Finally, here are a few photos over the past few months .... for Christmas we headed South and spent Christmas with my parents. It was a 6 hour drive and Brandi handled it really well. It was the first time Brandi had been to their house. The children really enjoy staying at Gran & Grandads & there is always so much for them to do - climbing trees, riding the bike, pogo sticks, playing with a neighbouring cat (who seemed to think it would be nice to spend everyday with us while we were there), the go-cart, flying the kites, along with helping Gran pick fruit from the garden ... her 2 little helpers were Brandi & Renee.

Decorating the Christmas tree at Gran & Grandads place .... requiring great concentration on Brandi's part:


Courtney & Josh also decorating ....



Grandad with Renee & Brandi

After leaving Gran & Grandad's house, we headed north a couple of hours & stayed with friends. Here we are at Lake Waihola where all the children had been paddling/swimming. Josh even swam out to the pontoon you can see floating in the lake (with the help of his noodle - those long foam things you can also see in the photo)


Moeraki Boulders - very cool rocks that look like huge marbles. Josh loves to climb ...


And the girls exploring around the rocks...

Brandi - still smiling despite the wind!!


Brandi with her little cousin, Ashton (well actually they look the same size, so 'little cousin' probably isn't the right word, maybe I should say 'younger' cousin as he's about a year younger). He loves hugs!!


Renee getting a hug from Ashton too...
Brandi & Courtney with cousin Tayla
This photo was taken quite a while ago at my friends house, when we went to feed her lambs one day. When the lambs are young she puts little woollen coats on them to keep them warm. When Brandi first hopped in to feed them she thought it was great, so I whipped out my camera to take a photo of her with her big smile ... but by the time the camera was on & I took the photo, the look of joy had been replaced by a look of "Help, get me out of here!! These lambs are going to eat me!!". So after the photo I had to quickly rescue her!


After a long day, and a busy time of drawing Brandi fell asleep ... pen in hand, so I couldn't resist taking this photo ....