goodbyes are hard to do

tonight we said goodbye to our dear Agar family. we have spent so much time with these delightful people and love them all so very much.

 

Agars fly back to Australia on Tuesday morning and tomorrow they have a farewell dinner in the city planned. Even with many competing offers they wanted to spend a laid back night at our house for Indian takeaways, wine, chocolate, tea and kids watching a movie.

After lots of screaming and running around and some quick grub the kids settled in to watch a movie. while we sipped our drinks, ate our delicious take away and talked.

Bill was setting up the timer to get a photo and I had to include this beauty. Nick was teasing Charlie and Millie about picking their noses (I think charlie was mostly the one picking his nose).

The whole clan.

close ups with Charlie distracted by funny Nick.

that is almost perfect! We have set a date for 3 years to see each other again. Let’s hope we can stick to it!

There were many tears shed (mostly me and Prue) upon saying goodbye. I honestly don’t know if I would have survived without Prue this year. She has really lived normal life with me – we vacationed with them and spend many afternoons with the kids playing in the reserve behind their house sipping tea and chatting, then feeding us dinner when Bill and Nick were working late. What a joy it has been to get to know them and thankfully we know we will see them in the future. We look forward to a family trip to Australia before our kids graduate High School and hopefully a ski trip in the US sooner. We love you Agars! 

a proper high tea

Linds invited me to join her for a *proper* (said in a kiwi accent) High Tea at Hotel deBrett. It was SUCH a fun way to spend our afternoon. Together, talking, no kids, sipping bubbles and eating savory mini sandwiches, sipping eat and eating mini brownies, tarts, scones and cream, mmmmm.

wanted a close up, but this will do!

I then jimmed the focus on this. love this gal and our time together.

the grub. I could eat a high tea every afternoon!

seriously! I could be the dowager duchess!

Extreme Edge again and again

this should have been posted awhile ago, but I forgot. I do want some of these photos up to remember all of our trips to Extreme Edge before we left. This place was awesome!

claire belaying back from the wall.

the video games draw them away sometimes. we don’t actually play them, but when they start wanting to touch the games more than climb we know they are tired.

charlie running up the ramp to get up.

so many cool walls to climb in here.

ellie going up.

the Kiwi wall. love it with the gumboots, L&P, buzzy bee, singlet, jandels, kiwi, marmite, etc.

the tetris wall is actually really hard. It takes a certain height and ability to get up and Ellie was EXTREMELY frustrated by this. She honestly tried until she was beyond fatigued and continued to keep trying even when the rope was kind of strangling her at one point. She was able to get higher than Charlie had gotten, but was unable to get past this certain spot (above where she is in the picture). When we finally told her that it was probably best to come down and try a different day she literally dropped her head and started sobbing. She was so defeated and disappointed. Bill and I were completely blown away from watching her on this wall and her response to having to throw in the towel to see just how much natural GRIT and determination this little girl has. Not sure how we will channel this drive in her in the years to come, but I hope we find something she is truly passionate about and let her go full force. She will definitely bring her ALL every time. We love you Ellie whether you climb this wall or not!

her trying her hardest to get up there. This is the spot where you need just a bit more height since there are not any grips or anything.

double seestor climbing. they like to go next to each other.

snack break.

ellie wanted to go on the adult walls so Bill and I started belaying them then.

charlie going up!

a great activity for our family! I hope we can start climbing in the future.

braiding machine

I am a braiding machine. each morning while the girls are eating I fix their hair. The ponytail is easiest and really cute right when it is done, but their fine hair falls out so quickly that within one hour they look like ragamuffins.

For school I usually do a half braid into ponytail. Yesterday I tried two braids and bill snapped a few pics. When we get back I am going to make a whole hair doing station/container with all my supplies!

Ellie sitting pretty still.

cute girl!

Claire when she was done.

if we had more than 2 girls my hands would be cramping up!

Charlie’s very kiwi outfit – sweats, long jersey with  superman on top. Bill said when we first came I would have NEVER allowed Charlie out of the house like this. Ha – now I just give it a side glance and think “oh well”.

Claire – a vision in purple climbing

quick park stop

Ellie climbing UP the fireman’s pole instead of down!

Ellie’s special E

Our dearest, sweetest, littlest Eleanore does things HER way most of the time. Writing is a perfect example of this. She doesn’t really care about writing certain letters – in fact – she likes to write her name by focusing only on her E. Not your normal E with three lines – her special E with a million lines.

she was even a bit upset that I was taking a picture of it, but I had to capture it.

notice the dotted out E for her to trace – she wants nothing to do with that sort of learning. oh well – she will eventually write an E.

I snapped these when she was done. Bill was trying to explain to her that the different lines make different letters – E, F, T, H, etc. She listened and then continued on her way. She is her own person!

We love you Eleanore with the special E. Don’t change one little bit!

1 year later

 

This picture was taken July 11, 2013 – a few days after we arrived in Auckland.

Lindsay had snapped this photo on her iphone and I have loved it.

After lunch at the Sky Tower, we went to One Tree Hill to try to retake this photo. It is never as easy as it seems and despite the kids being 1 year older they still didn’t seem to cooperate as I had hoped. Oh well – it is still fun to have the same shot!

June 21, 2014

or this option.

here is how it went down:

attempt 1 – wind was crazy up there yesterday.

who would have thought it would be this hard to duplicate?!?

Charlie is SOOOOOOOOOO over it.

we thought we had to have 1 shot that worked so we started going back to the car.

the poor guy we wrangled to do this was a champ. Ellie was still a bit difficult 1 year later.

these were our last shots and we had succeeded – sort of.

it is at times like these you don’t think much has really changed in 1 year!