Vancouver 2

The walk from our hotel to the Vancouver Aquarium was amazing. We strolled through the center of the city to the waterfront and made our way around the front to Stanley Park. On our way through the park we met a curious squirrel. Fortunately the weather was kind to us and we had beautiful sky by lunch.

Vancouver

After a very long journey watching movies, playing games and eating dodgy plane food we arrived nearly 24 hours later in Vancouver. We woke bright and early fully charged to explore this stunning city.

Xmas dinner

Here we go! The holiday blogging will be brief and to the point. Tamsin and Mark kindly offered to cook dinner and tea on the eve of our journey. They bought the boys a gingerbread house and a game to keep them occupied. We watched Gremlins as our Xmas movie, not the best choice - a little violent but it did have plenty of Xmas lights etc. We had a great time, now time to pack!

Christmas Portraits

Tried to get some Xmas photos for cards. Tried in lots of places but ended up taking shots with decent camera. I will try to update blog with photos of our epic holiday as regularly as I can, can't believe we are going to Vancouver. It was our original inspiration to emigrate so it will be very interesting to see how we all feel.

Life Saving

The boys are being pushed to the limit with lots of Baywatch running and 200m sea water swims! They are constantly moving and it's very serious. Fran loves it and is signing up as a coach, lucky boys!

Orewa - Fireworks night

On fireworks night we headed up to Orewa to meet with our friends Duncan and Katrina.  Firstly we enjoyed the fire brigade show which had an exploding car, hence Oli's hilarious reaction.  It was extremely hot and we had to move in the end, scary stuff. There was also a demo with a kitchen and putting water on the burning pan, this created a long discussion with Alex. There was a fair to explore but in the end fish and chips was too much of a temptation.  Snapper is lovely.   On our way back home we stopped to watch the big fire work display and it didn't disappoint.  Tom and Alex loved it, Oli fell asleep as it was gone nine o'clock. He is always asleep by that time, wonder if he will stay awake for disney fireworks, surely? 

Clip and Climb

We bought a daily do deal for half price which is the 'rage' in NZ at the moment.  There are lots of companies doing daily deals and its fantastic as it encourages you to give something a go i.e. tree adventures and clip and climb.  To be honest, I wasn't looking forward to it as I imagined that it was a couple of climbing walls and nothing else.  I couldn't be more wrong.  It was amazing.  They have an ingenious idea of an automatic support rope which means they don't need an adult to help them climb, they are free to roam.
The climbs are really varied in difficulty and style, which means they could climb some.  Their favourites were the dark tower (in a tower which was completely dark), a ladder where they jumped off and jumping from one cylinder to another which goes higher.

We ran out of time, which is always a good sign of enjoying yourself, so we will be back!