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I took the kids to the little local park yesterday .. Charlie has definitely inherited her parents tenacity when taking on tasks as she does not give up easily.  Meanwhile, Jonny thinks now that he can walk he can do everything Charlie can – bless him.

Well we are in week 4 of Ian working up in the ReachLocal Manchester office and only being home on the weekends!  So far so good, I’ve only had to resort to alcohol once however I am pretty brain dead by about 6.30pm after I’ve put the kids to bed.   Charlie is still waking at 5 something every morning regardless of what time she goes to bed, I’ve worked out its the time her bowels come awake so I can’t really blame her for standing at her door yelling ‘Mummy, I’m stinky!’  Sigh, just the way it is for the moment

We have our own little routine and the kids have worked out pretty quickly whats what, they have got used to Daddy not being here in the mornings and so get on with trashing my bedroom with their toys and stuff – bless them   They seem to enjoy the afternoon drive to the park to take Noodle for her run and a play on the little jungle gym and Charlie has got very good at climbing up the fake rock thingies – almost to good as she can climb up the largest one without any help and thats 9ft high!

Jonny’s speech is coming along really well and at this stage he maybe talking by the time he is two .. he can say a number of words and he’s ability to understand is also very good.  Charlie’s speech has improved and she is trying very hard to string sentences together and pronounce words better – bless her.  Both kids are growing like weeds and Charlie is now wearing mostly size 4 clothes (and shes not 3 until Sept) and Jonny is very comfortable in size 2 and he’s only 17 months old!  I’m pleased I’ve either been given clothes or the fact I buy a lot of their clothes on E-Bay second hand as they aren’t in them very long before they no longer fit them

More pics of the kids, taken in Wellington and on Bondi Beach!

We spent the day shopping at Otaki and then went down to the beach .. it was a little chilly and blowing quite a bit but that didn’t stop the curly girl from wanting to go down to the water

We caught up with most of the Sims/Smids family while home and heres a few pics of Charlie and Annelise -  who were born two weeks apart.

Its been a few months in the making, starting with an impressive commando crawl which turned into crawling on all fours while we were in NZ to cruising furniture, to walking with the aid of Mum or Dad and today he stood up and walked all on his own with some level of confidence   Bless, I’m in for a hell of a time now!!!

First Video is showing off all three of his talents, his walking, his crawling and look how good I am at climbing!

A couple of family pictures taken at Charlotte’s (Ian’s cousin) 18th birthday party in late May.  Given Sue and Ian’s (Charlotte’s parents) sense of humor there were a number of child/adult games played .. it was all very entertaining and I must admit I enjoyed trying to cut one square off a block of chocolate game   There was a Dad dance competition with my two brother in laws giving it their all .. must add, they were both sober

Gordon, Anna and Ian

Dad’s dancing competition.

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The final, which I think Charlie should have got a prize for her efforts

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I had to take these as I had never seen anything like it .. but given the kiwi culture for doing the unusual and in some cases insane, I shouldn’t have been surprised!  Any one for walking on water with the aid of a clear bubble

The family out and about at either Franks Kits Park, Oriental Parade or at the Botanical Gardens.  Charlie absolutely loved the jumping ‘thingy’ as you can see from the pics .. she was quite happy playing in the park until she saw this and at that moment she took off to discover more .. needless to say she laughed and giggled the whole time while shouting ‘more, more, more..’.

My best friend Stacey flew up from the West Coast to stay for our first weekend at home while Ian flew to Auckland to spend some time with Pete and Lozza.  A much shorter flight for her as she has made the trip twice to the UK since we have been here so I count myself lucky to see her so often   For some reason I thought I had taken more pics of Staces visit but this is only one with her and Jonny – he is very fond of his Aunty Stacey.

Again, I thought I had more family pics, but here are a few.  Uncle Donny is doing his best trying to show his niece how to play swing ball and ride a tyke   One of Aunty Jen who is trying to help Jonny open one of his birthday pressies and I think he’s got a mouthful of food!  The last three are included as trying to get 7 young kids to sit still for a good photo is near impossible so I included them all Left to Right; Harrison (5), Luke (3), Ayrton (11) with Olivia (2) on his lap, Logan (5) with Jonny (1) and of course Charlie (2).

Here ends this update .. I’m almost finished!!!

Sorry its taken me so long to get around to posting this update, time has flown since we returned to the UK.

The flight home was pretty average with 51 hours of traveling from our door in Wellington to our door here!  The kids were pretty good and I take my hat off to Malaysian Airlines as they were really fantastic with allocating us extra seats and their cabin crew were very attentive and helpful – I would recommend them if you are flying with young kids.

I’d like to say thank you to all those friends who welcomed us home and went out of their way to accommodate our wee family, and a very deep apology to those we didn’t get to see, time escaped us and we wish we could have got around to see everyone

We really enjoyed being tourists in our own home town, there is so much to see and do in Welly, and again so much we could have done but just didn’t have the time.  Ian and I enjoyed being back in such familiar surroundings and that constant feeling of how much we miss Wellington and NZ we faced everyday while we were at home.

