Chatting to some Playcenter moms (or Playcentre Mums, as they say here), someone asked about accommodations for the new baby. I had been thinking along the lines of a blanket-lined clothes basket to start out, but that must have seemed a bit roughish to them because one of the other moms generously offered the loan of their bassinet. I graciously accepted, having in my mind’s eye the plain woven basket my parents had as a bassinet for us. The clinking and clanking inside the hefty bag was the first hint that this bassinet was not to be such a simple affair. I pulled it out one evening to have a look and two college-educated adults spent the next 1.5 hours puzzling over its assembly, with Milo’s enthusiastic “help.” Not that there are lots of pieces either….. After 3 or 4 restarts we finally got it looking like a photo we found on the internet.

Milo was so anxious to try it out that we let him curl up in the top part just once. It’s really the silliest bit of frilly white laciness imaginable, but I’m ridiculously pleased with it.

Milo’s underwear and pants tend to be too big around the waist, making him prone to a plumber’s crack. I reached out and hiked up his undies as he walked past me this afternoon, and he spun around, finger raised in warning, head tilted to one side in consternation. “Mommy Naughty. Time Out!” He was in total seriousness, but I burst out laughing, then tried to explain that Mommies are allowed to pull up their kiddies’ underwear, it’s part of the job description. I guess it gives a little window into the 2-year-old psyche. He must figure that what I don’t like him doing is “naughty,” and merits punishment, so the same must apply to what he doesn’t like ME doing. I follow the logic…..

Returning from our annual vacations to Cape Cod, my Uncle Stewart and Aunt Cheryl used to adorn the hood of their minivan with seaside paraphernalia….generally stuff that was too bulky to fit inside the vehicle itself like driftwood, lobster traps, buoys, etc.  This bighorn sheep’s head, replete with sunken eyes and grisly wool, is quite a new dimension of hood ornaments. I guess it kinda makes sense….the SUV is an Isuzu Bighorn, that’s a bighorn sheep that someone shot (they’re wild in parts of NZ)…..but meeting it in the grocery store parking lot was still one of those “you’re not in Kansas anymore” moments.

A great view of the south island mountains from the air. Imagine being one of the first pioneers trying to cross this terrain without a map or an airplane….you wouldn’t see that the mountains are almost endless until you struggled to the top of one peak after another, only to see still more in the distance.

Feilding, a small town where we stopped on the drive, boasts the Feilding Saleyards.  Daily auctions for sheep, cattle and deer made this one of the biggest livestock exchanges in the southern hemisphere.

A few of us took a walk to a waterfall while we were waiting for people to arrive from four different cities around NZ.

We sat through about 90 minutes of business talk in the morning, then we were free to build our team by riding trails on mountain bikes.  The Old Coach Road is a 15km historic road that linked two railroads prior to a junction track being built.  It is now a biking/running track that DOC (Department of Conservation) maintains.

The track is overgrown now, but once upon a time a coach was able to pass.

The original bridge, which is now part of the cycle trail.

The new train bridge now does the job.

An engineers’ retreat can not be complete without some type of nerdy competition.  We were given a pound of spaghetti and a package of sticky tack (remember that blue tack stuff we had in grade school?  It’s still strangely popular here), and we had to construct a tower to hold an egg.  This one was our team’s attempt, it was leaning a bit…

Mt Ruapehu where we skied on Sunday is one of the mountains featured as Mt Doom in the Lord of the Rings. There are several ski fields on the volcano.  The volcano is active and still erupts from time to time….the last major eruption was in the 1990s, but it blew off a bit of steam as recently as 2007.

I stayed for an extra day with 7 other Christchurch colleages to take advantage of the ski mountain.  The weather was spectacular, skiing above the clouds all day, and no volcanic eruptions!

The ski lift ends quite short of the peak of the volcano.  I really wanted to peek over the edge and see into the volcano…

I saw a few people walking up, so why not me?

I put my skis on my back and “rocketed” up the slope.

Ahh, definitely worth the walk up.  A geothermal lake in the center and nice powdery snow to ski on the way down.  No volcanic rumbles or grumbles while I was there!

Christmas seems the traditional time for outdoor light shows, but since Christmas here is mid-summer and it’s not really dark until after 10 pm, Christchurch City Council puts on a mid-winter light show during a school break instead.  That’s right, even though the calendar says it’s July, it’s like a northern hemisphere January right now.  Milo expressed his deep appreciation for modern art (“Red! Purple! Blue! Green!” according to the light change) as he attempted to fill in the pond one pebble at a time.

Part of the even was a kids’ lantern parade. Lots of kids had made paper lanterns lit with a candle inside. Now, envision a few hundred kids waving burning lanterns overhead, attached with hooks to the ends of sticks, shuffling down a dark path for half a kilometer….it’s amazing that no one’s hair caught fire! The glowing moon was one of a few professional mascots that joined the parade.

