Updated Dancing Elf Family

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Merry Christmas!

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Happy Thanksgiving!

New Zealand Birds

From Paintings

Something very unique to our adopted country is its fauna. Or lack thereof. There are no native land mammals in this green and soggy land, which made for some avian anomalies as other species rushed to fill the niches that little critters would normally occupy.

That gives you birds like the Kiwi or the (now extinct) Moa and a whole bunch of really interesting and unique (and quite common) birds like the Kereru, Tui, and Pukeko.

Our family periodically paints together on little 5 inch by 5 inch canvases by picking a theme and doing our own individual interpretations.  The first time we did this was back in the States when we did variations on a picture of a coffee mug that Joanne picked out.  Just yesterday we did a "birds of New Zealand" session and came up with the pictures you see above.

The artists are (from left to right) Joanne, Haley, Steve, Zoe.

The top row are (from left to right) Morepork, Kiwi, Pukeko, Tui.

Wellington Santa Parade

Today we took the train into town for the Wellington Santa Parade. Tranz Metro was offering free fares for children coming into town for the parade-a nice surprise. We walked from the station the few blocks to the start of the parade route and found our spots with a few moments to spare. Nothing like enjoying a beautiful train ride instead of driving around hunting for parking.

After the parade we had a coffee and a cookie and lazed around Midland Park on Lambton Quay where the City Council has their Christmas tree on display. The girls chased the pigeons and I snapped some pictures of the girls, in their new Christmas sun dresses, with the tree for a potential Christmas card photo. We walked over to the library to pick up some books, and then strolled down to Cuba Mall to eat "meal" at our favorite noodle house (we frequently have a late lunch/early dinner on Sundays and just call it "meal". Perhaps "linner" is preferable? How about "dunch"?)

We popped into a couple more shoe stores (third weekend in a row)hoping to find Merrell shoes or another dual purpose trainer/hiker for the kids. No luck still and we've tried pretty much every shoe/athletic/outdoor apparel store in the area. We're having really weird luck trying to find quality children's shoes here. On the couple of occasions that we have found a workable shoe, they are out of stock of the girls' sizes. I guess I'll have to order those from home. Grrr..

The sun was out, the breeze was enjoyable for a change, and we meandered back to the train station, looking in store windows and enjoying the empty streets that just hours before were packed with people. I love that feeling of walking in a deserted city late on a Sunday afternoon.

Da Vinci Machines

Hail!

Wellington had some crazy hail yesterday!  I was standing in the window in a spot of afternoon sunlight one moment, and scraping ice off the windshield so that I could go pick up the girls from school the next.  Crazy!  The DomPost wrote about it here

Yes We Can! (and we did!)

Well??? Can you believe it? History just happened! Thoughts??

It's Finally Here!

Election Day! This is excruciating! How am I supposed to concentrate today? The anticipation is killing me! Let's hope this will all be over soon, and not a big dragged out mess.

How was your election day? Did you go to the polls or vote early? Was there tension in the air? Were people distracted and glued to CNN? I wanna know!

Birthday Party Sleepover

I've put captions on the pictures to explain what you're looking at. I chose to do that in lieu of a post, but I thought I should explain to folks who don't know that you can control the slideshow if you need more time to read the captions. Hover your mouse over the slideshow and a menu pops up so you can go back, forward, etc. I think if you click on it you may even have the option of enlarging it. Enjoy!