Busy Little Gracie

In Flippa Ball news, last week Grace was named Player of the Day.  Awarded by the New Zealand Water Polo Association for 'Fantastic pressure on defense and attack, with a positive attitude throughout.'  We were very proud!

This week, Grace's accomplishments go from becoming a Brownie, playing a double header in Flippa Ball, having a sleep over and going shredding....

For the last two weeks Grace has been attending the local Brownie meetings, a few of her friends from school are members and encouraged her to give it a try.  She has enjoyed it and decided on Monday to become an official member of the Brownie Pack.  It was cute, the girls had a neat little induction ceremony that John and I attended, after which they had a celebration party.  Grace has earned two patches which I promptly sewed onto her sash. 

Friday was our first sleep over.  Grace invited Amelia, she is on her Flippa Ball team and in her Brownie Pack.  (She is wearing the dark pink shirt in the picture to the right above)  The girls had a blast.  Right after school we took them to Moana Pool.  I have mentioned this pool before, it is where they have their Flippa Ball games and it is AWESOME!  There is a wave/leisure pool, two 25 meter lap pools, a lazy river, fountains, a platform diving well, a spring board diving well and last but our most favorite, two enclosed water slides...  I have posted a video John recorded of the girls going down the fast slide, it is a bit hard to watch at times but I think it is hilarious.

After the pool it was off to Flippa Ball practice and back to the house for Fish and Chips.  Earlier in the week we had some pretty hard rains as a result we sprung a leak in Graces room which shorted out her only light.  So the girls were up ALL NIGHT with head lamps giggling.

With nothing planned for our Saturday we ended up on the river.  We went shredding on the Taieri River with some friends, Michele and his partner Simone.  The Taieri is only 30 minutes out of town, a nice little hour long, class III run.  We made two runs, on the first was John, Grace and I in the shredder and Michele in his play boat.  This was Simone's first trip down whitewater so the second trip was Michele and Simone in the shredder and John in his new creek boat.  The wind was out of control, my shoulders were hurtin' by the end.  I'm pretty sure that if we had stopped paddling we would have gone up stream because the wind was so powerful...  Michele and Simone enjoyed their trip in the Shredder, they said the wind wasn't as bad and there weren't any swims, which is always nice.  We were happy to have been on the water together, another successful family shreddin' trip!

Sunday was the BIG Flippa Ball day... Two games, back to back.  Ms. Hesson had prepared them well with Friday's practice, lots of drills and practice swimming with the ball.  It paid off, they won their first game 4-0 and their second 10-2.  These kids are always so amazed when they score a goal, I love their facial expressions. After their games the team played in the wave pool for quite awhile.  

We returned home around 6ish for a yummy Sunday dinner, BBQ chicken and roasted veggies.  

Aramoana Beach

             
Thursday was beautiful so when Grace got home from school we decided to head to the beach.  This time we drove along a very narrow and windy road out to the mouth of the Otago Harbour, to Aramoana Beach.  This area is famous for great surf waves, blue penguins and fur seals.  There are plenty of gorgeous hikes in the neighborhood and across the bay, on the end of the Otago Peninsula is where you can find nesting Royal Albatross, massive birds.  We were able to watch them soar around above the peninsula.

Aotearoa is the Maori word for New Zealand which means land of the long white cloud.  One thing we have learned is that the weather here changes often and quick.  The skies had clouded over shortly after reaching the beach and the temperature had gotten a bit colder.  In a few of the pictures Grace is bundled up in John's down vest.  We didn't stay very long for this reason, but we did catch a few fur seals up close...

On the way home we drove up to the top of Signal Hill, this is the massively steep hill we live on the western side of.  At the top is the New Zealand Centennial Monument built in the 1940s, signifying 100 years of British sovereignty, sometimes I forget how young this country really is...  

By the time we reached the top of the mountain the weather had changed yet again, the skies had cleared, it was warm and the sun was shining down on us...

looking across the bay at the peninsula

the peninsula

Otago Bay

the city of Dunedin

the stone in the center is a piece of Edinburgh Castle in Scotland

This is the Town and These are the People...

I have been working for weeks now to get a post up about our neighborhood... It has taken me longer than I wanted to get photos ready, the weather here has been a bit nasty lately.   But finally today the sun was shining and the sky was blue and I was able to get a few pictures snapped and wrap it up! So, here ya go! There is a video at the end of the post, This is the Town by Harry Nilsson from the movie The Point... It's one of Grace's favorite movies, and ours as well, anyway, we watched the movie a while back and the tune has been in my head ever since.  I thought it was a nice addition to the post.

-this one is for you G-
Our little house sits halfway up a massive hill.  I would try to tell you that it is the steepest hill in the world, because I have to walk up it multiple times a day, but that street is five streets over... Baldwin Street, according to the Guinness Book of World Records, is the steepest street in the world, and I believe it.  Standing at the bottom it doesn't look possible to drive up or even walk up without falling over backwards...

