Our trip up the Gondola

Today it is Canterbury show day so Stephen had the day off. It was such a lovely day that we had to go do something. We have an annual pass for the Tram and Gondola. We hadn't used the Gondola so we decided to do that today. The Gondola takes you up to the top of the Port Hills. Rachel thought the motor at the bottom was too noisy. Fortunately once we got in and the doors closed you couldn't hear the noise.

At the top you have pretty impressive views to north, south and west. We went for a little walk (Rachel would probably say it was a long walk for her little legs). Then we went through the time tunnel experience ride inside. Rachel didn't like that either. We had our lunch (sandwiches) before coming back down.

Andrew thinks it was a fun ride and wants to go again.

Here is Andrew on one of the walking tracks.

Rachel and Mummy on the way back down. Rachel enjoyed it when it wasn't noisy.

The collage below is a just a few of the scenic photos we took. In one photo you can see where part of castle rock has come down with the recent earthquakes.

We will go again sometime.

Andrew's earthquake machine

This morning Andrew decided that he was going to make a machine to stop the earthquakes. I would love to have a machine that stopped earthquakes so thought I'd encourage him. This was after a discussion about the cracks in our walls. After much thought and discussion (he discounted the idea of using a motor) he said it would be really long and you would need a whole in the roof to get it up to the sky.

I asked him how this would stop the earthquakes. He then said it doesn't stop the earthquakes it stops us from getting cracks as it sends the shaking into the neighbours.

Anyone for tea

I came into the lounge to see what Rachel was up to this morning and she has set up a little tea party for her and "Baby"(her special dolly at present). This is one of her favourite activities at present. The footrest makes a great table. The pink chair was mine when I was child. When Rachel saw I was getting the camera she had to check her appearance in the reflection of the TV. Rachel is now teaching Dolly a song from music that involves counting. She isn't quite getting the numbers in the correct order but it is delightful to watch.

Andrew's earthquake story

This morning Andrew started to tell me a story about his earthquake experience. I wrote it down at the time. This afternoon we made a book up with his story. It is delightful so I really want to share it. Sorry, it hasn't photographed that well so I have caption the photos with the words plus some explanation of the photos. All the words are Andrew's. The ideas for all the pictures are his but I helped by drawing most of the pictures. As you can see I am not an artist.

Page 1 "Lots of shaking." The picture is of the little plates on the earth shaking.
page 2 "lots of getting under doorways." Mummy, Daddy, Rachel and Andrew are under a doorway in the picture.

Page 3 "Lots of noise. The picture is of the hallway "because the noise came down it".
Page 4 "I couldn't sleep with the noise." The picture is of Andrew asleep in his bed with Daddy sleeping on the top bunk.

Page 5" Our house got minor cracks."
Page 6" the house across the road lost a chimney."

Page 7 "It was dark because there was no power"

Page 8 "The supermarket didn't have flour." The picture is of a three layer cake on a plate. There is a muffin on the top.

Page 9 "This is the drum (that measures the earthquake)." Above is my attempt to draw a seismograph.

Cromble Holiday - part 1

Andrew initially had a hard time saying "Cromwell". We got away on holiday a day late after cleaning up from the earthquake.
Our route to Cromwell was via Lake Tekapo, were we took the obligatory photos of bronze dogs and churches. This one, in between bus loads, turned out quite nice.

On Monday we went to Stuart Landsborough's Puzzling World, and got lost for a while in their maze.

The kids grew up quite a bit, and quite quickly - it's amazing what running across a room can do!

On the way back to Cromwell, Stephen stopped to sample some wine at The Lazy Dog (near Mt Pisa), while Kathryn took photos of the wine-making equipment. It was a fortuitous stop, as one of the vineyards we'd been keen to sample - Bannock Brae Estate from Bannockburn - have closed for tastings, making their wine available at The Lazy Dog instead. They also had 2 Degrees, Locharburn, Misha, and Valli (I think) wines for sampling.

Cracker of a Morning

Here are some of our photos showing the minor damage we sustained.

The pantry had opened and emptied itself. This photo also shows the oven on a lean, which was easily fixed by moving the supporting pieces of wood back in place.

The last of Kathryn's ClickClack was destroyed. Tupperware survives earthquakes much better.

The other side of the kitchen was covered in mixed-spice, of our own secret recipe. The earthquake also broke one small coffee plunger, and one small coffee cup.

Andrew located our biggest crack - at about the line that the downstairs concrete blocks stop. This one extends around the corner of the stairs.

This next one is above the sliding door in to our kitchen. Most of our windows and doors have got cracks, presumably where the jib board joins, but not as bad as this one.

We'll be replacing our picture hooks with stronger ones, since they mostly look like this now. Thankfully none of the pictures were damaged.

Christchurch Earthquake

We had a rude awakening this morning, due to a massive earthquake.

