Flying Fox!

There was a flying fox a short walk from my brother's house, where we were staying. How cool is that?

The first few times we gave Dom a shorter ride, running along holding him like so:

Then we finally were inspired to bravery by my sister and her 2 year-old, and I went on with Dom. He loved it.

I did too. I was a little scared the first time - in fact I find a lot of kids' playgrounds intimidating in one way or another - but as soon as I was off the platform it was all kinds of fun!

Gingerbread

Before we went down south for our Christmas holiday, I made a batch of gingerbread. It is almost as fun to bake as it is to eat. Dominic is a fan of gingerbread (especially if it has mini M&Ms stuck on it) and so were his cousins as it turns out.

Conclusion: gingerbread is very popular with kids. Good to know if you're a witch wanting to build a house to entice small children, not such good news if you're a gingerbread man or woman, wishing to pursue a career in early childhood education.

Plate of finished cookies. The cars and dinosaurs were done by me with cookie cutters. The Santa head and UFO were sculpted freehand by Matt.

 

Delicious Christmas trees. Gingerbread + icing + green sugar crystals + mini M&Ms = yummy.

The Santa head before it went into the oven. I like the fact that it reminds me of Captain Caveman (if he ever dressed up as Santa).

Sadly, he was too delicious to survive long out of the oven and did not make it to see Christmas day.

Botanical Gardens

This is one of a set of new busts on plinths outside the Arts Centre in Christchurch. Mostly blokes, it does include Margaret Mahy (complete with skull and crossbones earings) and a couple of other women. Dom's favourite was this dude with glasses, which were great for grabbing.

Inside the Bot Gs, swinging Dominic up into the air.

This sculpture in a fountain was awesome! Pull the handle and water squirts out from two different places, making parts of the sculpture rotate. Dom loved it.

He also likes the smell of roses, though he had little time to stop on his tour of the gardens :-)

Returned from holiday!

We are back in Kapiti after a fantastic trip south to Christchurch. We had an action packed 6 days with family and despite eating ridiculous quantities of sugary treats, delicious Chinese food, BBQ and pizza I am less than 2kgs heavier than when we left :-) That will take two weeks of hard work to shift but, all things considered, it could have been much worse! Running around parks, playing on the flying fox and going for lots of walks certainly seems to have helped.

Central Wellington from a plane. Dom didn't like the delay we had on the tarmac waiting for baggage to be loaded onto the plane. He was perfectly happy for the first 15 minutes of sitting in the plane not moving, but it started to get a little old after that. Once we took off he found the experience quite exciting :-)

Christchurch Botanical Gardens has a cool fountain, with sinister-looking water-squirting fish.

Next to the fountain was the much more exciting feature of a mother duck and 4 or 5 ducklings.

They were very calm and tame, quite happy to mooch about swimming or looking for food as we walked past.

Lots more photos to come!

Scheduled post - Matt Predicts

It is Christmas Eve as I write this, but I'm setting it to publish on the 28th. Thus, predictions:

- The Xmas bbq was delicious, but there was too much food. I ate until my tummy hurt. It was worth it.

- 3 boys whose total age is under 9 can make a lot of noise, and a lot of mess.

- It's lovely to see family and catch up.

- I have taken in excess of 1,000 photos already in the last 5 days.

- I got sunburnt. On the back of my neck.

- In China a giant, irradiated moth attacked a nuclear power station, trying to suck out its irradiated goodness. The moth was defeated by the combined forces of a giant lizard and a robot. On-the-spot witnesses are now trying to compile a narrative structure from cell-phone footage, to be released in cinemas next month.

Matador blog

I have started up a blog for Matador Games - on the off chance anyone wants to contact us and offer us huge sums of money for the designs for Dig, Mob and Cow :-)

It's here: http://matadorcardgames.blogspot.com/

Merry Chirstmas

To one and all. And Merry Chistrmas, Merry Cihrstasm and My Racer's Mirths, March Misers Try, March Retry Miss and Charms Tyre Rims.

Debbie and I are looking forward to spending time with family and not being responsible for much of anything except our own (and Dom's) happiness :-)

Li'l lake

Moar amnimals!

Zoo photos!

The highly photogenic otters

Sun bear out in the sun

The log was getting a good gnawing

One of Dom's favourite animals - a very friendly wooden hippo!

Holiday fun

Zoo = visited 256 photos = taken Update soon :-)

Going to the zoo, zoo, zoo!

We had a beautiful day at the zoo. Matt has put up some of the photos (we took a lot - the animals were cute and frolicksome as was the Dom). Here are some more pics:

Checking out the Canadian Geese with his dad.

One of the giraffes gives itself a head rub.

The Wild African Dogs were interested in us...

...but left disappointed when they discovered it was only an apple that Dom was chewing on.

Lemurs know how to sunbathe with maximum basking.

Dom enjoys the playground area outside 'The Nest'.

Someone was offended when we made too many 'a dingo stole my baby' jokes.

Dom's favourite today was the Serval. While the servals have tended to nap through most of our previous visits, today this one was doing laps around the cage. Dom was giggling away as he watched the awesome serval on the move. It is a very graceful and beautiful big kitty when it is roaming around.

Despite the surprised expression on the Sun bear's face, it didn't actually sit down on a pine cone, just next to one.

The other Sun bear shows of its manicurificent claws.

The Red Panda was attempting to bust out when we arrived.

'Almost there...'

Then the Red Panda realized we were watching and abandoned its escape plan... for now at least.

Dino-muffins!

 Woo-hoo! My new dinosaur muffin tin worked out. We now have dino-shaped muffins (which more than meet Dominic's approval). I can now say Dominic ate a T-Rex for lunch!

Banana Choc Chip Dino-muffins!

Om nom nom. T-Rex. Delicious.