Pohutakawa's at Cooper's Beach

We spent Labour Weekend up north. Papa went up on Hayden's boat, Latitude, in the Coastal Classic. The winning boat, Alfa Romeo, broke all records and arrived in Russell after 6 h 45m. We were a mere 11 hours behind, arriving shortly before 4am. Here you can see Hayden accepting a case of Rum at prizegiving.

Andy and Georgia drove up to Cooper's Beach.






Fish and Chips at Manganui on a very wet Labour Day...

Georgia with Auntie Charlotte

A peck of pepper

Normal children eat lollipops and icecreams; Mlle eats peppers:

Fran's visit

Another winter bug seems to have got her down...


The ladies having tea on Saturday morning...




Fran came up and stayed for a few days while Stewart was "whitebaiting" (ie, going to the pub with the lads) on the West Coast.

Sleeping troubles

The good news is she has pretty much got out of the habit of sleeping in the hallway:





Mary and Georgia in the Park. I'm not sure which is worse - the tart in the Wainuiomata track pants or the slapper in the Ug boots:




What on earth were the mothers thinking?

Our Millennium Bug(ger)

A huge day today ! She's 1,000 days old ! Happy Birthday Georgia.

This also means that for us, tonight adds up to 1,oo1 nights (remember Aladdin, Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves, Sinbad the Sailor etc).

Actually, it's a bit less than that. Andy has had Georgia for just 989 out of the 1,oo1 nights.

Cooking dinner for Bunny

Here she is cooking dinner for Bunny. I wonder what it is going to be...

Mmm, yummy, Ginger coffee beans and corn.

Mary's birthday

We play all day, we fight all night

Lately, Mlle has been a right monster at bed-time. We're making progress on getting her to sleep...



... next week, we'll work on getting her to bed.

Fiji holiday

This year we had our winter holiday on Malolo Island, Fiji. It was well timed; Andy and Georgia were not well at the start, as evidenced by the first photo, and we'd all had a terrible week of poor sleep before the trip. But a few days in the sun sorted that out.

Below are some random photos. I think they're all taken from about the same spot, and have a hammock and beach theme, because we didn't go far.

Snorkeling off the beach was great, with plenty of colourful reef fish and interesting corals. I did four scuba dives, and since they were dive numbers 3-7 for me I clocked up all sorts of firsts and personal bests: first shark; first turtle; deepest dive (27m); longest dive (55m); first puke over my dive buddy (it was rough, ok).

The trip back was by floatplane, which was fun.