Tulip Sunday at the Botanic Gardens

Tulip Sunday happens once a year in the Botanic Gardens in Wellington. All the tulips are in bloom, there are lots of new sculptures, and a whole Dutch-themed thing as well. Al, Danny, Mary-Jane, and Anna-Marie and I spent a lovely day in the sun.

In the hot-house.

All the tulips! Tulip close-up

Karaka flowers

Checking out the NZ section

Snowdrop - symbol of spring! (and believe it or not, this is only a tiny sample of the number of photos I took - digital cameras are genius...)

Night out in Auckland-town

Headed out to dinner in Ponsonby with Caroline, Lisa, Kelly, and a friend of Caroline's. Much wine was consumed, random photos were taken and texts were sent, and a good time was had by all!


Mwah!

Nicci's birthday/Bastiaan's flatwarming

To celebrate Nicci's 26th birthday and Bastiaan moving in, a soiree was held at Palmer St on the 20th of June. It was the day before we moved flat, but Dave's party music mix was so good I couldn't tear myself away until about midnight. Good times!

Bastiaan's not afraid of the camera Arte! Why should you be...

Mid-dance photo of me and Bronwyn

Jeff and Jesse

Pip and Jeff doing the Egyptian!

Tammy showing off the new fashion of the season - ties are back!

Au Revoir Adrian!

Adrian left NZ in early July for the World Long Distance Triathlon Championships in Brittany, France. That's a lot of gear you've got there!

He ended up placing really well in his category and has been in France ever since - I am so looking forward to heading over there as well!

Duathlon at Scorching Bay

Adrian and Emilia entered a duathlon at the end of June. Adrian won - which was excellent and about time considering how many other races I'd watched! ;-) Emilia did really well too, making it look easy. It was a freezing cold day - check out the gloves! Nice farewell for Adrian from wintery Wellington.

Marathon!

So, after months of training, the big day was finally here! A freezing cold morning on the 24th June saw me up at the crack of dawn, eating my porridge and raisins, before heading down to Wellington stadium to join a whole group of other crazy folk to run 42km around the waterfront.

It was incredibly hard - more so than I thought it would be - but I did it! I did it in 4 and a half hours which was an ok time. I walked quite a bit on the homeward stretch - into the wind it was a bit of a tough ask!

But, I feel great that I finally achieved my goal and when I'm 80 I can say that yes, once upon a time I was fit enough to do a marathon!

A big shout out to my wonderful support crew too - Adrian you were fantastic!!

At the start - go #9087!
At the 3km mark, just heading around Waitangi Park into Oriental Bay.

At the 7km mark, nice tail wind!

At the 23km mark in Seatoun, starting to feel the burn...

35km mark, running around by the airport.

At the 39km mark in Oriental Bay - putting on a smile for the camera!

Coming into the stadium, there was no way I could run up that ramp...

Homeward stretch

Finally finished! I look much, much better than I feel...blisters, cuts, incredibly achy muscles...the list goes on!

Vanuatu!

Thanks to Adrian winning a spot prize to travel to Vanuatu to do the Vanuatu ocean swim, and me getting airpoints tickets, we winged our way to the tropical paradise that is Vanuatu in late June. It is GORGEOUS! So warm and sunny, friendly people, and just great to get away and relax for a while. We stayed for the first night at the 'flashpackers' in Port Vila, then two nights on Nguna Island, a little island of the coast of Efate (main island with Port Vila on it), then two nights at a hotel in Vila, then two nights on Iririki Island - oh my goodness, that is one flash resort! Lap of luxury suits me I think...

We did heaps of stuff: bareback horse back riding in the ocean (heaps of fun!), loads of snorkelling, swimming, exploring around Port Vila, these incredible waterfalls, and just general lying in the sun. I would highly recommend it!!

The Nomads flashpackers in Port Vila.

Adrian and me soaking up the sunshine.

Having a great lunch on Nguna Island - loving drinking out of the coconuts! It was so beautiful, the fish were incredible (the marine reserve was right off the beach) and we went on a walk around the island with a guide and saw heaps of cool stuff.

A spider web on Nguna Island - don't get too close!

Street sculpture in Port Vila.

Adrian at the Mele-Maat cascades.
Getting a good back massage!

Nature's spa!
You could walk all the way up to the top, it was very cool.

Adrian and me at the bottom of the cascades.
Lost in the middle of the dance! There were a lot of 'kustom' dances and this little guy was having a bit of trouble remembering what he was supposed to be doing!

And the funniest part of the trip - instead of sitting on the beach and watching Adrian do his 3km swim (the whole reason for the trip), I decided that I'd do the 1.5km event. Because there were hardly any people in it I managed to not only win my age group, but come third female overall!! So Adrian's bronze medal for his event was no match for my gold medal and statuette! (despite the fact he actually had to work a bit harder for his than I did for mine...) Iririki Island was excellent, great food, cocktails in the pool, the works - I'd be back in a flash if I could!

Weekend in Auckland

Before Adrian and I went to Vanuatu, I took the chance to spend a few days in Auckland, just catching up with everyone. Alexandra was actually over from Sydney for the weekend too, as was Karl, so we had dinner at home with him one night where some pretty interesting versions of creme brulee were tried. Everyone that was there would have to say that mine was the best (I do have photographic proof but don't think I need to brag too much - hehehe), but they all tasted pretty good.
Then we tried some pretty delicious passionfruit and berry parfaits on the night that Adrian was up for dinner - they were yum!!

Hannah was here for a while over the US summer, so we all went out to dinner at Vivace - lovely seeing all the girls!

Kristin doing a sweet smile for the camera :-)

Lovely Lisa.
Coquette Caroline! ;-)
Me, Amber, Lisa and Kristin.

Seymour at 6 months

When I was in Auckland in June, I spent the afternoon with Loretta, Seymour and AJ. Seymour was aout five months old - the first two photos are from when I visited, and the others Loretta sent about a month later. Isn't he a cutie! AJ reckons Junior All Blacks at 16, then fame and total domination as an All Black not that long afterwards - and judging by how good he is at practising packing down into a scrum, I can completely believe it!