marc.vic.max.elliot

So It’s two weeks later and not a lot has happened.  My brother and his wife went back to the UK (boo!) and my Mum has just got back from 10 days in Thailand.  The highlight of her trip? Riding an elephant! I am so jealous….

As for us it’s just life as usual with no great stories to tell.  I eventually got around to updating my brother’s tattoo website after a year or so of promising. We have also been given a photo of Elliot that was taken at Freddy’s party mentioned in the last entry.

So cute!  Elliot the rocker

Great weekend last weekend!

Saturday morning found Max and I at the airport awaiting the arrival of my brother and his wife from the UK. They haven’t been home for two and a half years – Max had just had his first birthday and Elliot wasn’t even conceived. Naturally of course this wasn’t going to be as simple as it should be and just after we had pulled into the car park Jason called from Auckland to say that their flight to Auckland was over two hours late and they didn’t make the connecting flight to Wellington. Unfortunately the next flight they could get on was three hours later! Luckily Max loves the airport and his Granddad had just turned up as well so we thought we’d look at the planes and have a drink.

The thing about this visit is that one of the reasons for them coming home was to celebrate my Mum’s 60th birthday on Sunday. Mum had no idea that they were coming back and Jason had even created a fake itinerary to put her off the trail. After Jason and Max had become acquainted again (and that went extremely well) it was off to my Mum’s place to surprise her The look on my Mum’s face when Jason and Selena walked in was absolutely priceless – just as well I got in on video

For my Mum’s birthday on the Sunday we went out for brunch so she could spend time with the boys and then had dinner in the evening for the adults. The evening ended with Mum and friends slamming “Quick f*cks” and champagne

Happy Birthday Mum!

Here’s an email I got at work the other day

Hi Marc

CONGRATULATIONS!  You are the winner of the company DELL U2 Sales Promotion.  We would be delighted if you would join us at the U2 concert at Telstra Stadium Sydney on Saturday 11 November 2006.

We are delighted to arrange your accommodation and return airfares from New Zealand upon acceptance of this invitation.  We will ensure that you travel to and from the concert in style and are accommodated at a well appointed hotel in Sydney’s CBD.

I sincerely hope that you can join the company / DELL team in celebrating the success of the sales promotion at the concert.  Please contact me via return email so we can arrange your itinerary.  Once your itinerary is confirmed I will send out an agenda for the afternoon/evening. 

Trusting you can make it!  I look forward to seeing you there.

Again…congratulations!

Regards.

Danielle

DANIELLE WATSON

Partner Marketing Manager ANZ

company Australia Pty Ltd

Sweeeet

Who knew that kids could fit so much puke and shit in them!

The last three days have seen both our boys the sickest I’ve ever seen them 🙁 They are slowly on the improve but it’s taking a while.

Monday night Vic and I went up to bed about 10:30 and as we usually do we checked in on the boys.  We walked into Elliot’s room to find that he’d vomited a small amount over the side of his cot and onto the floor.  I picked him up out of his cot and took him into the bathroom while Vic started to clean up.  Almost as soon as I got him into the bathroom he proceeded to bring up almost every scrap of food he’d eaten in the last day or so all over my neck, sweatshirt, jeans and feet in about four massive heaves!  The bizarre thing is that I was standing there being puked on (he takes after his Mum – long story ) and all I was thinking was “I really hope he’s going to be alright”.  The next two hours were spent bathing him to get the vomit out his hair, redressing him, redressing him again after he exploded from his nappy through his pyjamas, sleeping bag and my jeans.  He puked a few more times and we finally got him settled back into his cot about 12:30 and staggered into bed.

For two hours.  Then we went through a similar process with Max vomiting from 02:30 to about 03:30.

Elliot exploded again about 5:00 so then we decided to just get up!  Max then started with the explosive diarrhoea….. yay!

Tuesday was spent with Max sleeping most of the time (except when he was sprinting to the toilet – and making it 3 out of four times) and Elliot throwing up anything that entered his mouth almost instantly.  The strange thing is that they haven’t had a temperature and besides feeling tired haven’t seemed particularly “ill”

Since then they’ve both eaten small amounts of food, drunk quite a bit of water and slept a lot – except at night of course where the average number of times getting up is about three.

It seems that there is a rotavirus going around at the moment that really wipes them out for a while but hopefully they’re on the improve……

Ahh the joys of parenthood

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So, an update at last

In April Vic and I spent the weekend away in a place called Martinborough which is about an hours drive north of here and spent some time with adults doing adult type things.

Last weekend we went to the same place with most of the same people and had a fantastic time (again!) This time we stayed at a homestay called Todds Cottage (visit the site!). The weekend was full of great food, good drink and fun activities. After dropping Elliot off at my Mum’s place (Ali and Clay had Max) on Friday night we drove up and after a few drinks at the local had a lovely meal back at the cottage cooked by Ian and Ngahuia. Saturday was the activity day and so we split by gender and while the girls went off to be pampered at Turret House the boys spent two hours quad biking on the hills and in the rivers around Martinborough. It was one of the most fun things I have done and I found out that my quad bike topped out at 73kph on grass

Saturday night was a night out and the restaurant of choice this time The French Bistro. The restaurant has rated really well and even has positive comments from the likes of the New York Times food critic. With such a build up it was a shame that most us thought it was crap! Rubbish service was matched by mediocre food – I had whatever is French for Steak and chips – the steak was nice but served with shoestring fries that could have come from McDonalds and 5, yes 5, green beans. And that cost me 30 bucks….. Ah well at least we had plenty to drink

All in all a great weekend!