It was the first time the kids got to play with family and friends and it bought constant delight to watch Charlie interacting with all the kids and so obviously enjoying herself.  While home Jonny moved from commando crawling to ‘real’ crawling on all fours and he could get around quite quickly by the time we returned and since then he is very good at walking if you hold onto one of his hands, he is not quite brave enough yet to go it alone but I expect that to happen in the coming few weeks.

The kids had lots of ‘firsts’ during this trip, 1st birthday parties, 1st time at a zoo and a museum, 1st time on a plane, 1st time at the ocean etc etc It was a pretty exciting time all round for the kids.  We had lots of memorable moments but I very clearly remember us all walking into the Bendon factory shop in Otaki and Jonny letting out this very loud ‘WOW’!  It stopped all the woman in the store and made them all giggle when they realised it came from our little boy!

Our time at home come to an end pretty quickly and I found myself packing those suitcases all over again   However, below are a few of the photos taken

Charlie had never seen the ‘big blue wobbly stuff’ so while in Sydney we took her down to Dee Why beach and she LOVED it!  Although this photo looks like Ian is leading her, I’m quite sure it was the other way around!

Us at Wellington Zoo zoo zoo, how about you you you….

We had a fabulous night out with Marc and Vic  at one of our favourite restaurants – Monsoon Poon.  Great food, great company and great friends. Vic and I enjoyed our bubbles while the boys were certainly enjoying their Long Island Ice Tea’s!

We attended Elliots 5th birthday party while home and it was quite an experience for Charlie.  When we arrived she had been asleep in the car and was quite grumpy about being woken up and then having 8 screaming 4/5 year boys come running at her was not what she expected!  So we had tears and a bit of paddy .. that was until the kids sat down to play ‘pass the parcel’ and she noticed the kids were getting lollipops out of this parcel (see first pic).  At that point she decided she wanted to join and put on the pirate costume Vic had given me, and then there was no stopping her – she loved every moment.  Hats off to Vic and Marc for putting a fab party and when we come home I’ll be outsourcing my parties to you two

I captured the kids and adults singing Elliot Happy Birthday .. them trying to sing it in Maori is quite a giggle

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As I still have a lot photos to post so this update is going to be done in stages .. here ends stage 2

Its been two years today since we landed in the UK.  A small mile stone conquered and now on to the next two years – see you all again real soon

I know I haven’t updated the blog with all the news and photos from our trip to NZ .. but I promise to do it in the next week or so. .. in the meantime..

We (Charlie, me and Jonny) all went to the dentist this morning as it was Charlies 6 month check and she was brilliant   She strolled into his room, quite happily sat up on the big green chair and even smiled when the dentist reclined the it.  She even threw in sound effects when asked to open her mouth with  a ‘ahhhhhh..’ and a kinda smile.  He pronounced her teeth to be in very good order and gave her a princess sticker for all her efforts.

She enjoyed the experience so much she went back into the waiting area, sat down and was waving me ‘goodbye’ as she was staying – cheeky little monkey

We have been back in Wellington a few days now and I think we are finally resetting our body clocks to kiwi time.  The trip over was as expected, pretty average and kind of hellish!  The kids were pretty good really, but when you think we had been travelling for 6 hours before we even boarded our plane at Heathrow and then pile on 21 hours of flying to get to Sydney not including the stop over in KL etc etc.  So some 30+ hours later we were finally in a cab to our friends Steve and Nina’s in Sydney.  It was a huge relief.

We spent two days in Sydney which was just bliss and the weather was lovely.  It had been a long time since either Ian or I had been in 3/4’s and flip flops.  Ian and Charlie even braved the Prestridges pool for a swim, although Charlie did admit it was a little ‘chilly’!

Our flight into Wellington went okay and it was all worth it when we were met by our welcoming party!  Mum, Danny, Donny, Jen, Sarah, Logies, Lukies, Marc, Vic,  Max,  Elliot, Jonny and Emms.  Wow, it was so cool to see so many people come and welcome us home.

We spent our first night at the Cramers and it was great to catch up with Ali and Clay and meet their little girl Amy.  Charlie was/is loving playing with Max and Elliot and true to form she had only been there 10 minutes and she was already bossing them around

This is our first real family holiday and its really great to spend time with the kids out and about.  Charlie loves the water, sand and all the play grounds.  We took the kids swimming at Porirua pool and they loved it.  Charlie really enjoyed the wave pool and wanted to be right in the middle of the waves and she thought the slide into the pool was very cool as well.

I spent two and halfs hours on the phone to girlfriends – something I haven’t done in years and so great to catch up on news.  Ian is off to Auckland for the weekend and Stace is flying up to spent the weekend with me and the kids.  We have a couple of birthday parties to attend so that should keep us and the kids occupied.  Next week is reserved for catching up with lots of other friends before we leave the following week