A busy week

A stomach bug has managed to get to everyone in our house this past week, which has been a challenge for us, and throughout all this we have had the most wonderful guests at our house, all of whom I consider very brave considering as they endured a family not on top of their game by any stretch of the imagination.
And as an extra challenge for us the week was filled with rain and very cold weather.
However, the weather just meant we played more inside than out and, while the bug was present with at least one person on anyone day of our week, there was always some of us that were not down with sickness and there was certainly fun to be had....

We LOVED having our family from Christchurch coming to stay with us, our kids get so much joy from hanging out with their cousins.........

Even though the weather meant  no outside at times, there was plenty of fun to be had inside......

Board games.....

and inside rugby.......

and more rugby ...(thanks to our enormous lounge)

some chilling out in our inside hanging silk......

and another birthday to celebrate too.......

and why have just one birthday cake when you can have two..... this one was all about the decorations, and that was a team effort by the girls.....

and approved by the boys.....





a bit of quiet catch up, with the latest hunting and fishing magazine... (very popular in our house)...

and a bit of post stomach bug sadness captured on camera too......

 when the rain stopped for a bit... it was everyone outside to catch a bit of fresh air (very 'fresh'), down to the back of the property for some fun down at the pond....

to their delight, the boys caught an eel in their net.....

which we convinced them to let go, and then some drain crossing challenges (our little bridge had washed away with all the rain)...

a bit of jumping practice too....

we checked out our flooded creek and back paddock....

a bit of tree climbing.... on the way home to a nice warm fire.

we also managed to find a gap in the weather to show everyone our new community bike track which was ,as always, a lot of fun....

we love this track..

Our family traveled onto the sounds and that night we had some special friends from Dunedin come to stay on their way up to the North Island.

Unfortunately the remainder of our family were struggling through the stomach bug, so we weren't overly adventurous with our tour of Marlborough, but the kids had fun at home ...lots and lots of playing especially enjoying the dress ups and puppet theatre.....

The weather stayed gray, but the rain stayed away so we ventured out to show them our local beach, which ,as always, kept everyone busy with much exploring to do.....

and general joy all around...

Then on to a warm place with hot drinks for all.