To my great relief the parade finally ended, and we got a break from walking on people’s heals to watch a fire-juggling show. It was pretty impressive. I must be getting old when I wonder if the moms of fire-jugglers are proud of their lithe muscly sons tossing fire above their heads, or if they wish they’d gone into a tamer profession.

A couple girl friends and I have been planning a get-away weekend for a while now. But weather in the winter here can be a bit “dodgy” and at the last minute we decided to scrap our hut-hiking plans. One day of rain for one day of passable weather is alright, but two days of straight rain….what’s the point of that? Instead, Jen and I headed to Hamner Springs, the little resort village at the foothills of the southern Alps. The place is know for the….wait for it…. Springs! Hot springs, to be precise. Saturday the weather was beautiful, chilly but with blue skies, so instead of sitting around we hiked a short loop in the beautiful snow-fringed beech woods.

Milo likes pink skies and he’s enthralled by the moon, along with its changing phases and time of appearance. I must admit that I didn’t really miss him this first short weekend that we’ve been parted, but I still thought of him fondly and took a photo of the moon just for him.

We stayed at a YHA hostel Saturday night. Not fancy, but they had this endearing habit of keeping the wood stove well stoked. We spent a couple pleasant evening hours basking in the warmth and reading our books….I even shucked the long underwear.

I suppose the up side to a nasty cold is that I could hardly smell the sulfur in this hot pool. Hanmer springs are completely built up– no digging out a stream bed to find the natural hot spring here. But in the hottest pools the water is still piped directly from the underground source. The water is about 41 degrees C, around 106 F.

We used to have a pop-up book as kids that had one page of Japanese snow monkeys soaking in hot springs with snow dusting their heads, and I’ve always wanted to try that. After enjoying the snow falling in the air I still wonder how those monkeys ever get OUT of the water and dry off without the benefit of a heated (somewhat) changing room.

What do you think? Do we look like these Japanese snow monkeys?  Now guys, that’s actually just a RHETORICAL question!

What do you do while sitting in hot water for hours? Fool around with a water-proof camera, of course! Fish must think the above-water world is strangely proportioned indeed.

Jen is also American, and we had the exact same gleeful reaction when her large mocha came out–“Wow, that’s an AMERICAN sized coffee!” Needless-to-say, NZ portion sizes are significantly smaller than their American counterparts. If only the cost were also smaller….

Milo and Jeremiah had a good father-son weekend too. Sunday they went with two other families up to the port hills to the Sign of the Bellbird shelter, where Jeremiah impressed them by making a fire to cheer the chilly day.

This weekend was a “Westerly,” meaning the Southern Alps and the West Coast of NZ get torrents of rain. But as the front drops down from the mountains it becomes warm and dry, meaning the Canterbury plains get blustery sunny skies and unseasonable warmth, yet all weekend we can see the thick clouds hovering over the mountains…..and you’re just glad you aren’t up there!  Sometimes even the huts get blown off the mountains in a Westerly. We headed for Hinewai Preserve on the Banks Peninsula, just over the hill from Akaroa in the photo.

Hinewai preserve fills the valley from the summit to the ocean. We parked our car at the top, gave Milo a bit of scramble time on the boulders, then headed off down the trail to the end of the bay where we spent the night in a cute little red hut.

Most of the peninsula is now grazing land for sheep, but once upon a time it was all wooded “bushland.” Hinewai preserve encompasses some big native trees like beeches, kahikatea and totara (the last two are podocarps, for the few of you interested in plant lore). It was set aside nearly 30 years ago, and since that time has been managed by Hugh Wilson, a “Tom Bombadil” character if there ever was one!

Hugh sports a thick white beard, a cheerful weather-beaten face, shorts in all weather, and an encyclopedic knowledge of Banks Peninsula flora and fauna. He has been Hinewai’s caretaker and chronicler for almost 3 decades as the valley has turned from invasive gorse (that pretty yellow-flowered thorn bush) into regenerating native forest. And, as you can see, he is both eccentric and humorous.

The red little cabin on the right was our spot for the night. Red is such a cheerful color.

Nothing fancy about the hut interior, but after we had swept the moth wings from the mattresses and encouraged the resident lizard (the messy eater who dropped the moth wings like so many crusts of bread) to head outside for the night, it was suitable. The lizard startled me because it scampered so unexpectedly quickly. I must have let out a little screech, much to Milo’s delight, and he recounted the incident in Milo fashion with relish repeatedly that evening (“Mommy, Aah! Liz move”).

At least we knew we were welcomed by people, whatever that lizard might have to say about the matter.

That porch gate was just Milo’s size, and he was careful to close it behind him as we left.

You could actually drive right to this hut if you wanted to, but we chose to walk down through the forest instead. I think that fierce looking fence behind Milo is simply guarding that cabbage tree from disturbances by animals.

