After a nice an relaxed family Christmas we headed back home. OUr plan was to go freedom camping up the east coast, but we felt like hanging out in Gizzy for a little bit to rest and relax. Some friends of ours were having a little new year’s gathering at their house, and it turnout out to be awesomely perfect. Some celebrations of course, with a nice pot luck meal, a bit of alcohol (and my first tequila shots in at least 15 years!), fun for the kids and of course great company. Since they live at the beach we enjoyed a last swim before the year came to an end, with Tahi and Miro joyfully jumping waves and Tahi having a go at boogie boarding. The water was cool, but then it rarely isn’t anyway and I heard it’s good for blood circulation.
Earlier that day Josh set up the turntables outside and had a play around with Tahi.
You’ll notice Tahi is looking rather fancy… I finally manage to get him to wear a summer tunic to protect him a bit from the sun. Since he won’t let anyone decide for him what to wear, it was a matter of him choosing the fabric he liked. At first nothing took his fancy and I’d pretty much given up, until he watched me for a couple of days sew up a tunic for a friend’s little boy. He loves getting presents and seeing me make something for his playmate must have stirred a feeling of envy in him (as I hoped it would!) and he finally chose a fabric he liked. Once I’d started cutting up the body panels, another fabric caught his eye and he decided he wanted the rest of the tunic (i.e. the arms) and some short made out of them. I was more than happy to oblige and he wore them proudly all day. I love the way they turned out, Josh recons they look very exotic, indian-ish. Tahi’s got good taste!
The kids all had fun running around, playing and making noise. They ranged in age from close to 2 years old up to 5 and a bit. It’s always nice to see all these kids of different ages interact. As expected, the smaller ones look up to the older, and Nalu (one of the youngest) was very keen to have a try at skateboarding down the ramp like the older kids.
Interestingly the older children learn very quickly to look out for the younger ones too and some even love playing simple games with them.
As a bonus the kids got to play with sparkles. Most were at first intimidated by the bright noisy sparkles that spat out of the stick but they quickly realized how fun it was.
Tahi almost made it to midnight and fell sound asleep at 11.30pm, not even stirring when the adults all creamed “Happy New Year!” in the lounge right by his bed. Party-boy-Miro did make it to midnight, and jumped around arms in the air screaming with everyone else, obviously delighted the party was still going. He did crash half an hour later, and when Josh failed to locate our car keys after searching for half an hour we decided we’d better crash on the couch. The keys did turn up in the end, in one of our bags (that had been searched the night before, hum. Possibly the haze of the alcohol troubled his vision).
pioupioukids 