Queens birthday weekend

God Bless the Queen! Thanks to her we got an extra day off school today and that made it a good 3 day weekend. After Chantelle's fishing exploits on Friday, we all went to Whangarei on Saturday to re-experience the delights of its large Wharehouse. The primary objective was to get a better choice of clothes for the boys. That succeeded and they all got an extra outfit that they were happy with.
We went on to the museum which was on a large site with lots of different buildings run by various groups. We saw a kiwi in a kiwi house and had alook in a small church and a colonial style house. There was a miniature and a large railway. The museum was quite good, usual mix of artefacts, natural and man-made. We found a talking tui at the native bird recovery centre. Onto burger king for a fatty takeaway and then we travelled the 2 hours back home over the Mangamukas.
We watched the first Lions match against Bay of Plenty. Eric was allowed to stay up late to see what proper rugby is like. He has been introduced to the game at school and apparently did ok in his first game. The Lions match was Ok, a shame that Dallaglio got injured and a relief that the team managed to put on a convincing lead. The boys at school have been asking me about my allegiance and then giving me stick for supporting the Lions; as for the staff.... we won't go there.

I was up before dawn on Sunday to go on a fishing trip with Pat. He took me out in a kayak across the sea from Matai Bay to a small island where we spent a fantastic day fishing into deep water off a ledge. We caught a feed of fish and put back several smaller ones. We saw gannets at close range, a pod of dolphins and a penguin a way off. I took loads of pictures and then erased them all by mistake. Whoops! Even more whoops was not following the instructions and tipping the kayak over as we were launching it. Fortunately everything was tied on securely and nothing was lost. When we got home we had a fantastic meal of raw fish salad, crayfish (thanks Les!) and baked snapper.

We made it out to the farm at Diggers today and the boys went off for a walk in one direction whle the adults climbed up a hill in the other. We stayed in contact with walkie-talkies (thanks Nick and Karla) and re-united after 3/4 hour, both parties happy with the separation.

Back to school tomorrow for the second half of this term.