The big reveal….

Yesterday a big day in this house….Luca got his braces off, what an amazing job they have done!!!!!!!! Check out this smile…….

Maybe he will need them again later in his teens, when he has lost all his baby teeth, time will tell, but for now the result was worth all the effort put in.

We have been having rainy days , splattered in between with the odd good one, the frequency of which seems to be improving. On one of those it was warm enough for the first dip of the season, for Luca and Pica anyway ๐Ÿ™‚

We met up with Luca’s friends Eli and Matilda at Long Beach , the kids played in there until they turned blue ๐Ÿ™‚

On the really wet days days we found other things to do

Lego building with Olivia
Watching Ghostbusters with Arie and Ted, clinging to each other in the scary parts, so sweet, they loved it!!!! Hard to believe it came out in 1984 and it still entertains kids as much as it did then!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Reading…
Homework……
Watching the highlights of the All Blacks defeat on Rich’s phone, (only place to access it in our house), best to not say too much more about this, the country is in mourning…. ๐Ÿ™‚
Rich has done lots of baking ๐Ÿ™‚

The Chook house Rich has been building bit by bit, when the weather allows, he has been frustrated at the progress but I think he is doing great, I will post finished pics next post,have some painting to do……

A handy hint for those of you wanting to entertain your kids for a bit, store some of their things away……Luca got down the two boxes where the majority of his toys and books etc are ,(first time since we moved in), kept him amused for hours, like Christmas, he had forgotten a lot of what was in them! ๐Ÿ™‚

Last weekend the weather once again turned and the most gorgeous, hot days arrived. We abandoned all projects, picked up Luca’s mate Ted, and headed out to have fun exploring, swimming and walking. The kids had heard about a place called Bucklands Crossing, inland a bit from the coast and wanted to go, so off we set. It didn’t disappoint….

The boys are in mine and Rich’s t shirts we were worried about them burning after being out in it for a while shirtless. Not been that hot for months…
we set up camp for the day and left it as we set off to explore along the river and surrounds, few others were around but locking things was obviously not needed
New bridge
Old bridge, chasing fish…
looking for gold, the rivers of the south island used to hold a lot during the gold rush…
Showing Ted how to build an Inukshuk

It was such a lovely fun day and we decided on the way home to stretch it out and take the scenic route home picking up pies and ice cream for the journey.

Looking back to Karitane
Karitane is a small seaside community about an hour from Dunedin, there is a small store/cafe there we love to visit if passing…

The previous week had been Halloween, this is Luca’s favourite celebration. As those of you in North America know, it is huge, not so much down here for obvious reasons, but with lots of people settling here from North America bit by bit is seems to be becoming more of a thing (didn’t exist here when I was a kid). We had warned Luca to keep expectations low and that it was not going to be like last year in Canada. I was working late that evening so Rich took him. The village has a community Facebook page and on that they had organized for all the kids to meet and follow a mapped out route to those who were giving out candy..

It seemed to do the trick and the kids loved it, apparently it poured down, luckily at the last house though, and I came home to a happy boy ๐Ÿ™‚

Luca’s mate Olivia also held a Halloween theme party, so Luca by the end of it, certainly felt he had celebrated well ๐Ÿ™‚

Olivia is the dragon and Luca has his hand on her head…
Luca, either the Grim Reaper or a dessert assassin,he could not decide which ๐Ÿ™‚

The rain then sunshine and heat has been great for the plants, the orchard seems to be going well, we are interested to see what fruit it bears this summer…

The wet weather makes things mucky and dirty quickly. Tiny living means mess accumulates fast and is obvious, there is nowhere to hide, but on the upside cleaning is much quicker . Luca a dab hand with window cleaning now…

Vida and Pica and slowly getting more relaxed in each others presence. Vida does tend to pick on Pica, and this means Pica always a bit on guard. She tends to go the long way around if she needs to pass by Vida, but someone has to rule I guess…..

and she does do the ruling so well ๐Ÿ™‚

Pica does have the privilege of being Luca’s main sleeping buddy though….

Speaking of privilege, my sister in law’s Dad, is an incredible Lithuanian artist and recently sent this over to us, how lucky are we?! Such a special gift and it will be treasured…

Tourist season has begun and Port has a new ship pull in every few days….

This was the view Rich and I had this morning on our walk. We know the tourists are in town as we are meeting more and more on the trail. Our regular trail, (just beside our property), being a popular one for the tourists on the cruises, you can see why, we have not tired of the view yet and we see it daily.