Tuesday January 11th

Tuesday January 11^th

Miracles abound as the boys slept in til after 8. I was up at 7 enjoying the brilliant sunrise and doing some computer work. Nicholas made an appearance in the room and promptly found a book to read. Cottage life is so much more laid back and all the children lead a much slower simpler life here than in the city. There is no TV, no Nintendo, no video games to speak of. They have each other and cards/games to play. They all get along absolutely famously and it has been nothing less of complete shock to see them interacting with great success.

We made an appearance for breakfast and were quickly reminded what it is like to feed a large family. There was a Rubbermaid container with approximately 5 kg of Muesli cereal for the kids to attack. We went through a couple loaves of bread for toast and two jugs of milk for cereal. With everyone fed and watered, we prepared for our morning at the beach.

The Bach ( as Helen and Grant call it ) is a little cottage built in the 1950’s overlooking a lovely bay north of Auckland. It has two secondary buildings with beds for guests to sleep in. We are staying in the red one, a lovely 2 bedroom place with a cot in the main room for Jacob. After changing into our swimsuits, we walked down to the shoreline with everything we needed for the morning as we would be down at the beach for hours. I carried two fuel canisters for the boat while everyone had random beach stuff.

Most of the kids either swam or paddled out on a rowboat to the motorboat situated in the bay anchored to the bottom. Grant had purchased the home-made boat from a local who took 3 years to build it and came complete with a 90hp motor for a heck of a deal. It has a very deep strong hull which is necessary if you are boating out on the open sea though they rarely go out that far with it. Grant took most of the kids tubing in the bay while a few of us remained on shore or went for a ride on the rowboat or the kayak. It was a beautiful brilliant sunny morning and we spent hours on the water. Darren got to wakeboard for a bit and had some tremendous success jumping the wake and switching directions. Nicholas was even brave enough to try it but had no success in getting up as the boots on the wakeboard are designed for an adult and he came launching out of them on every attempt.

We came back up to the cottage around 2 pm for a lovely lunch of corn fritas (fritters) and salad. Everyone had a bit of a rest around the place after lunch as we had a good dose of sunshine all morning. Eventually we got a bit of life back in us and played some games indoors during the heat of the day. The children all played the Settlers of Catan board game and even Jacob was quite astute at collecting the pieces required to build his settlement with roads and buildings! It was great to see the children working as a team with little or no conflict, the upside of a large family where you had to make your own fun. It reminded Krista and I of growing up with our siblings.

Grant got a small fire going in the fire pit while the kids organized a game of soccer as Krista/Helen prepared a meal for 12 people. The sun lazily made its way down as another day was coming to a close.  We had a delicious meal of steak and sausages on the fire pit and ate at 7pm. The kids all roasted several marshmallows and were full of sugar. They have a mixed bag of pink and white marshmallows in NZ – we will have to buy a bag for tomorrow as well.

Grant had the brilliant idea of going for a walk before bedtime, so we marched down to the beach and headed out for an island around the bend. With it being low tide, we could walk for ages. We came to the island that was now reachable as the tide was out, wandered around for a bit and then headed back by way of the road. When we arrived back at the bach, it was well after 9 as the daylight faded to black. We got a quick snack into the kids and off to bed for 930. We played a game of Settlers of Catan and miraculously enough – I won!! I never beat Krista at these board games as she and her family are so hyper-competitive but I managed to pull out a win despite my inexperience in playing the game. Beginners luck no doubt had prevailed.

We toodled off to bed for 11 as tomorrow we would spend another beautiful day in the water and off to a beach on a different bay for a few hours.