Sunday January 2nd

The morning began unfortunately early at 7am as her royal chainsawness caused me an early departure to the living room couch. After a bit of reading, I went back to sleep and awoke at 930am to the sound of video games being played in the next room. It was a good thing as we were to be at Mass for 1030am.  We quickly showered, dressed and flew out the door at 1015 in quest of St Matthew Church some fifty blocks away. We arrived in the nick of time and sat behind Aunt Kim. It was a lovely mass and finished up after 12. 

We had a quick visit and headed out to the Sunday Markets – a giant garage sale of sorts where people were selling all sorts of wares and trinkets. We bought a couple things, but didn’t have much success with souvenirs or clothing. We would have to find some on our journeys over the next week.  We met Chris, Michaela and Aston and headed out to the Art Market downtown. There was a live band playing and much more hand crafted goods. We purchased a couple of unique wine holders, a knitted headband for Jacob and a few pieces of art to hang on our walls when we return home.  We devoured several Greek pita kabobs with chicken and lettuce before striking out for Aunt Kim and Uncle Jim’s.

We arrived at Kim/Jim’s and had tea. It was strange to be in a smoke filled house as we have very few friends/relatives who still smoke regularly in their homes.  The boys all played tag and other games outdoors while we had a great family visit with everyone. Fiona and Rebecca even stopped by for couple hours.  We took some photos of all the old family photos from years past. It was so neat to see the progression of the ages of the children/grandchildren of the family.

We said our good byes and headed out to the cemetery to find Krista’s grannie that had passed away in 1995. After some serious searching, Darren was the winner of the quest by locating it. We took a few photos after shining up the area a bit and tidying the headstone from moss and plant growth.  We headed out to the grocery store to get some ice cream for dessert and sent the boys with Chris/Michaela to start supper. We had a delicious meal of spaghetti/meat sauce with salad and dessert. We showered the boys and off to bed for 830 as we have a long day of travels tomorrow all the way up the east coast of the south island to Picton to visit Helen and Pat Williams on their sheep farm.

Nicola came over for a visit for a few hours and we had a great chat about her experiences living in America and getting stuck in Mexico with no Visa or being able to return to the US. She was quite the rebel in her youth and had many interesting travels long before the age of 25! We said our goodbyes and toodled off to bed at 1130. Another busy wonderful day in Christchurch!