Counting down… party season!

The Christmas tree is up (with our usual eclectic collection of decorations, added to each year!), the advent calendar doors are being greeted with great excitement every morning (and they’re not even chocolate ones – what mean parents!), parcels have been arriving and swiftly hidden from prying eyes and we’re all looking forward to the end of term for Charlotte on Friday and several weeks of chilling in our togs at the beach.

The Pohutukawa blossoms are in full bloom all around Wellington, but we’re still waiting for the tree in our garden and hope they open before Christmas Day and Sophie’s 3rd Birthday on Boxing Day. We’re looking forward to a quiet Christmas Day and then an open-house of friends on Boxing Day ‘avo for a relaxed BBQ with lots of water play like last summer!

We’ve had a busy week or so and this past weekend was full of social gatherings and celebrations. Saturday morning we all caught the bus into town and the girls decorated the tree in Dan’s office with some beautiful ‘Paua shell‘ and ‘Pohutukawa’ decorations they’d made on Friday afternoon.

In the afternoon, Rachel, Craig and their gorgeous son, Myles, invited us to Oriental Bay beach to celebrate Myles 3rd Birthday and their arrival in New Zealand (they’ve recently immigrated from the UK). It was a tad windy, but that didn’t stop everyone having a lot of fun. Unfortunately Charli and Sophie hadn’t had much sleep the night before so they went home for a nap, whilst I stayed on. I was so tempted to go for a dip, but was meeting up with my friend Kathy later on and didn’t have a change of clothes.

Kathy and I managed to turn a couple of quiet drinks into a large one, to say the least! The full moon is definitely to blame! Not that I realized it was a full moon until I read the Dominion Post’s headliner on Monday morning with the title, ‘Weekend of drunken mayhem. 1000 police calls as party season hits full swing’. If I’d known it was a full moon we would have tracked down a drumming circle and some fire dancing (we’re planning on taking up drumming in the New Year!)!

Dan read the headlines with amusement and was waiting for a report on two drunk and disorderly mothers hanging out in a gay bay carrying a brown paper bag each containing some x-rated material!

I have to admit it was the first time in years I’d been out way into the small hours and I came home thinking, ‘I’m moving to the Marlborough Sounds and living in a house with boat access only before my girls are teenagers!’.

Had a blast, but it was scary on the streets too and I worried about young girls and lads. With no limit on closing times and all the bars and clubs open all night, it’s so hard to say, ‘That’s enough!’ Courtenay Place is one long street of bars, clubs and restaurants and since a ban was placed on smoking indoors (needs to be more bars with open-courtyards to keep the smokers off the streets me thinks!), there’s been a huge growth in the volume of people milling on the streets.

Anyway, I found a reputable cab at 3am and was so relieved to be in it and on my way home – I was raving to the taxi driver about how brave he was and that many taxi drivers are the modern day ‘Knights of the road’ and no doubt save many a young lass and lad and deliver them home safely to their worried parents. I gave him a good tip!

For those interested, here’s the run down on where we went (minus one unmentionable, ha, ha!): Shed 5, St Johns Bar, Southern Cross, The Garden Club.

When I did crawl through the door (actually I was pretty darn upright – incredibly so!), minus one mobile phone and a bashed up camera…, I proceeded to guzzle down a gallon of water thinking, ‘I’m so grounded for a month and owe Dan a few make-ups!’. Dan, bless him, was a true darling on Sunday and let me lie in till 10am, whilst I listened to the sound of the girls giggling in the garden.

No chance of a lazy Sunday… we were off out again to celebrate Bethany’s much awaited 5th Birthday at the delightfully tranquil setting of The Short Straw Cafe in the Hutt Valley. It was such a wonderful, surprisingly relaxed, event and we all thoroughly enjoyed the party and talking with Marrisa and Michael’s wonderfully vibrant friends.

And not forgetting the school disco… Dan bravely volunteered to take both the girls, but didn’t take the camera, however they were both singing their hearts out in this little video-clip I took of them in the garden… (Abba is still going strong in the Lee household!):