Warm Christmas (and not just the wishes are warm!)

Making more mud castles

Summer in December.
As Buffalo and Syracuse have HEAPS of snow dumped on them and roads are shut down and people are shovelling tunnels through the snow to get out of their houses, we are entering the summer season down here in the land of the new (not old) zeal.

Of course the different season (the opposite one, in fact) from what we are used to in the northern hemisphere means that some of the traditions and events that surround Christmas time are different.  Can you friends in Boston, NY or NJ imagine going to a sing-a-long Christmas carols at the park and enjoying an ice cream cone at 7pm whilst sitting on the grass and waiting for the sun to set?  I didn't think so.  But that is what we did last weekend.  

Enjoying the music and treats!

Sometimes we don't want our photo taken.

Watching the St. Margaret's Band play/sing some Christmas carols

 With the summer season (almost) upon us, the days are longer as well, which also means less lighty kinds of Christmas decorations outside.  Last year we didn't make it out to see the certain neighbourhoods that typically light up their houses for Christmas, but we were told of 2 specific streets that we should drive to in order to see lighty-uppy decorations, so I think we will try to get there this year.  Very different than 2 Christmases ago when we were living in upstate NY with my parents, and we all piled into the car in the darkness of 6pm and drove around any street to see Christmas lights everywhere.

 Another difference is that Christmas break is also summer break and the end of the school year.  Yikes!  Duncan has finished Year 1 at primary school and will move to a different classroom and different teacher starting school again in Feb.  He has had a really good year with a great teacher, and he has learnt HEAPS!  We are so proud of him for all his hard work, and so thankful for his teacher who has patiently helped him settle in and has taught him so much.   At the last school assembly, Duncan received the Teacher's Award in his classroom for his persistence and hard working attitude.  So proud of the little dude!

Duncs and his award

And with the end of the school year and Christmas comes the "Variety Show" at the primary school and the "Christmas Show" and the preschool.  The boys have been practising with their classmates for several months, and we finally got to see the shows.  Good stuff.

You can tell by his expression he is excited.  For reals, yo.

So cute.

Ewan and his buddy dressed like wise men

Doing the actions and singing the songs

Ewan also received an award for "helping out the younger children" and he was very pleased to get his certificate and a little Christmas pressie from the preschool.  A very yummy thing about Ewan's program at his preschool is that all the families are invited to come and watch, then have a meal together, so everyone is asked to bring something to share.  Most of Ewan's classmates are from The Islands, and most of his teachers are from India, so we can be sure of having some taro and also some curry with naan bread.  Good stuff.

Ewan received his award

And straight away wanted to show his brother

.

And so for now, I shall sign off and let you know that we wish you a very merry Christmas and hope it is either a sunny beach day (in NZ and AZ and FL), a cozy white Christmas (in the rest of America), or a not-too-rainy Christmas day in Scotland!!  Happy Christmas!

We got free tickets to see Big Hero 6 at the cinema, which was a good movie with a couple of sad bits and a couple of scary bits (just the bad guys's face, really).  It was fun.

Call It What It Is

Zucchini (courgette) bread and brownies and a banana oatmeal cupcake.  All healthy stuff, right?!

This morning as I was making some banana bread, I was chuckling to myself about how the Kiwis call this same thing "banana cake" and how that is probably a more accurate term for this sweet 'bread'.  Even though I only add 1/2 the amount of sugar the recipe calls for, the banana bread is still pretty sweet.  And if you add chocolate chips (which I sometimes do), then isn't banana cake a more accurate term?

My banana bread/cake thoughts reminded me of buying an egg salad (or tuna salad) sandwich in Scotland.  Maybe in an effort to make it sound healthy, Americans call hard boiled eggs mixed with mayo (and maybe pickles) "egg salad", but in Scotland, they call it what it is: egg mayo.  No pretending that its really just eggs and mayonnaise!

So, I guess I can either pretend I'm eating healthy or call it what it is.

