Beautiful flower girl

Kaia's dress was made by Esmé's very clever sister Ashleigh.

 

Flower Girl!

Uncle Ben and Esmé were married on 20 February 2010 on Matapouri Bay beach and Kaia had the honour of being their flower girl.

The bridal party

Kaia decided to run towards the water but luckily this stranger told her that she'd better stay close to the others!

Back on track..well first a quick chat with Ché

A  few last minute instructions from  the beautiful bride..

She was a bit shy at first, heading into a crowd of mainly strangers but the crowd cheered as she threw the first lot of petals so that spurred her on!

"New Dister"!

Finn Moana Stevens arrived on 19 January 2010. Ché especially was excited to be a big brother frequently saying "My new dister" and "She woves me"  and "I'm a big brother now" and asking for cuddles.

Xmas

December the 25th dawned and Kaia came into our room around half six, snuggled into bed and fell asleep  (this was a rare occurrence indeed). Ché awoke closer to seven and went into the lounge, with Dale, excitedly saying something about Santa and presents. Kaia immediately opened her eyes and bolted into the lounge to discover that Santa had indeed filled their stockings,drank his milk and eaten his biscuit. Even the reindeer had munched some of their carrots! How exciting :)

 

Ché with his beloved Spiderman mask

Kaia on a whoppie cushion

Ché with his big present from Mummy and Daddy

 

 

The bargin $10 cot Mummy bought, sanded, painted and made the bedding for

 

 

 

Whanau skating

The next morning we all went skating;

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

ta daaaaa

Kid Bowling!

Ben & Esmé (and Grandma) came down to Hamilton to celebrate an early xmas on 5th December and the weather was nice enough for some waterslide fun;

 

 

 

 

Butterfly House

Today we went on a playcentre trip to the Butterfly House and Orchid Garden in Thames. Kaia had the day off kindy and was given "Adventure Bear" and the kindy camera to get some pics of their adventure. These are the shots from our camera (hopefully kindy will add the other pics onto their blog..).

 

Kaia enjoyed holding the butterfly - another of the adults passed it to her to hold, then we put it on Adventure Bear. It then started to fly away but turned and landed on Kaia's chest, which she was quite excited about (think Dale got some video footage of that...).

 

 

This butterfly had beautiful bright blue coloured wings but of course when it landed to drink the banana liquid it folded them up, and it was too fluttery to get a good shot when in mid air!

 

 

 

 It was a tropical garden, so very warm in there which initially fogged up the camera lenses, but we then found they had a little wall  mounted heater specifically designed to heat up camera lenses to prevent them from fogging - I thought that was pretty neat! Ché got a bit sweaty from the humidity and had to strip off his Superman top and cape (which he chose to wear that day) so was running around in his singlet and training pants (shorts had to come off too)! It was a lovely day :)