It was Valentine’s Day today. It turns out Candi bought me a card a few days ago, but obviously didn’t drop enough hints, because this morning when she gave me mine (along with some yummy chocolate stick things) I had to think fast about why I didn’t have anything to give her… At all. Nothing. Not even a card. Seriously.

Being half asleep, my brain didn’t function at all and I failed hopelessly. Oops! Luckily, she took it pretty well and is almost speaking to me again now. I’ll have to make it up to her somehow… Later I tried telling her this entire trip was one big Valentine’s Day present, but she wasn’t buying it ;)

Today I had to go into Wellington for 10am and afterwards Susanne drove us up Mount Victoria, which has great 360 degree views of Wellington and the surrounding areas. Here is a shot of the waterfront area of the city:
Wellington city

It’s really easy to get up to this viewpoint; you just drive all the way up. This is both a good and a bad thing - it means you can get there even with a small child, but it also means the coachloads of tourists can get there too. I wonder how many people took that exact same photo today?

After I had taken enough photos, (well, enough to make me long for a wide angle lens) we drove to Wellington Zoo, which is
nearby. Susanne and Joe had given us a voucher, which meant we only had to pay for one adult - bit of a result there! It’s not a huge zoo, but we did see a few animals - giraffes, meerkats, Malaysian sun bears, leemurs and a red panda (”flying fox”), who was really cool but didn’t stay still long enough for me to get a good pic. Instead, here are some of the others:
IMG_2774A Malayan Sun Bear and her cub go for a walk

IMG_2789An inquizative giraffe
IMG_2802A meerkat on lookout duty

It feels like we are coming to the end of our trip already - we have less than a week in Wellington now, and then just one night in Christchurch before flying home. It feels like it’s a dark cloud building on the horizon for a lot of reasons, but mainly

  1. It’s back to work for me - no more spending all day with my two girls
  2. It’s back to the UK winter for all of us. We’ve had great weather here, shorts weather most days. Going to miss that for sure!
  3. Leaving the NZ places and people behind, what a great country.
  4. But mainly (and most worryingly) how on earth are we going to be able to get all our stuff back into our suitcases?! We were borderline on the way out, we are bound to have space problems coming home!

We are also going to have to work on Sophie’s feeding / sleeping routines when we get back. It’s been a bit chaotic here as we don’t seem to do the same thing two days in a row, so it’s a bit impractical to try and keep her in a routine. As a result, she’s a bit random at the moment! We are hoping she’ll adapt once we get back home again.

Nothing else to report just now, will keep you posted with any developments as they happen.

Signing off…

Ross