The Zucchini brownies from a "super healthy" website still had sugar and oil, so the veg was just added to a brownie recipe.  Oh well.  I added chocolate chips, too, to keep on the "pretend it's healthy when it really isn't" kick. 

Birthday Boy

Happy Happy 6th Birthday to Duncan!!

The Birthday Boy

I can't believe my baby is 6 years old now.  He is growing up and learning so much.  It has been fun to see him grow this past year and become more confident as he settled into new routines.
Duncan has been attending school for a full year now, since in NZ kids can start school on their 5th birthday, and he did.  Duncan did not go to Kindergarten (except for the days in Mrs. Newman's room back in B'ville.  Thanks, Mrs. Newman and Mumbles for that!!), so he had A LOT of adjusting to do in addition to the move across the ocean(s).  Maths and Reading are two of the big subjects that it has been fun to see him make progress in.  He can read!  And he loves it when we give him math problems (simple addition and subtraction).  Duncan also loves teaching his brother these new skills, so Ewan will have a different kind of start when he goes to Primary school in April.  But that is a subject for another day.

Duncan loves superheros, digging in the mud or sand, jumping on the trampoline, playing in the water and learning to swim.  He loves playing sports, reading books and watching movies.  He loves sweeties!  This boy has a definite sweet tooth and would eat sweeties for every meal, if he could.  Duncan enjoys playing with other kids his age and has a few go-to friends at school.  He says his little brother is his bestest friend and you can tell it's true by the way they play together.

I love Duncan's kind heart and concern for others.  Watching him give to others even when he doesn't have a lot for himself makes my heart want to burst!

For his birthday party this year, he invited all the boys in his classroom and a few of the other boys at school who were in his classroom when he first started school.  We had about 9 little kids at our house playing with balloons, Imaginext, trains and cars, and any other toy they could find!  We played Pass-The-Parcel, of course, and I didn't mess it up this time!  Yay me!  Duncan had fun, his friends had fun, and some of the parents hung out and had a nice time, too, so I'd say it was a success.

So, happy happy birthday, sweet boy.

Getting ready to blow out some candles

Hair and Feet

Flowers in front of our house

 More specifically, Long Hair and Bare Feet.

Two different topics, and two distinctly NZ things we've gotten (or are getting) used to.

First bare feet.  They're everywhere!  People go barefoot all the time in all places here.  The first time I noticed some kids in a grocery store with bare feet, I thought that was a bit different than Scotland and Americaland, but not too too odd, since they were kids.  But looking around, you will see that even grown ups go around barefoot sometimes.  In grocery stores.  In restaurants.  In church.  In the bank.  At the playground.  Anywhere!  This is the kind of culture shock that warms my heart!  I love going barefoot and it's OK to do.  Anywhere!  So much for that sign on American shops, "No Shirt, No Shoes, No Service," eh?!

Duncan and Ewan have taken to the barefoot thing quite quickly as well.  Duncan (along with 1/2 the kids in his Primary school or more) either wears his shoes to school and take them off straight away, or don't even wear shoes at all to school.  This is totally acceptable and no one bats an eye.  Ewan and Duncan both prefer going out and about barefooted.  I still insist they bring shoes with them in the car, sometimes, in case we decide to go somewhere that is rocky or if I think they'll get too cold going barefoot, but most of the time, the shoes stay in the car unneeded.  Duncan and Ewan are also part of Athletics, which is one night a week when kids compete against others their same age in races and some other track-and-field events.  Heaps of kids (including our two) don't wear shoes for that, either, and also when the schools did cross country events about a month ago, heaps of kids did not wear shoes for that.  Pretty impressive feet, I'd say!


Now about long hair.