We're all ok. We seem to be much better off than many of our neighbours. None of them have brick chimneys anymore.

We had spilt food & minor broken glassware in our Kitchen, a shelf in the laundry came down, and the plaster has minor cracks around a number of doors and windows. Our oven is on a minor lean, which we'll be looking into.

Carolyn & Matt's place sounds about the same.

Margaret & Murray's place had a number of broken windows, and some cracks in the brickwork.

Our Future fashion designer

Here is Rachel's outfit for the day. Note the blue tights under the purple skirt with the yellow dress over top. The inspiration started when she decided that the yellow dress was the outfit for the day. It is a little cool to wear it on its own.

The Rubberband guys

Tonight at dinner we had Andrew's version of the Good samaritan story as follows:

"The man got hurt by the rubberband guys and they took his money. But a good guy came and he took him to a place [pause] a museum. And when they had finished they called him [possibly the good guy] a comforting guy."

Last week we were looking at this story in our nightly bible story and then it was also the topic for Andrew's group at Church this week.

Andrew's new glasses

The four year old screening test picked up a problem with Andrew's eyes. Last week I took him to the Optometrist. He is long sighted with a lazy eye. So he needed glasses to wear all the time. This should hopefully fix the lazy eye. Yesterday afternoon we went and picked them up. Here he is wearing them. Andrew says he likes his new glasses and that they make things look bigger.

Rachel thinks she wants glasses too. Mummy might find her some sunglasses.

Andrew Birthday Party Number 2

Andrew's family party also had a Treasure Island theme. The collage below shows the main treasure hunting activity.

I made a treasure map. I cut this into pieces which I hid around the kids room. First they had to find the 12 pieces, then we put it together. The kids followed the map to find where the treasure was hidden. They had to go outside through the laundry and then came back in through the ranch slider into the lounge(the photo top left shows them coming back inside) before heading down the stairs to the garage where again we had hidden metal rings in the sandpit to be exchanged for edible treasure.

We also played Pass the Parcel.

Andrew is wearing his new bumble wings he got for his birthday in this photo.

Here is Andrew's Treasure Map birthday cake.

Andrew's party Number 1

In a crazy moment I decided that we would have a preschool kids birthday party for Andrew and also a family party on the same day. As Andrew is into pirates and treasure maps at present we had a treasure island theme. Here is the story of his kids birthday party.

We started by decorating pirate hats and treasure coin and pirate biscuits.

This was followed by morning tea (served in little treasure boxes). Then it was time for birthday cake and singing "happy birthday" to Andrew.

We then down to the garage for a treaure hunt in the sandpit. The kids dug for metal rings which they were able to swap for edible treasure. We didn't get any photos of them actually digging.

We finished with playing pass the parcel.

Treasure chest birthday cake

Daddy and Mummy made Andrew a treasure chest birthday. We were rather pleased with our effort so we have given it a separate blog post.

Here is the finished cake.

The surprise comes when you cut the cake open to find the treasure.

Now how was this done. It was mostly Daddy's idea. We started with a loaf tin shaped cake. We cut both ends off to form a base for the cake. Then we put a cavity in the cake by first cutting a square about 3 cms deep and then put a slit in each side to go through where we had cut the square. Then we were able to lift the piece of cake leaving the cavity as the photo below shows. We added the piece we had removed to the ends to form a base for the cake. We did have to cut some cake off to make it level.

We filled the cavity with lollies. Then place the base pieces on top and carefully turned it over and placed on the serving plate before icing it.

Lego words

The other day Andrew said he had made an "S" out of train track. Mummy went to have a look but she couldn't see it. Howeve later that day She and Andrew made the letters that spell house together as you can see below. Mummy needs to work out how to make the other 21 letters in train track and which ones you can't make out of track.

Andrew's birthday

Andrew turned four on Wednesday, where has the time gone. Here are a selection of photos taken on Wednesday of Andrew opening and playing with his presents.

When he got in the morning there was a selection of presents wanting for him. The open card on the right end is from Rachel. She made it for him. She didn't want to draw on the front only in the middle.

Playing with his new "turn" [table] for his train track. Apparently Aleesha has one just like this one.

Another train set.

Andrew got this tool set from Great-grandma in the mail on Wednesday. It is a tool set with a drill and screwdriver that" work". Andrew is enjoying playing with it. He keeps telling me that things are broken so he needs to "fix them".Rachel likes to have a go when she gets a chance.

We gave Andrew some more Lego. He wanted Daddy to help him build just as Daddy was about to leave for work. Daddy said he would when he got home from work. At 9am Mummy got asked how much longer before daddy got home. Mummy's response was after playgroup, lunch and Rachel's sleep. Andrew then said "That's a long time". When Daddy got home Andrew wanted to start build then. Here Andrew is putting some pieces together.