Whitecliffs

Often talked of but I have never been to Whitecliffs before and what a treasured place it is.  With no sea breeze providing the limiting chill, this place was just stunning yesterday.

Camp with the caravan and the massive mobile home. As day trippers, we just had a car and a few deck chairs.

In the caravan drawing pictures and eating chocolate

Cockabully tales

Nic swinging on the rope, not togs so it was an undies undies undies day.

Ben loving the swing, I wonder if his arms are working today as he spent a very long time doing this

Navigating the rapids

Easter '12

My love of Saturdays just never ends, no matter where in the world Saturday is just the best ever day.  Yesterday Saturday did not disappoint with the discovery of new things that just confirm Saturday as the BEST day of the week.   Three things we found...me and Marie-Anne on a moochy afternoon around Christchurch.  After an expected delicious lunch at UTRV (a survivor of the EQ world we live in..)

we then mooched down Colombo Street to The Colombo which is slowly being turned upmarket and interesting.  A mall without being a mall.  Nice work.  Anyway, two new foody additions to the space included Cooper & Co, looked deli delicious to us

 PLUS

 where we also discovered our lovely neighbours about to indulge in macaron loveliness.

 From there we headed towards the famous Christchurch Red ZOne to indulge in a much missed Alice and Videoland adventure.  It was truely lovely to be back in the familiar building, a testament to the over engineering of Post Office buildings.  Thank you for the NZPO.  At least there will be two or three buildings left in the CBD.  I picked up a lovely light French film to spend my solo evening with. 

Tiny Alice sign with soon to be demolished McKenzie and Willis building on Tuam Street.  The 'lanes' are gone....damn it.

 And then the best treasure of the day came in the form of the Dance-o-Mat, another great Gap Filler project in the city.  I am sooo going back there at night to see the glitter ball and get my boys dancing on a demo site in front of the passers by.  How liberating it is to dance like you just don't care who sees you.  It was such fun and so windy.

We found this fantastic family dancing away and so just joined in.

Definitely worth a visit when groups of dancers are booked in.

Quince Cake

This stunning cake is cooling on a rack on the kitchen bench with two small warm slices missing.  It is so delicious I had to share it immediately

Although it is an Apple and Blueberry cake, I used cooked quinces for my topping.  Stunning.  It is another Donna Hay recipe from her latest book 'fast, fresh, simple'

1 and 1/2 cups of sifted self-raising flour;

3/4 cup of caster sugar;

125 grams of butter, softened;

1 teaspoon vanilla extract;

2 eggs;

1/2 cup of milk;

1 apple, cored and thinly sliced;

3/4 cup of frozen or fresh blueberries (I used frozen as fresh are so expensive at the moment); and

2 tablespoons of demerara sugar.

To start, preheat the oven to 160 degrees C. Place flour, sugar, butter, vanilla, eggs and milk in a bowl and beat with an electric mixed until just combined. Spoon the mixture into a greased 22cm springform tin lined with non-stick baking paper.

Top the mixture with the thinly sliced apples and blueberries and sprinkle with the demerara sugar (I didn't have any so used ordinary sugar).

Bake for 45 minutes or until the cake is cooked when tested with a skewer. Let the cake sit in the tin for 5-10 minutes before turning it out to cool further on a wire rack. The apple slices and blueberries will have sunk slightly into the cake mixture. Serve the cake with ice cream or dollop cream.

Easter 2010

I love Easter holidays as I often say in my blogs and this Easter was no different.  We went south with the Warbirds over Wanaka as our prime destination.  I have wanted to go for many years but have not made it.  Jonty has been before though and it was he who did the extensive search for accomodation, leaving us in a tent at the Lake Hawea motor camp.  Forgot to take a photo of that but it was gorgeous and a very pleasant place to be.  We had such fun at the show but sadly as I was taking photos, there are few good ones of the planes.  Nic got some good ones as he managed to squeeze up to the fence line and see the action from a great vantage point.  Our new tiny tent lived through an amazing 7 hours torrential downpour, the likes of which Christchurch has not seen for many seasons. 

I am playing with Google Maps to show you our journey.  This looks like fun.  I haven't managed arrows and some of our places aren't actually on there but fun to try new apps.

View Easter Trip 2010 in a larger map

Here are some pics from the weekend....with some tiny commentary

Boy and Dog in Tekapo.   Due to Easter church services we were unable to get into the Church of the Good Shepherd.  Stunning day though.

Jonty and Nic at Lake Pukaki with Aoraki Mt Cook in the background.  I really need to put some effort in to using my camera better.  However, nice pic of the boys.

We had such a hoot at Puzzling World in Wanaka.  I am guessing we walked about 2km in that maze.  I was wearing jandles and am still nursing very sore calf muscles in my left leg.  Nic was very bossy!

