Edinburgh Royal Military Tattoo - on Tour

The Edinburgh Royal Military Tattoo came to Wellington so we took the girls off to see the bagpipes!  There were a lot of local pipe bands, marching drill teams, highland dancers, Kapa Haka and of course Military bands.  Joined by the Royal Scots Dragoon guards and the Royal Dragoon Guards, UK military bands and Scottish regiments, Shetland Fiddlers, Norwegian King's guards, and the Top Secret Drum Corps.  All set to a backdrop of a replica Edinburgh Castle.  The girls loved the NZ Army Band - quite comical!  The top secret drummers were spectacular, as were the marching drill team and the Norwegian King's Guards.
Special guest was LTGEN Tim Keating - NZ Chief of Defence Force.

Hot Hot Hot

Its been a rather very hot dry summer lately and Upper Hutt has had a few scrub fires (deliberately started) and we lost the Silverstream MacDonald's due to overheated refrigeration unit in the roof.

Maidstone Park scrub fire

Barque

A Navy training sailing vessel "Guaya" from Ecuador visited wellington this week, 7 months into its 10 month round the word voyage.  It was only in for a few days but we managed to get on-board for a look see and chat to some of the crew.

The girls were impressed as Ecuador's Navy is way bigger than NZ's with Submarines and battleships!  Cool!

This is a cool picture of it as it arrived in Wellington, from the "Dom Post" article

Girls on Tour

Road trip with the girls to New Plymouth in mid January - a chance to see friends in New Plymouth and have some girl time.

We stopped at Foxton and went up the windmill - that brought back lots of memories of Holland as a kid, then we had Poffertjes from the dutch cafe.  What a treat, the girls loved that.

From there we carried on to Hawera to a Tawhiti museum recommended by a knit friend, it was a great little museum and we would recommend to all.

An amazing collection of tractors, lawn mowers and army vehicles

A scary Kiwi DIY hedge trimmer - looked lethal!

Whalers and Traders

From there, we went on to New Plymouth via the Surf Highway and went to the gardens to see the Light Festival.  It was lovely, especially the waterfall.









One wet day then a few more days in the sun sightseeing.

The Mountain

Private Zoo with lions and a great view of the mountain

The park by dayligh

Len Lye's wind wand, the Len Lye center was great too.

Stone carving

Aslan the lion

shame the mountain was hiding that day!

flax and beach view

New Year at Ngawi

This year we shared New year with friends at Ngawi, a gorgeous clear evening, good company, lots of drink and a few fireworks!

Sunset over the South Island

Sunset

Christmas in Taupo

As a break from the normal, we decided to spend Christmas away camping.  I know the weather is normally terrible over Christmas, but we managed to pick the best year ever with wall to wall sunshine for almost all 10 days,   The Campsite also had a new pool open while we were there, so lots of chilling out at the pool.  We had expected a very busy campsite, but it was dead until after boxing day - bonus!

Geothermal Roman Foot Spa - at the Prawn farm

There is always one!

The new pool

Prawn Fishing

The catch all cooked up.

Christmas eve Santa Visit

The old pool with the new pool behind.

The two lambs