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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