Easter Weekend 2012

This past Easter Weekend was unlike any other  that we can remember, due to the weather. Usually Easter weekend is tragic weather with rain and wind. Not this year. The weather was beautiful. We decided to venture out for a change. Saturday, we lazily prepared then headed off to Orewa Beach. Here we spent the afternoon swimming, eating, and playing. It was such fun. We had a competitive game of Touch with a little rubbery ball and 2 sand buckets for the goal – kind of Touch Rugby meets Basketball. 

I snapped so many good photos of the day, this is just a small handful.

I had to take this photo, she was actually stuck like that so I took the photo then helped her up.. priorities.

Nauvoo is so Beautiful!!

Kawea loving the surf, hik on the right

The kids in action. Nauvoo has the ball.

My 2 little ones.

Hikawera

See they can get along... don't tell them though. Arama being a great big brother towing his sister in the surf. He then took Hikawera too. Yes as cold as it looks.

The younger boys, Hik, Ren and Rakai

My handsome husband.

Everyone really enjoyed themselves. Once we had built all our sandcastles and frozen ourselves in the ‘fresh’ NZ waters, we rugged up and walked over to a gypsy fair across the road. It is the first time many of my children have seen a gypsy fair. They were intrigued by the homes that they had and you could see the younger ones minds ticking, trying to decide if that is something they would like.

Sunday saw another glorious day, as often Sundays are. General Conference saw us at home. I love technology that enables us to watch these sessions at home where we can stop for toilet and tantrum whilst eating popcorn in our pjamas’. Usually our family tradition on Easter is to have an Easter family Service followed by an Easter egg hunt. This year I decided that because the kids were having an easter egg hunt at the Branch activity the next day, we would save the hunting till then. Instead it was a day of sharing time with each other and getting to know our neice and nephews a bit more. In reflection, a most excellent day.

Monday morning we were up earlyish… out the door by 8am to head to our Branch Easter Picnic activity. This was at Wenderholm beach. Once again we were blessed with superb weather and the water was not too icey. (I am so not a cold water person!!) We had a really big and yummy breakfast followed by a really awesome Easter Egg hunt. The volley ball net came up and it was game on. By the end of the game I found myself saying “I am sure I remember being better than that”. Talk about brushing off the cobwebs! Some shots were great ,others…. Not so great. All great fun.

We spent the best part of the day there at the beach. It felt so good to be out as a family at the beach. We have become so busy that we had forgotten this is what our family loves to do.  It was also soo nice to be able to just relax and not have to worry about time or anything else for that matter.