The land at the tip of the ocean bay is actually privately owned by farmers, but they allow walkers to access the beach over their land. There must be paua (a big one-sided shell fish that cling to rocks) in the bay because their iridescent shells were common on the beach, and Milo thought the were perfect for scooping sand.

During the summer Hinewai boasts a nice new visitor’s center for guest accommodation (you can see the grassy clearing where it is perched on the shoulder of the hill on the left), another good spot to bring visitors if ever someone decides to make the trip to NZ!

“Moon, wet?” Milo asked. We were on our way to work yesterday under clear dark skies, a novelty after weeks of rain. We had just passed some horses for whom we routinely feel sorry when they’re standing out in the weather, and maybe that was the connection in Milo’s mind with the moon being wet. It’s a good question. But no, Milo, the moon is very dry, way up above the wet clouds. “Moon, dry” he intones. That’s right, you’ve got it.

After a full week of miserable sniveling cold winter rain (as fitting as that is for the winter solstice) we were hungry for exercise and craving SNOW. News clips were full of impressive white drifts in towns closer to the mountains so we set out on Sunday in search of some fluffy white stuff. About an hour of driving through sodden green pastures towards the blazing white southern alps had us at the crusty foothills, but Arthur’s Pass road was closed to vehicles without tire chains (including us, in our ‘new’ 1996 Isuzu Bighorn 4×4), so we had to turn around. We settled for a picnic pull-off with the other non-chained reject cars, donned our equipment, jumped the pasture fence, and plodded out into the not-so-far-out wilderness.

“Mommy, I can’t put my arms down!” Milo’s layers rivaled Randy’s in A Christmas Story, minus the swaddling scarf, but he was a good sport about it. It’s not that the temperature was all that cold, but the wind was blowing and he would be just sitting in the pack instead of working up a sweat trudging through the snow.

We have yet to meet a Kiwi with a pair of snowshoes (they don’t even know what they are) but we still think they’re a good invention. They’re probably like central heating–a technology well used and loved in other parts of the world, but considered “pansy” and unnecessary by the no-frills Kiwis. We were glad to have them today, at any rate, since the snow varied from waist deep drifts to knee deep powder.

Cool cats! Well, the chewie in Milo’s mouth kinda ruins the effect, and Jeremiah would like to add the disclaimer that those sunglasses really aren’t his style. After loosing/breaking three pairs since we’ve been in NZ he found this pair on a hiking trail and adopted it for “car only” use. Sun on white snow made them “car and snow only” use.

We weren’t the only animals relieved to see the storm end. The hillside was crisscrossed with hare tracks, and we saw three running across the snow surface, much to Milo’s delight. The hillsides had areas of matagouri bushes (mean thorny legumous shrubs) that held up snow umbrellas, making deep pitfalls for hikers or good hide-outs for hare. As we approached one clump a hare ran out the top, and we could see the little niche where it had spent the last few hours nibbling on dry grass.

Another highlight for Milo was peeing on a bug in the snow. Don’t ask me why it’s Mommy’s job to assist with this process, as Daddy undoubtedly has more experience in this department. But we hit our target nevertheless, and the insect didn’t seem any worse for the wear.

We took lunch in the lee of a big rock, not in the sun but at least out of the wind and deep snow. Milo sure knows how to turn on the toothy grin when the camera comes out!

The sunglasses and palm-like tree look like they belong in Florida rather than in fresh snow. These are “cabbage trees,” iconic NZ natives, and apparently quite cold tolerant too.

After a sunny day the snow at the bottom of the hills was quite packable and slippery. We threw loose snow balls at each other and Milo’s squealy giggle was infectious.  He thought sliding down this little slope was the cat’s meow. On our way back home we saw dozens of cars lining the road next to a little hill in a farmer’s field where kids were out sledding. If the snow sticks around until next weekend we’ll have to acquire a sled and give it a go.

Aw, another family shot. Behind us are the beginning of the southern Alps. Though we didn’t make it to our original destination for hiking, the snow at the foothills still presented enough of a challenge to be fun and give us a good excuse to curl up on the couch and relax this evening.

Keas are usually parrots that we see higher up in the mountain peaks, but this one must have wandered down to get some respite from last week’s storm. It stood there quite photogenically but didn’t follow us or offer to steal our belongings like Keas usually do, so maybe it was still catching its breath and wondering when it had last seen this much snow dropped at once.  Perhaps it’s birdie grandparents had told it tales of walking to school in deep wintery drifts back in the olden days….

Look past that bit of Maori-style “tatoo work” on Milo’s chin (washable marker), and you’ll see he’s learning another favorite Kiwi past-time. Home brew. This batch Jeremiah made is ginger beer, and it lives for its fermentation life behind the chair in the living room where Milo can monitor its bubbling activity. This particular batch might not be reproducible despite careful following of the recipe, because right at the end Milo dipped his markery hand in the otherwise-carefully-controlled yeast colony, no doubt adding a bit of “local”  fauna.