They’ve arrived! The picture I really wish I had was of the kids running up to them at the airport and giving them big hugs. Skype seems to have done its job–the kids had no question as to who their grandparents are.

No rest for the weary–we fed the Grands some lunch and trotted them out to the botanical gardens a public art display–Tangle. Here are the kids in strikingly similar skeptical poses, wondering what this whole “tangle” thing is going to be about and if they’re going to like it.

Crazy, eh? The idea is they give each kid a ball of stretchy yarn and let them loose to wind it around the poles or themselves or whatever. At the end of each day the mess all gets shoved up to join the rest of the canopy, and the stage is set for new messy play. The only trouble is the poles weren’t up to the job of holding all that tension, and later that afternoon a few actually fell down, with several day’s tangled string on top of the kids. Not good, but since law suits about such things aren’t done in NZ, it was no big deal to the organizers.

Our kiddos were tentative at first, but eventually got into the rhythm.  We left before it all fell down.

Here’s Abi taking a snooze–jet lag lasted a couple days, but they did amazingly well.

Here’s Omi trying to take a snooze, but the kids aren’t cooperating with that plan.

One afternoon this week we went up to Victoria Park, on the Port Hills overlooking the city centre. The big slide is always a hit.

“Omi, you can’t get me!” We’ll see about that, Mr. Milo. Omi’s still pretty quick at a game of chase.

Abi even tried out the playground gear. They’ve been right into kid zone these last few days–Abi is building lego with Milo, Naomi is getting books on Omi’s lap, and they’ve both shown off their tricks at the skate park. The kids are eating up all the extra attention!