So we made it back from holiday in one piece!  I must admit though that on a few occasions we could have easily been a child down……. New Zealand’s a big place to hide the wee body of a stroppy kid I tell ya

So in chronological order:

The first day was spent travelling from Wellington to Napier along State Highway 2 which is usually a 4 hour trip.  Now before my overseas friends get carried away with the term ”State Highway 2” you should remember that this is New Zealand and that our second most important road is for the most part a wiggly little road with a lane each way and nowhere near enough passing lanes. 314km (195 miles) really does take 4:00 to 4:30 under normal circumstances!  Of course travelling with a 3 year old and an 18 month old is hardly normal circumstances so a large part of the day was spent stopping in rest areas to eat/stretch legs/get Max to pee which was actually a very relaxing way to travel.  Time frames were not important so we got to see little places that we wouldn’t normally.  This trip would have been slightly shorter if we hadn’t needed to leave home three times! And after all that I went on holiday at the tail end of winter without a jacket of any sort – useless! 

When we got to Napier we checked into our accommodation at Kennedy Park (great place for kids – even if just for the Jumping Pillow!) and settled in for the evening.  Putting the kids to bed is when it all got interesting though…….. For Elliot there were three things that were new – 1) He was in his travel cot 2) He was in a new room and 3) he was sharing with Max for the first time.  After 30 minutes of him going mental we walked back in to have Max, who had been silent up to this point even with Elliot screaming (and boy can he scream), sit up and say “Mummy, I’ve been a good boy but Elliot won’t stop crying and I think I might cry too” – bless him.  We moved Max into our bed and he dropped straight off and once Elliot had gone to sleep (about 10 minutes later) we transferred Max back into the room with Elliot.

The next day was to be spent in Napier and in the morning we went to Marineland to see the dolphin (singular as the other one died a while back), the sea lions and the penguins.  The show itself was pretty mediocre as there was only one dolphin and she’s 36 but the big male sea lion was quite funny with his barking and clapping and we were there for feeding time which was all a bit of a laugh.  Max also had his picture taken with a little blue penguin which scared the hell out of him for some reason so I had it on my lap and Max sat next to me and stroked it.  After lunch it was off to the National Aquarium of New Zealand for more sea life and again we planned it for feeding time.  This time though it was divers hand feeding massive rays and 6’ long sharks which was much more exciting That was pretty much the day done and the boys went to bed better than the previous night but it still took a while.

The next morning we packed up and went for a bit of a wander around Napier then it was in the car for the 2 hour drive to Taupo.  The boys both slept for most of this leg which was nice Once there we had lunch, visited Huka Falls and wandered around town until we could check into our motel.  Once that was done it was off to the geothermally heated AC Baths for a dip in their very warm waters with the kids.  Neither of them are hugely comfortable in the water (which we need to sort out) but seemed to enjoy themselves none the less.  That night the boys were both so knackered that we put them to bed about a foot from each other and they basically crashed – yay!

The Saturday was the highlight for Max I think with the 6-7 hour trip home broken by a trip up to the snow (first time) at the Whakapapa skifield.  The weather was atrocious driving up the mountain but it stopped raining just after we pulled into the carpark and after meeting up with Vic’s sister Ali, her boyfriend and some other people we spent 45 minutes playing silly buggers in the snow Max absolutely loved the snow but Elliot, unstable as he is on his feet, was a little unsure and basically stood there giggling at everything that was going on around him.  Before too long it was back in the car and a two hour leg to Fielding where we stopped in to see some friends for an hour or so then into the final two hour leg home.  Unfortunately due to severe rain the usual last 30 minutes of our trip took two hours!  There had been a major slip over State highway One (only slightly better than SH2 BTW) and the diversions were causing havoc.

Home at about 6pm, boys into bed and then Vic and I could sit down and catch our breath…… The trip was a mixture of extreme frustration, tiredness and absolute joy at watching the boys experience loads of new things.  The thing about the holiday though is that the great parts will remain in my memory a lot longer than the bad

There are some additional photos in this flickr album

I got back from Sydney last Thursday and was very glad to have no trips planned for about three weeks.  The “highlight” of going to Sydney was the fact that Michael Dell himself was in town and we had a Q&A session with him (and 350 of his closest friends).  It was interesting to see him in person as it’s never happened to me before and I guess when the boss of 70,000 people is in town then it’s something slightly special.

The other great thing is that as of yesterday I’m on two weeks holiday – much yayness and leaping about ensues……..  Vic pointed out a while back that I hadn’t taken any time off since Elliot was born (almost 18 months) and as my entitlement was creeping up towards 30 days I thought it was a good time to grab a break.

We don’t have a lot planned for the break though.  I, of course, have a to-do list of things to do around the house and tomorrow we’re off for 4 days visiting Napier and Taupo and hopefully giving the boys their first real experience of snow up the mountain.

I’ll be taking my camera with me and will hopefully have some snaps to share if a) I get the time and b) the weather permits.

See y’all soon