Winter Carnival Fun

The two-week school hols came to a grand finale this weekend with the Petone Winter Carnival. After a fortnight of mostly grey skies and days spent at the local swimming pool, or rugged up at home, we were in raptures to see blue sky on Saturday and Sunday. We did have some fun over the hols, despite the rain, with a train trip to Johnsonville, a couple of play-dates, a theatre visit to Capital E to see ‘Tale of a Dog’ and even roller blading across town in the rain. I finished all the Twilight series books and felt like I’d regressed to my teenage years with a twist. I see Vampires everywhere now and think my neighbour’s son has shape-shifter/wolf like possibilities! He accompanied us to the Winter Carnival on Saturday and seeing as I couldn’t go on any of the rides he made for a perfect chaperone to the girls.

The carnival was tremendous fun and the children spent most of the afternoon on the small fair ground rides (which only cost $5 per person for an unlimited number of rides!). As dusk fell around 5pm the focus moved to the beach, where fire sculptures were lit one in turn. As each sculpture burned to the ground the crowd moved on to await the lighting of the next, momentarily feeling the warmth of the fire against the cool night air.

It was all very reminiscent of Guy Fawkes Night for Dan and I (which is celebrated here on November 5th every year!). We were wrapped up with hats and scarves and oooing and ahhing in all the right places. By the time the last fire sculpture was lit everyone was eagerly anticipating the firework finale. Our car was parked right by the beach and we had a perfect view over the beach to the end of the pier, from where fireworks lit up the sky with Wellington city beyond.

It was a perfect end to a magic day. And with our car parked right by our quiet viewing spot on the beach we were able to make a very speedy get away and were almost the first car out of Petone and on the highway home! Certainly a lot easier than attending the 9pm Guy Fawkes fireworks on Oriental Parade in November and the display was of an equal high standard. The girls stood in stunned awe with their mouths wide and the whole event was certainly the highlight of the school hols (but Charli would probably beg to differ, having enjoyed an outing with Daddy to the cinema to see ‘Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen’).