Friday, April 29, 2016

Running in the city

I've registered both Jef and myself to running the Queenstown half marathon in November this year. I've heard it's a beautiful course, so I didn't want to miss out on that. Air New Zealand sponsors the event, so there's a lot of hype over it. In other breaking news, I've also (verbally) committed to running the LA marathon next year in March - which will be my first full marathon! I know! 42km is a heck of a long way to run...but not only that its all the preparation and training in the months beforehand. So I've been out there pounding the pavement at every opportunity I get to build my base fitness and show my body that, yes, it can do distances. I track my runs via Strava and have photos to accompany my logs on the app. It gives me a good record to show my progress and I can review the routes I've taken. Here are some pictures of our beautiful city that I've taken whilst out there running.


















I feel very fortunate to be running in such scenic spots, which I must admit makes the training that much easier.

Friday, April 22, 2016

Making Tuesdays count

Now that it's the school holidays I felt like how I used to feel on Tuesdays when I had Kien with me all day. Depending on what time of the day, it was either the best thing ever, or when the heck is Jef getting home so I don't have to deal with this kid's whining anymore! On Tuesday I experienced both of those phenomenons, and my only solution was to take him out and burn off as much energy as possible. So we set out early (as soon as the first whine occurred, basically).

Cornwall Park

If you haven't gathered already by the many posts in the past, I love Cornwall Park. I forget just how beautiful it is until I go back and then I love it even more. Kien on his bike, me and my running shoes - perfect situation for exercising. We did a nice loop which we both enjoyed consisting of tracks, side walks and some off roading.













It didn't take long and we covered a good distance. Kien wasn't keen on pushing for the summit, although I told him I would push him all the way up the volcano. I had told him we could go climb another mountain if he was not tired, and he was enthusiastic about that.

Hamlins Hill


Well it's not exactly a mountain but it's fun nonetheless, and it's close to my dad's restaurant where we were planning to have lunch. It is a mixture of farmland and bush, and is really easy to walk.





He collects "treasures" along the way and wants me to take pictures of them.







After the walk we got to my dad's for a late lunch. They usually have a giant bag of feijoas for Kien since they know how mad he is about the autumn fruit, but they didn't know we were coming so didn't have any. To keep us in full supply for a week we drove over to dad's house and got a bucketful of lovely, fat and juicy beauties. Kien was so happy!

Monday, April 18, 2016

Catchup

Yeah, its been ages. We've done a fair few things and all the photos are sitting in the cloud waiting for me to process and do something with them. We've been to Las Vegas and back, stayed with our friends in LA, checked out the Star Alliance lounge in LAX, saw a Blue Man Group performance, trekked to the M*A*S*H filming site, watched a Guinness World Record holder bubble blowing performance, frolicked at the mouth of the harbour in Whatipu, bumped into Christoper Luxon at the AirNZ engineering day, taken Kien to his first ever team sport practice...but the words ain't coming easily enough let alone the inclination to sit down for an hour (or three) and recall and write and edit. So the posts will come in drips and drabs, and completely out of chronological order, but hey, doesn't matter so long as it happens. This here blog has been the only consistent record of what we do/what Kien's life consists of. The only reason I remember most of Kien's firsts is because we took pictures and I wrote about it here. Otherwise it would have just been some random photos stuck on the hard drive somewhere.

Mt Wellington

We like volcanoes, and luckily Auckland has plenty to choose from when we want to have a quick walk. On Saturday we chose Mt Wellington since it was close to where we were and where we were going. We walked the perimeter, and then we went down to the crater. There's still plenty of scoria down there - amazing that after 10,000 years!







Second cousins

Michelle and the kids were in Auckland this weekend, so we went over to see them. Michelle and I walked the kids to the beach/park, played on the playground, collected feijoas and hibiscus, and the only photo I took was them sitting on the berm across the road from Rod and Gun's place.



Cycling in the rain

Well he did. I just walked...and ran after him when he sped away so quickly and didn't wait for me. I'll remember next time to put on my running gear. The kid can ride. Fast!







We parked just after the bridge between Judges Bay and Okahu Bay, and went all the way to Mission Bay and stopped for him to have an ice-cream before turning around.







Football

He now belongs to the Western Springs Association Football Club (WSAFC). First team sport for him, and its been...interesting? (I've got so many thoughts that I can't even process right now about his performance). I love their uniform. The kids all look so cute out there.




Right, I need to get off my behind and go out and get some much needed vitamin D.

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