Spencerville

Summer is not quite over here and today we went off to our favourite beach at Spencerville, just to the north of Christchurch. It has miles of golden sand and calm waters. As often as not, its blowing a gale but you can’t avoid that in this country. It also has a pine forest, mountain biking tracks, a nature reserve and a free animal park. It’s super-fab.

Today, as always, I dug a hole for Lily by the shore and she jumped up and down in it.

Who Does That?

The question of the week was “Who does that?”.

The question related to an empty cake box, which was put back into the cake tin after it was finished. A member of this household was looking forward to cake all day only to find, after Lily’s bedtime, that the cake box had no cake in it. Who would do such a thing?

The answer is, of course, me. Jo fixed me with her special hard stare and let me know how disappointed she was.

Oops.

The Rolleston Dogwalking Park

Big News today - the Rolleston Dogwalking park opened. Up till now we've been expected to walk our dogs on the lead or drive for 15km to walk them by the river. Today we drove past on such a journey and noticed that the soon to be opened dog park was in heavy use already.

It was heaving with about six groups of dogowners - not bad considering it is not officially in business yet. It is a triangle of land with sides of about 150m so its not huge, but a dog park is considered quite a luxury in this country.

It is a sore point with us really. There are endless football pitches which are used for 2 hours on a Saturday for 4 months of the year by 100 people or so. But no dog parks which are used by dozens of people all the time.

Thats the main thing that's going on here this weekend. Jo is out for the night so I am staying in with a bottle of wine which is two thirds gone already.

The Accident Club

As I have previously stated, NZ has the world’s highest rate of childhood accidents and Lily added to the statistics this week with an injury at kindergarten. It was a very Kiwi kind of injury as well. A boy dropped a saw on her hand and she needed a plaster. In other countries, the DIY workbench has no place in early childcare but here it is part of the curriculum.

We have been to a party today. There were 12 shrieking kids running around. One of the Dads made an impromptu climbing frame out of a couple of ladders and a plank.

Lily's 3

Lily has been looking forward to her birthday for months now. She loves to pretend that it is her birthday and yesterday she was 3 for real. She was so excited we had to sing happy birthday 3 times, then Felice Cumpleanos which is the same thing in Spanish as viewers of Dora the Explorer will already know.

We had a party at the weekend with 15 toddlers running riot in the house. During which I was shocked to discover that pass the parcel is fixed. Only one other Dad turned up so the furtive boys drinking session I had been planning had to be cancelled.