Things I’m Loving this Christmas Holiday Week in New Zealand

Top of the list, of things to love, has to be having the man of the house home all week – and rolling into half of next week too! It makes such a huge difference having him home and we are having so much fun (and craziness) that comes with having three highly energetic daughters! It was amazing to have a couple of hours one-on-one time together on Christmas Eve. On the way home we parked up at Princess Bay to admire the most amazing cloud formation on Wellington’s south coast – a superb prelude to the scorcher of a Christmas Day we enjoyed!

And the ‘time-out’ in the late ‘avo on Christmas Eve gave us a little lift of energy to keep up with our daughters late into the night (nearly so late that we were worried Santa wouldn’t stop at our house!).

Christmas Day was the hottest it’s been in eighty years in Wellington – hotter than Sydney even (now that’s a rarity!).

Boxing Day gave us plenty to love, as we celebrated our second daughter’s 7th Birthday! Sophie was made up with her presents and we enjoyed a very chilled day at home, with a little trip out in the afternoon. Her younger sister, Alice, helped to bake the Birthday cake, which Sophie then decorated with her favourite chocolates (taking after her Great-Grandma in her taste for expensive chocolates!).

The Pohutukawa tree in our garden, a traditional late bloomer compared to the others in Wellington, gave us its first bloom on Sophie’s Boxing Day Birthday (perhaps our Sophie will be a late bloomer too – but all good things come in time!).

The week has also been filled with little moments to love, like giant Jenga games, with our pre-Christmas Sunday roast dinner, at ‘The Southern Cross‘ in Wellington.

A happy moment of one-on-one for Alice and me at Carlucciland one evening (she loves going there to play with the little metal golf-men…!).

And a fun game of mini-golf at Pirate Ship Mini-Golf in Porirua with Sophie and Alice (Charlotte had her own fun with Frances and a break from a crazy sisters).

Chilling in the spa…

And playing pirates and princesses at the Wellington Museum of City and Sea, with Alice and Charlotte, whilst Dan took Sophie to scale the climbing walls at Fergs on Wellington waterfront.

Loving family meals together, at home and out and about, with plenty of time to relax and just ‘be’, no rush to get anywhere for anything and time to catch up with a dear friend and old neighbour today.

So much to love in this beautiful little of slice of paradise. So much on our doorstep, within easy reach. We are always mindful of how fortunate we are to live in such a peaceful place, with no distances to drive or traffic to face, so much choice of delightful places to dine and places to be entertained, so much natural beauty to play our own games.