this particular day, Emily was intent on getting my attention so she decided to strip off her clothes and keep walking past Cameron's door to catch my eye. She was not getting enough of my attention so she decided she needed to impress me. Emily walked past the door again, still naked, but with buttcheeks clenched, walking like a penguin. This DID catch my attention and after asking  Emily what she was doing, she said "I got hairclip in my bottom." Yep, her new skill was using her butt cheeks to hold a hair clip in her butt while walking. Needless to say, Cameron was a bit unsettled when he went to sleep because the quiet environment I tried to create was gone due to his mother laughing hysterically. He protested the nap by....yep....standing!

Home is where the heart is....

Home Sweet NZ home. It's nice to be back in the time of year where everything is blossoming and the days are getting real long. However, I was loving being at my other home in Canada for 3 weeks. Funny how no matter how old you get and how much of an adult you feel you are becoming, you only need to be back in your parents home to feel like a kid again. That is, until your 8 month old cries out 3 times a night to remind you that he is still on his "NZ home time" and you quickly remember that you have responsibilities you never had when in your parents home last time! Having said that, the kids handled the jetlag pretty well on both ends of the trip. Poor Em was pretty sick when we arrived in Canada though, with a bad cough and that didn't help her sleep much in the first few days. Unfortunately, colds and allergies plagued the whole family for most of the time in Canada, so coming back HOME to NZ was a chance to finally rest and heal up.
We did have a wonderful trip, despite the coughs etc. It was so awesome to see everyone again and watch Emily and Cameron interact with their cousins and my friends' kids. It definitely felt like the next era has begun where friendships can now form between Emily and the children she played with on our trip. I started to hear Emily's little kiwi accent from time to time too, which up till now I had been unaware of. She talked about "cahs" that you drive and wanting a glass of "watah". I will have to work a bit harder to teach her how to put the hard "Rrrs" into her words, just to keep the Canadian in her.

Some highlights of the trip: visits with family and friends of course, meeting Mom and Dad's new kitten Mickey, visiting the caribbean-like island with the Gear/Skinner family, Emily relishing a cupcake that was the size of her face, the Homecoming dinner with my girls, meeting Sally Jean at 3 days old, Mom's cooking and especially her caesar salad, and all the real hugs full of love we received. We are truly blessed with some wonderful people in our life, who always accept us back home like we have never left. Thanks to all of you who made the trip really feel like Home to us.

More family adventures

We have been racking up kilometers visiting family and have been seeing some generous pieces of roading. Refer example A below.

The flipside of all the travel is great times will all the extended family.

 We have just located a camera cable to download images, thus more to follow.

Maxing and relaxing

Watching the sun set over the lake from the deck, jumping into the lake while Emily counts 1, 2, 3 go.... relaxing couple of days at our friends cottage.

Flying to Canada

We have hit the ground running in Toronto.  25 hours of travel, 3 flights, and kids that coped fairly well.  Still got next to no sleep though.  All good now until kids jet lag really hits.

The days of traveling with one bag and getting through the airport quickly are definitely a thing of the past.  Got our bags and were about to head out of LAX to transfer when out of the corner of her eye Candace saw the oversize luggage area and someone else's baby car seat and quickly exclaimed that we had forgotten to pick Cameron's up.  That would have been a mighty mistake to discover at the midnight end of the next flight!

An exhibition of Feelings

A exhibition of feelings from Candace K on Vimeo.

Rockstar Em!

This is Emily singing and dancing with a microphone she made out of magnetic blocks at school.

Emily reading....

We just love listening to Emily read stories to herself. Thought you might enjoy it too. 


But where's the green sheep? from Candace K on Vimeo.

Our lil big man...

Cross spectating

Little Emily is stepping up the spectating game, now with a clacker!