Megan Lindsay McEwan Wansbrough - Megan's Gallery

Megan is now three and a half years old! We're feeling much more settled in now, and trying to make the most of our time here in Auckland. It's been lovely to spend some time with family and friends - Aidan and Megan particularly enjoyed tree-climbing with Uncle Martin in his next-door neighbour's garden!

A favourite activity of ours is to take a picnic dinner and go to one of the local beaches. We usually eat dinner, and then go for a walk (or play!) along the beach - this month we've been to both Judge's Bay and St Heliers. Another favourite place of ours is at the bottom of our street, where the train line crosses the Orakei Basin, and you get a wonderful view of downtown Auckland, and the Sky Tower.

One particular sunny afternoon we went down to watch the trains (the kids managed a pretty good hit-rate of waves (from the kids) to toots from the passing train drivers!)! Then they spent ages psyching themselves up, and got Daddy to help them go down to the (as they call it) "dangerous beach" - a little beach on the edge of the basin, down a steep bank. With some encouragement, they scrambled down and wandered around on the rocks for a bit, before scrambling back up again - quite an adventure for the kids!

Another highlight of this month was attending a powhiri at Aidan's school - this was a ceremony held to welcome and bless the five pou whakarae (guardian poles) which were carved by a team from the local Ngati Whatua tribe (see the school newsletter, page 3). This is being used as an opportunity to (re)forge links between the school and the local Maori. I don't think either of the kids really understood what it was all about, but they loved the experience, and the music. Aidan was on first-name terms with the head carver Katz, though - he encouraged all the school kids to say "Kia ora, Katz" when they saw him!

We've found lots of local parks to check out - one of the closest ones is the Little Rangitoto reserve, which has a cool concrete bike bowl - the kids loved running up the sides and trying to get back out again! We've been up One Tree Hill, and enjoyed the playpark in Cornwall Park too. It's been great having playdates with new friends too, both at their place and here at home.

Further afield we had a lovely walk in the Waitakeres with Nan and Grandad - we did the Karamatura Loop Walk (see also here), breaking for lunch at the waterfall at the furthest point of the walk.

Still further afield was our long-planned weekend in Rotorua, where we hired a bach with Steve, Varya, Benji and Toby - oh it was so good to see them again! We had lots of fun - went to Wai-O-Tapu on Saturday and the luge on Sunday (if you are ever in Rotorua, this is a must!). In addition to this we discovered our bach, which was located on the shores of Lake Rotorua, actually had its own kayaks! Lake Rotorua is pretty shallow for a fair distance out from the shore, so we spent several hours getting extremely wet and having a huge amount of fun!

On the way home, we dropped by Josh and Mel, and had a great time catching up with them and their kids (Amy and Daniel), and meeting little Noah (crawling, and into everything!) for the very first time!

In Megan related news, we've been really pleased to have some dry nights from her :-). More excitingly, she's been branching out with her eating, and her menu will now include rice, green beans, and lots more bread than she used to eat :-). She's loving going to kindy, and ballet, and swimming, and KindyRock...

Towards the end of this time period, we had the fun of an early start when we went to the airport to meet Grandma and Grandpa as they arrived from Scotland! We managed a quick breakfast together in the Domestic Terminal before they had to catch their onward flight to the South Island. With school and work continuing it would be nearly another week before we could join them in Wanaka :-( . It so happened that that Friday was a holiday so, to provide some distraction, we left the airport and headed straight off to Long Bay for the remainder of the day - we had a lovely picnic, built sandcastles (and sand cities!) and the kids got to swim in the sea for the first time ever!

See also Aidan's 5 year 9 month page...

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