urban daisy

What possible gift would be appropriate for two stoic, silent, country farmers?

iPhoto offers several book options, and was just what I needed to thank my farming friends for allowing a trail of little girls to follow them around their Old MacDonald wonderland, and for tolerating my ever present camera.

There are options for text on each page, and on the dust jacket.

The gift was well received, and I’m thinking I won’t be long resisting the urge to order some of our family photos to be presented this way.

What do you get if you cross a Bengal with a Burmese?

Well, kittens of course!!

They arrived last night.  There are now six bundles of furry sweetness residing at my mother’s house.  Oh, the joy!

The first day in the snow was on the Remarkables.  We were assigned teams, and I confess I felt a little sorry for the competitive minded men in our team.  Having three little girls on your team was a bit of a disadvantage in this event.

The second event was mini golf.  Yes, seriously.  No one in our team was able to hit the ball in the hole, so even when Blossy absolutely decided that she must participate, it couldn’t harm the scores too badly.

We had twenty minutes to design and build an emergency snow shelter, with points awarded for practicality, creativity, and how many people would fit inside.  Here, the little girls were quite useful.  We managed to fit 8 people in our shelter

Can you imagine hurtling down the mountain on an inflatable tube?  Everyone loved this activity.  It was a definite for the do again wish list!

The last event for the day involved assembling a sled and dragging the smallest member of the team up the mountain.  It was no contest.  Our smallest member weighed about 25kgs, and the other teams had men of around 80kgs.  Dragging anything up the mountain at a run is …(insane, if you ask me..) challenging, but an 80kg man was just too much.  Our team was the only one able to finish, and so having the little girls turned to our advantage.   Winning this event clinched the day for us, and while the more adult members of the team celebrated with schnapps,  the little girls all received a furry kiwi toy that makes a noise when you press it (I assume it is the noise of the bird.  Whatever it is, it’s enough to drive you nuts after a while.)

I have no shots of the last event as by this time Blossy had exhausted her interest in the great snowy outdoors.  So while our team rode to glory in the final event, Blossy and I were winging our way back to relative warmth of the ski cafe.

Today, the rest have headed out to Coronet Peak to ski.  Blossy and I have spent the morning at an underwater observatory, watching ducks on the lake (they have cool ducks here!) and I’m hoping she will be up for a cruise around the lake later this afternoon.  You could easily spend a month here and not exhaust the possibilities.  Adventure sports abound and the scenery and places to explore are grand.  It has been very hard to see so many beautiful and amazing things, but have no time to stop and photograph them.  Being with a group (this is a corporate activity rather than a family holiday so the girls and I are just tagging along) is a different experience for me, and it has been interesting to say the least.

Doesn’t the image on the screen look like it came from the suite of Mac’s desktops? It should have.  It’s a perfect delight to marry it with the clean styling of the Mac Book Pro.

Cool, hey?  You can appreciate it in it’s full glory at MUTE photoblog, along with lots of other creative offerings from the everlastingly clever, but mostly silent, Miles.

Definitely comes under the heading of one of my favourite things…

There is nothing quite like exploring the bush at night.  A possum is a source of great excitement for the spotter ( both the middle girls of the family had the honour), and this weekend we saw two on our wanderings.

I’d have liked to spend longer watching this galah.  It was on the other side of a busy road and early morning traffic was pouring past.

I love this lively soul.