Winter holidays
Whilst most of you will have spent the last few weeks in scorching heat, here it has been the coldest winter on record for some years, the upside of all this is that there has been loads of snow and a good skiing season.
Louise and Daniel had two weeks off school at the beginning of July and in the first week they went to Kiwi Sport at the local sports centre and had a go at loads of different sports - favourites were basketball, volleyball, hockey and tenpin bowling. There was also a kids festival on in Christchurch so we were able to go and see Peter Pan at the ballet and they had a go at fudge art.
Our skiing, well tow bar incident happened right in the middle of the school holidays.
The last weekend brought our first set of visitors. Some RM long termers will remember Caz? Well Caz and Dave and their kids Ella and Jake are spending a couple of years in Sydney. They had a week skiing in Queenstown and then came to us for the weekend. After Sydney, Christchurch was cold but we packed loads in – a wander round the city centre, a boat trip out to see the dolphins, dinner at the volcano café to celebrate Caz’s birthday and a tour round the Antarctic centre.
Louise and Daniel are now back at school. Daniel has moved up a class and they are both completely immersed. Mum says they are developing Kiwi accents. It was also grandpa’s 65 birthday last week and Mollie and Paul’s summer party – we wish we could have been there but did love catching up with cousins and the rest of the family on the webcam
We have had two winters back to back, the sun is beckoning so we have booked a holiday to Fiji for 10 days in early August. Who knows how long we’ll be in this part of the world so we’re making sure we see as much of it as we can.
Until our next instalment, enjoy the sunshine and keep in touch.
Mishaps on the slopes
Well … it was bound to happen at some point!
We had gone south and inland into Mackenzie country to Lake Tekapo for the weekend. The bright turquoise colour of the water is due to the rock flour created when the lake’s basin was gouged out by a glacier thousands of years ago. We were staying right on the waters edge and had planned to take a flight over Mount Cook and the glaciers of the west coast and hoped to make it up to the observatory at Mount John.
We woke up to a perfect morning, sun overhead and surrounded by snow covered mountains and so we decided to start with a morning of skiing up at Roundhill. Check out the pictures from the drive on the way up, we’ve resisted taking pictures of sheep so far but had to be done and the backdrop is amazing.
Lake Tekapo and RoundhillThis is where it all happened! We had just rented out our skies and lift passes and headed up the T-Bar for our first run. It was the first time we had taken the kids on this type of ski lift, as we went up I decided it was a bit steep for Daniel so we came off half way up – not the easiest thing to do and we weren’t very elegant about it! Ben and Louise carried on for a bit and the next we knew, Ben was on the back of a snowmobile coming down the hill. He shouted out that Louise was following and I assumed that he had gone further up, decided it was too steep and done the sensible thing and hitched a lift down – looking back I should have thought something was up at this stage, apart from anything else why wasn’t Louise just on the back? Daniel and I skied down and looked for Ben, it was at the point that a big red flag was out up requesting a doctor that I knew something was up. Louise arrived at the bottom of the slope a minute later with a kind lady who had helped her ski down (and had brought Ben’s skies down) – her face was scratched but she had done an amazing job to keep calm and ski down the hill. Ben was in the first aid hut receiving gas and air and having his elbow bandaged! It turned out that they too had tried to get off, Louise had fallen and Ben in making sure he didn’t injure her, mashed his own elbow as came off. An ambulance ride and a visit to Timaru hospital later, the doctor’s initially thought he had broken his elbow in 3 places, fortunately it looks like he may have got away without any broken bones, just massive bruising and two weeks on still limited mobility with his arm (although enough now to raise a glass of wine so it's not too tough!)
It hasn’t put any of us off skiing and we’ll try to get back to Tekapo whilst the winter is still with us so that we can do the other trips we planned.
As well as all this excitement, the kids have had two weeks off school for their winter holiday. We'll try and get the rest of our news and photos updated over the next few days.
