Holiday part 2

After the weekend we went up to Auckland harbour and took a hour cruise around the harbour through the Maritime Museum (very reasonable).  The kids enjoyed it very much!

 Waiting for our boat ride.

 

 We passed this huge cruise ship.

 One of the crew offered to take a picture of us for us. :D

 Coming towards the harbour bridge.

 Me and Keith.

 Amelia struck up a conversation with one of the crew.  I like how my children are quick to converse with others whether they are young or old.

 Afterwards we stopped at the American Shop and Daddy went and got ice creams from Mcdonalds for the kids

We then went up Mt Wellington since we were in the area andwalked around the crater.

Holiday part 1

I was going to post something a lot sooner than now but life is busy!  I forgot. :D

Anyways, I'll continue where we left off....our holiday!  Which was awhile ago now. We decided on staying in Auckland and do a bit of touring around.  It worked out very well and the kids enjoyed themselves.  Our first stop was Butterfly Creek.  Aaron has been wanting to go to Dinosaur kingdom for awhile now.

Here is Owen in the butterfly house

My crazy children.

They are growing too fast. :(

The children took turns feeding a bearded dragon live wiggly gross worms. They thought it was great!

The alligators were coming up to the glass to get a closer look.

"Mmmmm.....those fingers look yummy."

Aaron is wiggling a tooth here....oops.

Yeah for dino's!

Our paleontologist in the making!

Our children.

Keith practicing his steering skills

I'm not going to even imagine what it will be like when he gets to driving age... :D

The sleepy-wouldn't-move-for-us-or-do-anything-for-us croc.

The other one (I think this is Scar) who was willing to give us a show.

I now understand the story of the five little monkeys swinging in the tree...Croc's do "snap" and make a large popping sound when they do very neat.

Family Photos 2015

Yes!  Finally after how many years since our last family photo?! I'm pretty sureI wasn't even expecting Keith. We've finally updated ours!  

I just can't seem to decide on which one to use  to send to family.

By the way, this coming May we are celebrating our 10th anniversary!  I can't believe it has been that long already!

I really, really like this one of Owen...so natural.

 An everyone seeing this one of Keith probably will start to laugh at what looks like a bunch of mischief and believe me that is exactly what he is!! (We still love him.)

Will give another update with our holiday pictures..we had a nice time just touring and hiking around Auckland...well, not necessarily *in* the city but at the beautiful regional parks. :)

We also received our passports with our resident visa's! :)

Good news!

I would like to announce that our application for residency has been approved!  Weare very thankful!  

Isn't this silver fern pretty?  Surely everybody knows about this national symbol? 

Now onto the next step which is sending in our passports, paying a migrant levy and another detail that I can't remember. All of this sounds easy, except we just realized Jett doesn't have any pages left in his passport for the residency visa.to be placed (and they definitely specify where it cannot be put)..haha!  Ok so we need to renew his passport now but that shouldn't be too much trouble thankfully. :)

So there is our good news. :)

Jan - Feb update

Ah life tends to be busy with 4 kiddos.  Never a dull moment, although sometimes Mommy wishes there were a few dull moments. ;)  But I'm thankful for happy and healthy kids.

They just do lots of random stuff, like a sleeping party in my living room...with as many blankets and pillows you can muster from the rest of the house.

I also have a wee boy who constantly picks me flowers.  It is sweet to have this little boys voice sounding out to me, "Here Mommy, these are for you."  Another good thing is we hardly have any dandelions about now... :D

January is a busy month for us.  Getting ready for the communion and then having the communion!  On the Monday we had the Campbells over.  The children seemed to get along quite well.

Mr. Hutton had quite the audience when he was drawing a pig for them.

A very nice family. :)

Isn't Marion a doll? She is so cute.

Mr. and Mrs. Hutton

Jett, Alaisdair, and Mr. Hutton

After the communion I tried getting all the washing done. And then busied myself with preparing for Aaron's birthday party!  We had about 15 kids at this party including our children.  Yes it was noisy, but I think it was fun too.

We filled up the kiddie pool for the kids to splash in...seemed like the right thing to do and it kept them well occupied!

But everyone wanted some cake...:)

Aaron was thoroughly spoiled on his birthday as you can see by all the gifts!  He is really big into Dinosaurs at the moment.

An after all the bustle of the party was a quiet weekend while Jett was in Gisborne.  And then Monday after we picked him up from the airport we started school!

Here is Mr Aaron starting Gr 2/Year 3. 

And Miss Amelia starts Gr 4/Year 5 this year.

And Tuesday morning we got our family photos taken by a good friend.  We can't wait to see how they turned out! :)