Happy Birthday Daddy! Jeremiah’s choice for his birthday dessert was peanut butter pie, his Mom’s recipe. I have to say that I enjoyed it more before I really looked closely at what’s in it. Butter, whipped cream, cream cheese, peanut butter, and sugar, with a little hydrogenated vegetable oils and chocolate thrown into the mix. Yikes, if I wasn’t worried about my mortality before, I should be now!

Today, Jeremiah’s actual birthday, was predicted to be wet and nasty, remnants of a tropical cyclone pummeling Christchurch. So yesterday we ventured out to a beach on the Banks Peninsula for a fun birthday excursion. Driving over the hills the clouds were building up on the northern side and we thought we’d be in for some early cyclone rain, but it turned out to be a fine beach day after all.

Jeremiah’s main reason for choosing a beach birthday was to test his new spear hunting gear. He caught the spear hunting bug during our recent trip to Stewart Island, and it took him about 2 months to gear up completely. Well, I’m sure not COMPLETELY, I’ve been married to a hunter long enough to know that even the best hunting kit is never complete, there’s always some new nifty lighter neater gadget to covet. Turns out the water at this beach was too cloudy for spear fishing, but at least he christened his wetsuit.

This is why I was amenable to a new hunting hobby. Kids + sand = happiness. Spearfishing must by necessity happen at a beach, and while not all beaches have sand this nice, some will.

This beach also sported cool lava rocks, smooth and warm on chilly bare feet.

Last year the tame little waves rolling in made Milo nervous, but this year he has gained more confidence and ventured out shin-deep on his own.

While Jeremiah was out spearfishing, Milo and I made him a flounder….in the eventuality that he didn’t get any fish in the water, we’d at least have one to present to him on land.

Our friends Ian and Sophie joined us with their three girls, and all the kids examined the crabs accidentally swept up in the flounder net with interested squeals.

These pincers and the speed with which the crabs disappear back down into the sand elicited tales of my youth at Cape Cod, and the search for the perfect water shoe to protect vulnerable toes from pinches. Lucky for these crabs, none were big enough to be worth the trouble to eat. Had Jeremiah been in the picture in those early Cape Cod days, I’m sure he would have managed to capture some keepers.

Naomi spent most of the day happily watching the goings-on from my arms, but when she’d had enough we plunked her into the stroller to take a beautiful snooze. Aw……