Gogo and Gramps got Adam a radio controlled car and Grace and Eli motorised technics lego (Cada deTech) which they finished building….which meant it was time to put it to the test with some serious racing (and laughing so much that people just about wet themselves)

There is a little beautifully maintained park, with a seesaw and our kids were having fun on it.

I loved the pure joy at bouncing off the seat.

As so often happens, we didn’t exit well, but we’re working on it and we’ve definitely gotten better at exiting over the past year.

Grace, Eli and Adam organised Christmas carols for us….and I think this may be the start of a new tradition.

For story time we did an improv version of the nativity, including the birthing of a teddy bear baby Jesus. I think next year will be the three siblings turn to put on the nativity.

Making charity stuffed bears with granny

Attack of the stuffed bear!

This is Grace being a silly windsock man

And Grace being what she calls, “I am too fancy to look at you”

Holiday time again and we travelled safely to JBay.

One of our stops is at Timberlake outside of Wilderness where they have a funky little zipline on the jungle gym. They’ve installed a new stopping mechanism….

There has been lots of practicing and preparation, but tonight it arrived and both Eli and Grace performed excellently in the school concert.

Grace has been practicing over and over again with Melano and because they have mostly practiced at school it was quite a surprise to hear how good it all sounded together.

We’ve been practicing with Eli and helping him get all the words and directions committed to memory and he has been working on his delivery and his card tricks all went perfectly.

We took Eli (and the siblings) to The Ropeyard for his birthday.

Decked out and ready to go

Mr super cute

First steps

Ads did the green course and Eli and Grace did the blue course…which was slightly higher than Grace was comfortable with.

Grace struggled a bit with some of the bits. She was excited before, but when she got up there she really started to struggle a bit. Even with the challenges she made it through with her summary, “Terrible but awesome.”

Eli just got on with it and had loads of fun.

And little Ads had a blast on his course and going down the zipline over and over.

The kids rode in the Fedhealth MTB last year and had loads of fun, and this year Adam got to join in too. 500m for Adam, 5km for Grace and Eli, and happy faces all around.

The next day was my first MTB race – a 28km half marathon and my goal was top 100.

I managed to just make top 100 in the mens, with 20 in the veterans and 111 overall.

Also kept the heart rate up….

I really did enjoy it and am looking forward to my next race.

On a whim (and with beautiful weather) we headed out to Betty’s Bay to visit the botanical gardens.

It is a really beautiful reserve with two lovely gorges running through it and coming together.

Some bridges have been damaged by some bad fires that happened a few years ago.

But this crazy family had a beautiful and peaceful day hiking around.

And we ended with a short trip to the beach while waiting for our Ooskus fish and chips to be ready

Back home, which means bicycles in the street and fun riding through some water after the rain