that we live in paradise.
Pete and I stopped at a new coffee shop just down the road from our house and took takeaway latte’s onto Cheltenham beach across the road. It was 10:30am on a Thursday morning and we were greeted with this beautiful view. So lucky.
It was a gorgeous hot hot hot last of the summer days day. March 12th and ma strung bunting through the trees in our back garden as I laid out plenty of rugs and pillows and Lou sliced up the worlds best home baked chocolate fudge brownie in the Kitchen.
Chris arrived in her usual whirlwind of energy and ran about successfully completing all the things us Tyler / Connolly’s (powles and harrows) unknowingly leave half done, while simultaneously baking sausage rolls and dutifully tasting my iced tea and strawberry punch and making much needed suggestions (seriously, sometimes I feel exhausted just watching Chris)
Clare arrived with Asparagus rolls and after telling her about my last run in with the midwife (The week before Diane had got me to place my hands either side of the babies head which is now thankfully down in my pelvis and no longer breech, at which point I just about died with fear because the head no longer felt like a cricket ball but a giant telly tubby) I unsuccessfully tried to get clare to feel it too so she could share my terror. Instead she poked and ahem’d until I said, ‘now I think you’re just prodding my vagina’, which made us both laugh and promptly stop. HA
My best friend in the whole world (except for all those other best friends!) was over from Australia for a wedding and the girls had expertly arranged it so she could be at the baby shower, yey! Little things like this really do make your day.
Opening some of the most delicious presents. We’d asked for “no plastic’ after reading this awesome woman’s blog who I call ‘sarafarmaramamumma’ (see link on side of our blog) who lives out on a 3 acre lifestyle block in Colorado and suggested that….
‘to work towards a more eco-lifestyle we consider everything that we bring into our homes and think of them in terms of – if there were no landfills would I be happy to have this item composting at the bottom of my garden?.
So, no plastic, or as little as we can. It does slightly detract from all the cool toys people can buy you for the newby but we received some excellent and well thought out pressies from everyone.
Ma and Cass relaxing in the hammock
My lovely sister and I.
Aunties, where would we be without aunties. I particularly like looking at mine, Aunty Sheryl, Aunty Christine and Aunty Dotty. They are all strikingly fashionable and well read and easy to talk to, such good role models.
Lou’s little Leo and his red balloon. 6 months old already!!
Cass and Sara’s boys Sebastian and Rueben.
As always, thank you to the wonderful women in my life that arrange these things for me, always with a touch of class, a heavy dose of heart and a good emphasis on relaxation and uncomplicatedness. How would my life work without any one of you?
Pregnancy lays to bare to a lot of uncomfortable things.
More than I dare mention, but trust me they are all ‘uncomfortable’.
There is however one thing that amuses me greatly, the linea nigra, the line that you get on your tummy, see pic below (this is not my tummy although doesn’t look much different) I look at it every morning and night and have to STRONGLY resist the urge to get a big fat felt tip pen and colour it in. What is all that about? It’s a line that wants doodling over with a marker. Pete told me if I did it the ink would be absorbed through my skin and could give our baby ink poisoning. pah! this is the same man that requested we go back for another unscheduled ultra-sound because he was so worried I have dented our babies face with all the belly prodding I do. I told him to stop being so silly but suffice to say have stopped poking at the baby just in case.
Another amusing thing to mention is the misfiring my brain has done on a couple of occasions. People call it baby brain but there is no real scientific evidence of it. When I was in Farmers the other day picking up some supplies the cashier handed me my receipt and I looked at her and smiled and said ‘Massive’. I had no idea I was going to say ‘massive’, I thought I was going to say thank you and out came ‘massive’. She gave me a very odd look and so to cover up my strange term of phrase I said, ‘choice’. HA. By the time I reached Pete outside I was actually crying with laughter, it took 10 minutes to tell him the story which clearly was not as funny to him as to me, he smiled politely and said ‘silly wife’.
Pic’s below are at 32 weeks, only…..8 weeks to go! Now we are down to 4, d-day is imminently looming.
Just finished work and waiting for the midwife, reading something incredibly inane on a pin-board, probably about babies, or herpies, or haemorroids, these are the things are on midwifes notice boards.
babies babies babies babies. Below are a couple of pics of the nursery we have created. We painted and put up a wall decal and made a hanging mobile of small elephants.
***in defence of this blog I never finished it and so am posting it as is because now I have lost the will to finish it, apologies if it makes crap reading but really we all just look at the pics anyway eh?'***
This is the last email I sent out to my fellow campers before we tore off for the North to begin our camping weekend for Pete’s 30th birthday….
“Just thought I’d drop you all a quick email to say despite possible better judgment, we are heading off early this morning to Uretiti. I say despite better judgment due to thunder storm Saturday that the met service has predicted to roll in.
Come armed with wet weather jackets if you’re prepared to face it! By Sunday it should be clear blues again.”
Ben’s reply below SHOULD have made me rethink my plans but I was hideously optimistic, cyclone smyclone, we’d be just fine.
reply from Ben……
“Thunder storm??? It's a tropical cyclone with gale force winds and extreme rain warnings!
"Because it's a tropical storm it has very, very heavy rain which is not too good for the long weekend. And the winds will be gale force further north which is exceptionally strong ..." (Metservice report)”
Below are two pics, the first is us arriving, smattering of rain about to pitch our tents. The second is the very same spot the next day after the cyclone forced us to yoink up our tents in the dark battling sheet rain and big winds.
Back we came the next day, much to my horror. I had to take a big dose of ‘suck up’ for the sake of Pete’s 30th. We saw that some campers weren’t so lucky and had had to abandon their belongings to the rising waters the night before. I felt mildly better that at least our situation wasn’t quite so dire.
But we re-pitched on high ground. Stoked campers free of flood waters!
Cass, Chris and myself headed in for a dip one day while Pete took in the view sand side.
Like a cat walk to heaven eh?
Post cyclone and the morning wind was blowing offshore, Pete made the most of the surf before the day turned to cloudless skies and a wafty breeze.
Caving to see NZ’s largest Stalignite. staligtite. or staligmite. I can’t be bothered to look up the correct term. 