Baldwin Street...

I love our little house, we have a sweet little kitchen and a potbellied stove in the living room.  The walls are bright colors and the floors are beautiful old hardwood.  Grace's room has an old fireplace, which is not in working order but stuffed full of flowers, and a perfect little built in desk.  She has her pictures and drawings posted up all over her walls making it truly her space.  Our bedroom is nice and cozy, the walls are dark green and the window looks out into the garden in the backyard.  I have a wardrobe that I keep some of my clothes in, several times we have tried to find Narnia, but so far have been unsuccessful.  We hang our laundry on the line in our backyard to dry, I love the way they smell afterwards.  I like it, I have enjoyed very much the slower pace to life we have discovered down here, it suits me.

We get most of our produce from a fresh produce stand around the corner and our meat comes from the local butcher.  I love going to the butcher, he is a nice German man who is always so friendly when we enter.  We had Grace with us one day and he gave her a Cheerio, a tiny red sausage, which she loved.  Every couple of days we go in and get meat for the next few meals, it is much cheaper than the grocery and the quality is great.  The variety of sausages is amazing, I am like a kid in the candy store, so many to choose from.... Venison with sun dried tomato and black olives, or hot and spicy jalapeno beef.  Any given day there are at least six varieties to choose from.
One of my most favorite NEW things is Kumara.  A purple veggie that is quite possibly the most delicious thing on the planet.  It is basically like a purple sweet potato and I love them.  What's not to love about eating purple food!

Veggie Stand

                                                                         

Grace's school is three blocks over from our house, so each morning John walks her to the bottom of our hill and the rest of the way she rides her scooter.  All of the children in the neighborhood ride around on scooters, it is such a safe place.  It is nice to be in a place where they can have this type of freedom.  She comes home on her own and rides to her Brownies meetings on her own, their meetings are held at a church across the street.   She has a little friend, Echo, who lives one street over, they ride between our houses most afternoons.  Ahhh, how we love and appreciate her freedom of transportation.  She has been very responsible with it so far, only once has she come home late, to which we responded by getting her a watch.

North East Valley Normal School

              

I work at the small neighborhood pool during the week teaching Learn to Swim classes.  In New Zealand swimming is incorporated into the school curriculum, so Grace will be taking classes in learning all four strokes and survival swimming.  Which I think is awesome.  I love it so far, the kids are so eager to learn and love being in the water.  John has a short twenty minute walk to the University, he rides his bike most days.  It is nice having everything so close, the ability to leave our car parked for days.  My own two feet have become my main form of transportation and I love it.

Across from the pool is the Dunedin Botanical Garden.  It is absolutely beautiful, flowers like I've never seen before and massive trees.  People come from all over Dunedin to enjoy them and they are a short walk from our home.  We have spent several sunny afternoons there feeding the ducks and walking along the trails.

Grace and Tinkerbell, for Jojo

Flippa Ball

Grace has decided to join the Flippa Ball team at her school.  It is basically water polo, and hilarious to witness! We had our first practice this past Friday and Sunday was their first game.  They are NEVN Silver team, (which stands for North East Valley Normal School) and they played against the Abbotsford Eels. Their one and only practice was a bit like herding cats, to quote my father.  She had no clue what was going on, and the pool building was so small the echo was louder than her coach so she had a little trouble understanding what was being said, as far as rules and objectives of the game.... We had planned to go to the pool on Saturday to play for a few hours so we told her that we could work on the rules and skills then... Well, once we were at the pool she said she was fine she wanted no part of working on it, she was all about playing and going down the slide, go figure.  Which, I have to admit, those slides are a lot of fun!!! They have a fast one and a slow one, I didn't go down the slow one, the fast one was too much fun. 

On Sunday we arrived 15 minutes before their game, Grace was so nervous she could hardly stand it.  They had a team meeting in the baby pool adjacent to their competition pool and were handed their caps, they all looked so darn cute, a bunch of little bullet-heads running around. There was a game playing before them so Grace was able to watch and observe how it all goes down.  Apparently Sundays are big Flippa Ball days at Moana Pool, the schedule we received showed various parts of the facility booked for games till almost 6pm.  Grace played awesome!  She made an assist, stole the ball, and guarded the other team.  The girls on our team are fierce, in between whistle blows they were twirling around in the water and splashing each other, but with a little direction from their Coach, and teacher Mrs. Hesson, they were quick to get their game faces on.  Grace's friend Charlotte was the leading scorer for our team and our goalie, Broady, was incredible the Eels took several good shots at our goal but he defended it well!!!  We ended up winning 4-0

Grace had a blast and is excited about the next opportunity to play, who knows we could have a future little water polo champ on our hands!!

Here are a few pictures, they are a bit grainy because of the lighting in the pool, but you get the general idea.  Gracie is number 10

That's our girl!

Our backyard

One of the things I love best about our house is the garden... We only have one small patch of grass about one square meter in size in our front yard.  Here are some pictures of what is growing around us...