Christmas day at Hawea Flat

And there was plenty more food too, including 5 different types of puddings. Sue and Sara were busy.

Lennox eating his birthday dinner.


Lennox eating chocolate cake, his defence mechanism ready for action accordingly.

Stina singing Happy Birthday in her language from Sweden.

Georgie.


Birthday bubbles.

I read this excellent speech:
http://moreintelligentlife.com/story/david-foster-wallace-in-his-own-words

Getting rid of old stuff in a dramatic and effective way.

Caoimhe gets down to the business of printing on fabric. She printed a human over the humans that already existed on her t-shirt (she didn't like the look of the pre-existing humans).

Caoimhe's painting above from this afternoon's session.

Caoimhe making a guacamole.

One of Jeremy's talents: making dishes like this outside.

It didn't matter that it started to rain.



Eating the goods straight from the pan.

pics from yesterday

Industrious, making cakes, biscuits and muffins.

First go at pavers. We had 6 children and 2 adults including me carrying Lennox and in the persisting down rain. It was not that fun for me but the kids seem to have good time.

Trying new season nectarines, not very sweet actually. This was just after we went for an explore in the bush behind our friend's (we have a few different friends around who have properties like this) paradisical coastal property south of Westport. We had a look at one of their penguin burrows which had a chick and a parent in there, we thought it was the Dad as he seemed pretty (and understandably) cranky for opening up their safe home, a mother would be too no doubt. They were stinky! Caoimhe thought. It felt pretty special to be able to have a look at these guys, they are pretty rare the Blue Penguins, on the West Coast and in NZ numbers are declining overall but numbers have increased locally this year. Timo and Reuben found no rats or stoats in the 42 traps they checked last week.

This photo below is taken from about 1m away from their couch in their living room. Nice eh! Timo and Caoimhe had a good play in the sea with body boards, about the third dip so far this year. It's great living so close to beaches.

2 in a few days.

Lenny has been reading the Mixed Up Chameleon by Erice Carle lately and maybe it inspired him to go part monkey, part spider man, part dinosaur.

Gun practice. Not me.


Our first froglet which we will return to Granity soon where Timo found it. We're not sure but looking at its habitat and where the tadpole came from, we currently think it could be a Brown Tree Frog - Litoria ewingii.

We found some Oyster Catcher eggs randomly spread at the beach near dog and weka prints and found another nest nearby so added them to it, no idea how they are doing but Oyster Catchers lay a max of about 3 eggs in their nest and the one we added the eggs to already had 3 in it, we didn't know this until after, but maybe the mother and father are looking after them...

Timo is going stoat trapping with Reuben today at the stretch of beach with penguin burrows at Tauranga Bay (in between a birthday party and a human circus).

Paver update: we have created a craft group with parents and children to work here so the plan is to do pavers one day this coming week with the group.

A success in the world outside Martins Creek - we received funding for the SPACE group I facilitate that has been up and running again this term, here is a picture of some of the mothers and their babies and the NW owner operators presenting the cheque. It is the second lot of funding received, totalling about $3000 from me simply writing 2 letters, the first to fund a laptop for Playcentre and the second for resources for SPACE - the Foodstuffs (New World) community grant is a good source to apply for if you have a group you would like funding for. This picture with a blurb was on the front of the local newspaper.