“Whatcha don’ this weekend? How about a beach day?” Sophie and I chatted Thursday, emails zinged back and forth Friday, and by Saturday we had a plan. Rapaki bay Saturday for a barbeque.  

Rapaki is in the Port Hills near Christchurch.  It has a “warm water seep”–too tepid to be classed as a genuine hot pool, but still geothermically heated water. It’s submerged at high tide, but we arrived near low tide, took over from the resident mallards, and enlarged the pool a bit. Naomi and I sat at the feeder pool a few feet up, warming our feet, while the boys did the hard labor below.

There’s a picture in an old photo book of me and my dad standing like this in the waves, staring at the camera, grinning. Naomi thought the waves were pretty funny too–especially when the cheeky water tickled her “bits.”

The silliness continues!

I didn’t realized how funny this picture looked until afterwards–Milo looks smug in the centre of an adoring crowd of girls. He’s in the middle of the girls alright, but they don’t hold any illusions as to his adorable nature. The play is always punctuated with “Stop MiiiiLoooh, STOP!” Or more often they skip the words and come running to a mommy for assistance. “You’ve got to use your words, girls–you can’t expect boys to understand body language.” It’s a parental pickle, really. I remember my own father advising me not to react to a tease, since the reaction is what the teaser wants, but as a kid I found that utterly impossible. And the girls do put up a really good noisy reaction to even slight provocation….

Chloe is Sophie and Ian’s oldest. A book is a beautiful thing–on the couch, waiting for the parade, or for a Saturday afternoon on the beach–you never need endure a dull moment.