Warbirds.  If you want to see some great photos of the warbirds then go to the website, linked above as ours were crap.  However, here is Nic in the cockpit of the Vampire.  Saw a real one flying, loved it.  Very Thunderbirds are Go. 

Harvards

 Old Cromwell Town.  Gorgeous, if not a little hard to find.  Need the directional signs a little higher off the ground where people can't park in front of them.

Famous Wedderburn shed in the Maniatoto.  Stunning place.  Took many gorgeous photos of the area.  Just loved it and can see why my dad has so many fond memories of living and working in the area building houses.

Boys at the Ancient Briton pub in lovely Nasbey.  We stumbled upon, as you do when travelling, a weekend of bards, balladeers and bulldust.  Spent a great evening in the pub listening to folk songs and poems, meeting locals and having a blast.

Self timer outside the pub the next day.  Not a great shot but a nice memory for us.

Curling at Nasbey.  What a hoot.  This was great fun and I can't wait to do it again.  It is much harder than it looks.  We also met the NZ Olympic Curling Team Skipper Sean Becker.  Very nice chap.

Gold panning with a pudding bowl and a salad bowl in Dansey's Pass. 

Dansey's Pass.  Stunning place!

The Flying Pig in Duntroon.  Delicious food in a very pleasant setting.  Highly recommend a visit there if you are passing by.

Thanks for hanging in to the end of a very long post. 

At the end of the rainbow

We ventured to the big smoke on the last day of the holiday and spent a great day at Rainbows End in south Auckland. The park is much smaller than the ones everyone has been to on the Gold Coast which was fine because there is only so much you can do in a day and because there were surprisingly few people there the queueing was at a minimum. Everyone knows what a theme park is like so here are some pics of us having a great time.

Karen and I almost wet our pants laughing as we hurled around the go-kart track at great speed. Nic was terrified of the dark parts of the log flume but after a tearful initial trip round the roller coaster he was hooked on that instead. I think he and Jonty did about five rounds. I managed one but I really have to take care of my neck so it was one screaming minute of upside down fun for me.

Anna was a little short for some of the rides but attacked everything she could with great gusto. Interestingly Karen and I both agreed that as we have aged we have become less fearful of some things we might have in the past. Equally we are probably more fearful of other less tangible things as mothers but lets not go there.

Holiday catch up

So much for keeping up the posts while on holiday. We have been home for a few days now so the instantaneous stuff is gone but here is a run down on the last days of the holiday.
To give the kids a bit of a break from each other and some families re bonding time we headed off to the lovely Parry Kauri Park in Warkworth. The bird sounds were fantastic and we loved being amongst the giant trees so lovingly cared for by a bunch of hard working volunteers.

That same day we had a great family lunch at Jill and Don's and drank far too much booze and ate so much food and it was all very delicious. J and D were gracious hosts and having looked after the children for a night as well, were really good sports. A quick run down of the food...stuff, boned leg of lamb, potato gratin, Waldorf salad and for dessert we had lemon and yoghurt cake, feijoa and apple filo tarts and the local Charlie's ice cream which is more than delicious and included lemon meringue ice cream...ooooooohhhhh. We also downed a fair few bottles of New Zealand's most delicious wines.

We were celebrating Jill's birthday a day early which was special and were sitting outside bathed in Northland sun having such a lovely family time. Don made the children box kites which they decorated with drawings. So sweet.

too much chocolate

Yes, there is such a thing as too much chocolate. Too much chocolate, chips, wine and all the other really bad for you things. I have had to take my jeans off and resort to an elastic waist. Tragic and with no self discipline I am writing still from Warkworth north of Auckland.

After a fantastic movie experience at the Matakana Cinemas we slept in this morning as our darling children were being loved and cared for at Justy's parents for the evening. Oh, the sleep in, oh the silence. We went to see 'Untouchable Girls', the doco about the Topp Twins. It was just great and they are fantastic. I love them. Even my lovely Jonty shed a tear at the end. Brilliant.After a very slow start to the day we swooped up the children and headed up to Goat Island about 25 km up the coast for a day of fish spotting an relaxing. There were a stunning number of people there. An Auckland thing. There are a lot of people up here.
Anyway, Goat Island is a marine reserve so you can see giant fish swimming by and lots of other sea life. It is big on the tourist map so there were lots of people snorkeling and getting aboard the glass bottomed boat to check out the sea life. Jonty hired a wetsuit and put on his goggles and floated about. Nic got in the water and spent a lot of time rock hopping. Overall it was a really enjoyable relaxing day. Nic and Anna looking for waves and splashing

I hope you all had a lovely Easter Sunday.