Piano Competition

For a long time Alister has been wanting a chance to win something - Claire gets quite a lot of oppurtunity with her dancing, but he hasn’t really had much of a chance.

So when Mum wanted to enter him into a “competitions society” music competition in Gisborne, we thought it would be a great idea.

He entered 3 categories in the under 10 years age group, a total of about 5 minutes playing time (and 2 days driving time). We had no idea what standard the other kids would be playing at - and some of them would be a year older than him…

The competition lasted several days, we watched quite a bit of the other stuff that was going on, and gradually over a period of several days…

…HE WON ALL 3 CATEGORIES. It was very exciting!

Rugby World Cup

Rugby World Cup, 2011 - Scotland vs Argentina.

There are a few games played in Wellington, just too good an opportunity to miss, so I took Alister to see a game. The other kids were quite unhappy about missing out, but it really was too late for them.

The stadium was about 3/4 full, and it was raining cats and dogs, but the atmosphere really was amazing - especially from the Argentinians (where did they all come from?). There was a Mexican wave running around the stadium in the first half, there were drums and whistles, and lots of singing.

The rugby got quite exciting for the last few minutes of the game too - Argentina won 13 - 12.

Snow

Snow? In Wellington?!

I don’t think it is that Wellington is too warm for snow, just that… It doesn’t happen, or at least if it does, we get a quick flurry that is gone before it even settles on the ground.

But today, it snowed for a couple of hours - even in the city (which is at sea level).

Very exciting.

Fishing

A beautiful day in the middle of winter, so we decided to go fishing dwon by Frank Kitts park, and ended up catching quite a few little fish really quickly.

Unfortunately, once we caught them they had to be dispatched, and all the kids watched really intently as the little fish went from alive to…. not alive.

Since then Billy has been very careful about where his food comes from, and “where are the eyes”, and “is meat really a cow”…

Day trip

Sonia brought Billy in to meet me for lunch today, they caught the train. When you’re three, that makes for a very exciting day.