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.