Aunt Mary's visit in October

We are enjoying our long summer holidays (school doesn't go back until the 7th February) so I have time to catch up with lots of things including this blog site!

Last October, Tom's Aunt Mary from Edinburgh paid us a visit. She was on a cruise with the Holland America Line which started in Auckland, cruised around NZ then over to Tasmania, Melsbourne and finally Sydney. The ship was docking in Picton for a day which is about 2 hours drive from here but what Aunt Mary decided to do was leave the ship in Wellington the day before it was due in Picton, and fly over here to Nelson, stay the night with us, then we would take her back to the ship the next day.

Tom and I had both arranged to take the day off work and the boys stayed off school. We had a lovely time although the weather was a bit chilly. We took Aunt Mary to the Gardens of the World near Richmond then headed back to Picton on the scenic route via the Nelson Lakes.
BubbleShare: Share photos - Play some Online Games.



It was lovely having some time with Aunt Mary and catching up with some of the family news.

BubbleShare: Share photos - Print Christmas Coloring Pages.

Having travelled all the way down to Dunedin for the soccer tournament we decided to stay on a few days after it finished and have a bit of a holiday. While the weather for the football was awful the weather at the end of the week was great and we had a lovely break. We visited the Cadbury's chocolate factory and climbed the steepest street in the Southern Hemisphere. It doesn't look very steep in the photograph but it is really! And no its not called Findlays Road - that was on the way home!

More soccer!

Even before the winter Saturday soccer season ended, training started for national soccer championships. The trials to select the top 15 players in each age grade for the Nelson area had taken place in June and Niall was selected to play as one of the top 15. The 14th Grade, South Island tournament this year was in Dunedin and Nelson were defending the title they had won last season (13th Grade) in Queenstown. As the boys are getting older the competition is getting tougher. There were less teams in the competition this year than in previous years but this meant that the real elite players were concentrated in fewer teams. This also meant the standard of football was higher and great to watch. Unfortunately the pressure of defending their title proved too much for the Nelson team and although they won 5 (out of 6) of their games, they were beaten by the team from Christchurch so came runners-up this year. The weather was very mixed from sunny warm days to sleet and snow on the final day. We had a good time though and stayed on in Dundedin for a few more days. Dunedin is 2 days driving from here so it was good to have a bit of a holiday too.

BubbleShare: Share photos - Print Christmas Coloring Pages.