End of Term 1

Wow - that went fast!

One term over and done. I think it can be safely said that the children had a great term. They made loads of friends, worked hard and played hard. they even have the callouses on their hands to prove that last bit! Nearly every day after school they play in the school adventure playground for about an hour - climbing walls, slides, and loads of monkey bars. It's the monkey bars that have given them and nearly every other child at school callouses galore on their hands.

During the last week of term the senior students in Mt Carmel (the juniors) were asked to decorate an egg with winners being given Easter eggs as prizes. Joe, not surprisingly, chose to decorate his as Jonathan Falefasa Umaga better known as Tana Omaga an All Black. I'm sure you can spot the similarities!

All it took was one boiled egg, two black balloons, some kitchen roll, some white paper and some super glue & there you have Tana Umaga!! Blue Peter eat your heart out!

The Cricket Tournament

Today was the day Joe has been looking forward to for weeks. This was the 11 a-side cricket tournament held at Dilworth School in Remuera. There were schools from all over the Eastern Suburbs but to make it more manageable each school would only play 2 matches with an hour each innings.

Joe was playing for Mt Carmel A team and was very proud of the fact. His team played Meadowbank Primary (a very local derby) and Dilworth School.

Mt Carmel A won the first match and lost the second match.

Joe played extremely well but is still learning of the importance of good sportsmanship - let's just leave it at that!

Daddy's Taking Us to the Zoo Tomorrow!

We can stay all day!
Today we went off to the Auckland Zoo. Joe and Millie were excited at the prospect of seeing a real-live kiwi bird and a crocodile! Guess who wanted to see which!
Neither were disappointed although both the kiwi and the alligators were pretty shy and they weren't available for a photo shoot.We had taken a picnic so we did manage to stay most of the day. One of the highlights definitely had to be one of the lionesses playing with a large blue plastic barrel. She picked it up and carried it to the pool where she dropped it in. Because it was relatively big and had several puncture marks in it sank quickly but kept bobbing on the surface. This was obviously what she wanted. She spent the next 5 minutes playing with it and making it bob about even more before she decided to drag it out of the water completely. She actually looked like she was enjoying her playtime.

At the end of the visit Millie was very excited to the visit the gift shop. It gave her an opportunity to use her EFTPOS card for the first time. With it and with birthday money from Auntie Avril, Millie bought this little chap. As with every soft toy to enter our house we had to think of a name. Millie finally settled on "Auckland".

The future is EFTPOS

One of Millie's friends from school, Olivia, told us that she had an EFTPOS card and her own bank account. Both Joe & Millie thought this was amazing - not the bank account bit but owning your own EFTPOS card!
After quite extensive research and a few blind alleys we found a bank that would allow the children to open their own bank account and also supply the desired card.
Joe & Millie are now proud owners of their own cards!
In NZ EFTPOS is everywhere and there seems to be no minimum spend either. This makes it perfect for the children to go and spend their pocket money in the local dairy (corner shop) and get an ice-cream or lollies (sweets).

On the one hand this does take a lot of pressure off Mum & Dad because they don't have to dip into their own pockets for such treats quite so often but it now means that Mum & Dad have to remember to pay the pocket money on a regular basis. Fortunately we can do a transfer over the Internet so we don't even have to have the right change!