Auckland is a culturally diverse place, so there are people from all different places with all different cultural norms and traditions.  There are a lot of 'Islanders' (people from The Pacific Islands) who live in Auckland and still have their own traditions, and one of those traditions happens to be that they do not cut little boys' hair until the kid's fifth birthday.  Now this can be confusing to an outsider who expects 4 year olds with flowing long hair to be girls.  Or to someone who may assume that a 3 year old with a long braid or pig tails is a little girl.  I am catching on, now, and I think I do better spotting the differences between the long haired little girls and boys (or at least don't put my foot in my mouth and call the boy a girl as often).  And if you were thinking you could count on the name to help you out, well, a lot of times it doesn't.  For example, if you hear someone call their long-haired child Sillilo or Tuca or Hohepa, you probably still wouldn't know if the kid was are boy or girl, right?!  In one instance, I was most convinced that this little 3 year old kid in Ewan's Athletics group was a girl.  The kid had nice long black hair, usually up in a pony tail and a super cute smile and both ears pierced.  I was ready to tell the mom that the girls line up on the other side of the line (since this kid was next to Ewan on the boy's side), but someone else stepped in and told the child.  Then I heard the dad (a BIG dude who you'd want on your side in a fight!) call the kid "son."  Oh, so it's a boy.  I still think he'd make a pretty cute girl, but he's a pretty cute little boy, as well.  And in another side note, one of my friends told me that in her culture, the little girls get their heads shaved every year until a certain age (I can't remember how old, but it was maybe about 4 or 5yrs old). 

I have other stories of bare footed people and long haired boys, but I think you get the idea!


And since I don't have any photos of people out in public with bare feet or little boys with long hair, you'll just have to enjoy a a couple of the boys.

A boy, a stick and a cow.  Need I say more?

Making a castle and moat in our back garden (bare feet, of course)

September Spring

 That's right.  Down here in the Southern Hemisphere, the season is SPRING!  (Well, maybe it isn't officially spring, yet, but the Kiwis just go with the "Hey, it's 1st September, that means it's spring!" kind of thinking, so we roll with it).

September for our house means more gardening and lawn care and getting ready to plant some vegetables.  It also means the October school holidays are coming soon, which is the end of Term 3 in the school system.  There are 4 terms per school year, so the school year ends and begins with the calendar year -- kinda makes it easy to keep track of, eh?!

Superman helping move some of the branches from our grapefruit(?) tree

Spitting out the watermelon seeds never gets old

He's a climber

See?!  SPRING!!  I love this tree right outside the playroom window

Sure wish we had Mumble's rototiller!!

Since I drive Ewan to his preschool every morning, I've  gotten more used to the differences of driving here, versus Scotland and Americaland, so here are some of my observations and thoughts:

- I miss the craziness of being able to park on either side of the road facing either direction like we got to do in Scotland.  That was cool.

- We drive on the left-hand side of the road here, which is the same as Scotland, and Japan, but opposite of Americaland.

- When making a right turn at a traffic light (remember that would be across oncoming traffic), cars wait patiently on the stop line until there are no cars coming the other direction, then make their turn.  Now maybe it's just Boston that is the super-duper opposite of that, but there, you pull up and out as far as you possibly can so that when there is just a tiny gap in oncoming cars, you can shoot through to make your turn and be on your way.  I kinda miss the Boston way, but I'm trying to be more patient and do it the Kiwi way.

- An interesting/annoying thing about traffic lights and green arrows for a left-hand turn is that sometimes there is a lane for left turn only (which goes along nicely with a left-turn green arrow), but a lot of times that left lane is for cars that are both turning left or going straight.  So, if you are in that lane waiting to turn left and the green arrow comes on for you, you might have to just sit there and watch it shine green and disappear, cause the car in front of you is waiting to go straight.  This is a good thing to realize before you start honking at that annoying car in front of you for not moving as soon as the green arrow appears.

- When merging onto a motorway, there are two lanes that become one after a traffic light (used during the rush hours) that turn pretty quickly through all 3 colours and signs saying that one vehicle per lane can go on the green light.  I think that's a great way to help the traffic merge a bit better and get two lanes of merging down to one, and merge that lane onto the highway.  (Is that confusing?)  Anyway, the motorway that I take everyday is not very crowded, ever, so the merge system works really well for it.

