To the moon (and beyond) and back

The past weekend was just nice and relaxing. On Saturday we went to Crystal Mountain and as always the farm walk was fun. Caitlyn was even brave enough to feed the one rooster, which surprised me as she usually runs a mile when they just start looking in her direction. She kept saying "he's hungry" and "he's happy".

Bianca wanted a pony ride (no surprises there) and she loved feeding the goats.

The bit that Bianca loved the most was holding the bunnies in the barn. Bianca insisted on holding it on her lap and I struggled to get her away eventually, if she could she would have stayed there all day long or better still take one of the bunnies home.

I have to say that we were a bit disappointed with the service levels on this day. Not sure what was wrong, but we had to ask for somebody to come and make the bungy trampoline work (and then we waited) and the same with the rollercoaster. The poster said one of the running times was 1pm, the guy at the ticket office said "no, it starts at 1:15pm" and finally Bianca and Terence managed to go on the rollercoaster at 1:25pm after going back to the guy in the ticket office and asking when somebody would come. So unfortunately not the best experience service-wise on this day, which was surprising as it was good the previous time we went.

On Sunday it was Father's day here in New Zealand. When we bought the first part of Terence's present which was a DVD he's been wanting, I had both girls with me. So I told the girls that we must not say anything and I put it away at home. Of course the minute Terence set foot in the door, Caitlyn said "we got your DVD daddy, we got your DVD". And I quickly changed the subject, but just comes to show, never trust a 2-and-a-half year old with secrets. So Saturday evening the girls and I wrapped the presents and they both made a special card for Terence.

On Sunday morning it was present time and the girls couldn't wait to wake up their dad.

And Caitlyn eagerly helped.

Then we set off to find a place to have breakfast and what do you know, the Coffee Club close to us only opens at 10am on a Sunday, so we went off in search of another place and the Takapuna Coffee Club was open. It was lovely! Great menu and wonderful service.

The rest of the morning was spent at Kids' Republic where the kids had an absolute blast running up and down the play structure. The kids' most definitely love the "big scary slide".

Later in the afternoon Bianca and Terence went to a show at the Stardome Observatory, she even paid for the tickets (if you can't see it nicely, she wrote the names in pink).

It was a child-friendly show and started off as a cartoon with some kids who made a rocket out of a cardboard box and flew off to visit all the different planets. When they showed the planets, they showed real images of the planets. Bianca absolutely loved it and I think this will become a new favourite place. They had a question-answer-session before the time and Bianca asked how many moons Mars has and she won a frisbee for her question. After a pre-show, highlighting the sizes of the different planets in comparison to the others, the audience could ask questions again and Bianca then asked "why does the moon turn so slowly?", the guy didn't really know how to answer this aimed at a 6 year old. She won another frisbee for her question, which she kindly shared with Caitlyn when she came home.

All in all, a very fun, relaxing weekend!