Winter Pool Party

The weather was very wintery when we got to the venue but it didn't matter - we were indoors!!
It was a great swimming pool having a shallow end for the little ones and long lanes for the older ones to swim around.





Everyone had a ball!

Devon:



Talia:



Oscar:



Harriet & Richard:



Corin:



Rory:



Luca:



Gus:







Ashley was there too!



Yap still got lots of hair :) :) :)



After a good couple of hours swimming we had some yummy snacks:



It started to rain so we moved the food inside - nice and warm for the kids :)







Time for THREE birthday cakes!



Gus with his tennis court cake:



Corin with his karate top cake:



And Rory with his sea & boat cake:



It was such a great venue as the kids entertained themselves and the adults had lots of space for catching up.

Siblings:



Happy grandparents :)



We were glad we made it to join this special day. Happy Birthday! to our three darling nephews xxx

Catching up

The English Roses arrived right after us and the Fenwick Roses came over for lunch to catch up with all their cousins. Our few weeks of get togethers begin!



Relaxing after lunch:



Can you guess what they are staring at?



Our kids are very lucky to have a big family on both sides. They have 5 Japanese cousins and 7 kiwi ones. Oliver and Luca are still in the process of learning all the kiwi cuzzies names. I hope they will get them all by the time we leave NZ.

Traveling downunder

Was - very very loooooong.

We have been lucky and have traveled in business class for our last trips to NZ.  This time all the flights we looked at were FULL and it was even hard to get seats in economy class.

We had to standby at Changi Airport till 20min prior to our flight and finally got the last 4 seats on the flight, and then run to the gate.

It was a night flight and of course we couldn't get the bassinet row so we had to take turns holding Ashley. And we missed the first available connecting flight in Sydney so that added extra hours to our journey...

Anyway almost 14 hours later we got to Auckland safely :) Let our holidays began!

Three kids, three gollies

I've been meaning to take photos of our kids all together with their special friends - the gollywogs. But you know it is so hard to get all of the kids to cooperate.

This is the best I could do this time:



Oliver is convinced the green golly is his, even though his one is the blue one...



They were all almost as little as the gollies when they were born. They are growing at an amazing rate!!

Baby shower

My lovely girl friends organised a surprise "welcome baby shower" for Ashley and I. They were very keen to put one on for me before we left to Japan to have Ashley but at that time everyone was away on holidays etc so had to be postponed till we got back.

The girls decorated the house with balloons and lots of pink things:





And the lovely afternoon tea:



And the cakes:



I dressed Ashley in a very girly summer dress for the occasion - Isn't she cute!?



It was such an relaxing afternoon. Lots of catching up to do and of course showing off my beautiful daughter was great fun!



Beautiful little girls joined us too:





Some close up photos - Naz and Ashley:





Olivia and Ashley:



With Su:



We went home with a buggy full of presents and balloons. We are so spoiled!! Thank you girls for a fabulous afternoon. See you when we come back :)

River safari

The Brunke family came over for their last family visit to Singapore (they are leaving Brunei in early August). The kids were so happy seeing each other again and got more excited when we arrived at the zoo! A large part of the River Safari is still not open but we were keen to see the pandas again and check out some of the new parts of the zoo.



Ready for a hot-fun day!



The first half was ok but not too exciting (to me anyway), there were lots of fish and turtles etc:



The crocodiles were cool to watch tho:





Took some time to convince Oliver it is not going to move!



Of course no problem for Luca to jump on:



We spent a good 20min or so watching all the giant fish before heading into the Panda forest:







Unfortunately one of the Pandas was inside the house so we only saw this one (we went in again in the afternoon and that time we could see both :)





Say PANDA!



We saw some monkeys hanging off the rail...



Very intense reading session...



Mina and Luca were getting along quite well by the time we came out of the panda exhibit. They are so cute to look at together.





Time to cross the river - weeeeeee!!!!!





On the other side exciting boat rides like this were still under construction so we didn't spend much time there. We started off watching the animal show.

I thought they could have put on a slightly better show, it was ok but nothing impressive :(











By the time we finished watching these animals the kids were getting tired. So we decided to order our taxi and head back home.

It was a shame we discovered there were more exhibits we could have spent time at on this side of the river. There is a squirrel monkey forest where you can get very close to the monkeys and the Amazon flooded forest where you can sit in the cool air-conned room and see the big manatees swim around. But as we already ordered our taxi we were sort of in a rush to get through...

I recommend you wait till all the parts are open to visit the River Safari but if you just want to see the Pandas like us, it is not crowded anymore.

It was certainly a good day out for the kids tho! They had a fantastic time together :)

We had only a few more hours of play time together when we got back to our apartment. They had a quick swim in the pool and had lots of fun.

It is always so hard to say goodbyes but we are sure we will be seeing each other sometime in the not far future.

Ashley saying good bye to the girls:





And to their parents:



Thanks Brunke family for coming to visit us. Good luck with all the moving and settling in back in Germany. We will miss you!