OK, enough thoughts on driving.  When you come to visit us, you can experience these first-hand! (By the way, I'm super excited about who's coming to see us next month!!!!)
Until next time, enjoy these spring pictures of ours.

One Year Anniversary

 


22 August was our 1 year anniversary of being in New Zealand!  Can you believe it?!  In some ways it feels like we've been here much longer, but in other ways it's hard to believe that it wasn't just 4 months ago that we stepped off the plane in Auckland.  Crazy thing about time, I guess.

So, in the past year we've all had a birthday (shocking, eh?), Duncan has started at Primary School, Ewan has started at Kindergarten, and I have started working at an after-school program for a couple hours a day.  Joe has done HEAPS of stuff, so I'll just mention two of the big things in his job.  The vicar (senior pastor) retired in June and  renovation work on the church building started, which has moved our Sunday morning gatherings to a local school for now.  Joe did a lot of work preparing for both of those big events as well as coordinating and making sure transitions went smoothly.  (And if you ask me, he did GREAT!)  We've also attended several birthdays, weddings and funerals for folks at St. Margartes and some of our neighbours.  And having been here a full year, we've experience all 4 seasons in Auckland and are quite pleased with the plentiful sunshine, heaps of rainbows, and lack of ice storms and such.  Although one of us still wears her long johns whilst the boys are in shorts, I think we are all getting used to weather and life in the land of new (not old) zeal.

So, I will share with you some of our new-found vocabulary that has become part of every-day talk for us.  I'm sure the combination of American-English, Scottish-English, Stevenson-English (haha!), and Kiwi-English can be confusing to some, but we have found the Kiwis to be very accepting of other words and just roll with the idea of whatever it is we're trying to say.

heaps!  = this is what we say in stead of "a lot" or "loads" now

cool as = (or any other word followed by "as") instead of just "cool" or "fast" or "heavy" or any other descriptive word you might want to say

ey. =  this is how you end your sentence instead of saying "right?" or "agree?" or "huh?" or just ending your sentence without any of those words.  A couple months into our stay here, Ewan said something like, "That was fun, huh, Daddy?  Oh wait! Wait!" and paused for a second before saying, "That was fun, ey, Daddy?  I just wanted to say 'ey.'"  Well done, little guy.

my shout  =  that means 'my treat'.  maybe that was a UK-ism, too, but i heard it first here. (thanks, Jolene!)

arvo = can you guess what that means?!  apparently it is a way to shorten the word 'afternoon.'  It doesn't make much sense to me, but everyone is very matter-of-fact about how obvious that is.  OK.  Kinda reminds me of our experience with Petit Filous in Scotland, but that's another story....

pakeha = white people.  actually Maori for "European Decent"

whanau = extended family.  also Maori and the "wh" makes the "f" sound

OK, that is enough language study for today, I think.  And now time for some recent photos.

Eating watermelon in the empty paddling pool

yummy

Enjoying our holiday

At the thermal pools

Working in the back garden

Deciding if it's too high to jump down...

On holiday!

 

 Thanks for checking in with us in our corner of the internet on the other side of the earth! (Unless you're in NZ, then we're on your side of the earth.)

Haka

The Haka is something we sort of know about from the All Blacks, and we hope to see the real deal both when we go to a Rugby Union Game (someday soon, I hope!), and by the Maori people (even if that happens to be at a show specifically for tourists) whilst we are here in New Zealand. 

Duncan and Ewan have seen the haka on youtube, so here is their impression of it.  (And just so you know, they remind each other that "sticking your tongue out is rude, unless you're doing the haka.")

And the grand finale' with the tongue coming out

Of course the grand finale' requires a close-up.

And if you haven't seen the haka, I suggest you go to the YouTubes and watch one!  It's pretty cool.