Selling Clare Belle

Sigh, we are back in Australia now, have sold our beloved Clare Belle van on the way to the airport in a stroke of luck, genius or maybe just wishful thinking. Anyway, it worked out and we boarded our plane with a nice fat wad of NZ dollars in my back pocket.

It was very sad to see Clare Belle go, she was so good to us for the 3 months we shared together. Both Sonny and April had a good cry the night before we sold her, Sonny managing to get a few words out between sobs “Love her, Clare Bell”, “Kiss Clare Belle” and then hopped out of the van to give her a big kiss on the bonnet.

Lucky for Clare Belle she is going to good owners, a lovely french couple who had been looking for a van for over 3 weeks, one look at our van and it was a deal.

Packing all our things for the plane we realised just how much stuff we had brought over, so many things we never used! See the pics below.

Caving!

We found some awesome free caves around Waitomo, as the commercial cave tours cost $$$, and Sonny not being so good with the dark we definitely wouldn’t get our monies worth…

The natural arch at near Te Anga was our highlight, and no-one in sight!

And from there its just a 5min drive to the 38m Marokopa Falls.

Cold weather is upon us

The weather has finally turned and its not getting COLD! 13C days and much colder at night.

Mt Taranaki had snow on it which made for great views as we headed back up the coast slowly to Auckland.

Just finished The Hobbit book

April and I have been reading the fantastic fantasy book The Hobbit for the past 3 weeks, her first real non-picture book and it went down really, really well!

She totally got into it and we would read morning, lunch and night sessions, we were both hooked. I hope this starts an interest in longer books for her (yes I know she can’t even read yet!), they transport you to another world.

April cried real tears when Gandalf left them, and when the dwarf Thorin died (I admit I had teary eyes as well), what a great read.

We’ve even been able to do some hikes for the first time since April was born, a 6km walk the other day were April role-played Gandalf the whole way, and I was the Hobbit who got all the nasty jobs, like checking under bridges for trolls and goblins in caves. Anway, she was so into it she walked nearly the whole way. Success!

Anyway, we have a copy of The Hobbit to lend if anyone wants it.

Sonny with his surfboard

Rhe kids are getting desperate for toys, but I like to think they are just super creative!

3 weeks till we fly home.

(sent from my phone on the run)

Easter egg hunt

We spent Easter in a forest, luckily Nella emailed the bunny so he knew where to find us…

photo 1

photo 2

(sent from my phone on the run)

First Snow for the kids

We are staying at Turangi, on Lake Taupo and spotted some snow this afternoon on the nearby Mt Ruapehu (NZ’s biggest snow field), so we immediately packed up the kids and headed straight for it.

Unfortunately by the time we got there all the snow in the village of Whakapapa had nearly melted, and the road was closed to the mountain (ironically due to too much snow).

It was blowing an icy gale so we just drove around town, picking up lumps of ice and snow off cars, the kids thought it was brilliant, the best thing ever! Little did they know what real snow is like.

Oh well, we can at least say we’ve seen snow!