Turning 50 is definitely a milestone birthday, but hubby Dan didn’t want a party so in February we decided to head away for the weekend to celebrate at the Marlborough Food and Wine Festival. Dan’s Birthday fell on the same weekend as the festival, in the sunshine summer month of February here in New Zealand, […]
Our youngest turned 13 in February, joining her older two siblings in ‘teen hood’ (though our oldest will turn 20 in June this year!). Having started high school a couple of weeks before her birthday there was, certainly for me, a moment of nostalgia as I reflected on how grown up my ‘baby’ has become […]
Sunshine was gifted to us on Christmas Day this year in Wellington and we had the most wonderfully relaxed day together (well, almost all together, as our oldest currently lives in Melbourne and so we video chatted and were delighted to see them having an awesome time with a friend and their friend’s family). We […]
Happy New Year! I have to say I’m feeling very fortunate to be living freely in New Zealand at the moment. Writing about all our freedoms seems a little unfair when so many people around the world are struggling with the Covid-19 Pandemic, facing lockdowns and huge restrictions on normal day to day activities. I […]
It’s been a whirlwind few weeks of events and I am so grateful that our ‘team of 5 million’ pulled together earlier in the year, with the 7 week lockdown, so that we can enjoy living a life of ‘relative’ normality now (things can always change!). Everyone I talk to is filled with gratitude and […]
What a great week! We’ve celebrated hubby’s 45th Birthday, our youngest daughter’s 8th Birthday and felt the love on Valentine’s Day, appreciating the amazing community of friends and neighbours that we and our children are blessed to have in our lives. Valentine’s Day fell on a Wednesday this year, which is my favourite day of […]
On the day of my 43rd Birthday (after having ran my first fell run with my sister the night before) we headed out at a much more sedate pace to enjoy some local sights. Our first stop was Castleton, a village in the High Peak district of Derbyshire, England. We took a stroll around the little […]
Alice had a hard job deciding on what theme she’d like for her 7th Birthday party. Pokemon featured high on her list, as did the amazing ‘Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them’ story, from the recently released movie and the wonderful ‘Moana’ movie. In the end we went with Pokemon as there were so […]
Nineteen years ago, on 14th February 1998, my then boyfriend proposed to me at the Marlborough Food and Wine Festival in New Zealand. It wasn’t overly romantic to any onlookers – simply a guy on one knee, kneeling on a random piece of earth, asking a girl to marry him. What made it special was that […]
This is the longest time I’ve gone without blogging and, to be honest, I haven’t missed it. I’ve only felt slightly remiss for not having ‘documented’ everything so that I can look back on it in later years. The last few weeks of November into December were so busy, with our oldest finishing school for […]
One of the many highlights of my recent trip to the UK was being there to celebrate my Dad’s 70th Birthday and my sister’s 40th Birthday. It was wonderful to not only share an incredible three week trip with my folks and their youngest granddaughter, my daughter Alice, aged 6, but to also celebrate two ‘milestone’ Birthdays! We […]
I don’t feel like I’m a parent to a teenager – at least, not in a ‘ARGH! I have teenager in the house, run for the hills!’ kind of way. But then, the teenage years last six years, so I am sure those moments will come, but right now our Miss 13 is a real […]
I woke with no expectation – or even desire – for breakfast in bed. I’m past the days of sleep deprivation making a lie in a luxury I lust after. These days, thank the heavens, my daughters don’t wake me for night feeds or cuddles (I had three daughters that didn’t sleep through the night […]
School finished on the Thursday before Easter with a very touching Easter Service in the Wellington Cathedral, especially as our oldest daughter sang in the ‘Choral’ and our youngest with the ‘Princess Singers’ choir. I popped into my youngest daughter’s classroom afterwards and saw this beautiful nature arrangement. Good Friday morning was a relaxed start […]
