The Big 6 Year Old

My goodness, a month since my last post. I must be settling in and not gawking at every new/odd thing I see.

Taine is now a big 6 year old! Thank you for all your presents and messages. He is a very lucky boy. We had 6 friends round for a cowboy party (note to self: check availability of party accessories before committing to a theme) on the Saturday before his birthday. They played pass the parcel, musical spoons, shooting and a treasure hunt round the compound, where I seriously misjudged the ability and willingness of young children to run from slide to pool to gate to tree in the midday sun. Never mind, they all came back eventually, although one boy was walking round all the houses looking for a prize while the other kids were gathered round the table for lunch. We'd decided that cowboys eat tacos (sure they do) which we thought would be a fairly fool-proof lunch because the kids could make their own. Well, good idea in theory, but we didn't count on the first dear saying "I don't like tacos, can I have a sandwich" and the second repeating him and so on. Even Taine, the monster. But Mean Mum told them to have tacos or go hungry so everyone eventually ate something. Of course I overcatered so we were eating nachos, bean dip, burritos, ... for the rest of the weekend. The pinada cake didn't happen but Taine was happy with the result.

Sunday was a quiet day playing with lego and testing out the new goggles, then Monday was Taine Can Do Anything He Wants Day, which was fun for all. We went out for dinner at Sadie's By The Sea, which was decidedly average, but all visitors will get taken there anyway because the view is pretty.

Taine started swimming lessons on Tuesday, and is making super progress. Today he did a width of freestyle and a width of backstroke. The coach is very direct, and as Taine likes to follow instructions (given by anyone apart from his parents), he listens and does as he's told. Then he went back to Noah's to play and I started to plan my World History course. Just use the textbook, the director said, but the textbook starts with cave men and finishes in 1990 with 800 pages in between. So I downloaded the NZ topics, and may just use them.

My Auckland trip was fantastic. I just needed to get it out of my system and now I feel much better. The worst part was 8 hours at Apia airport on the way over. Luckily I made friends with two Australians who were on the same flights, so at least we could watch each other's bags if we needed to go to the bathroom. No early checkin! I wasn't too tired to manage a full day shopping at St Lukes on Thursday, a coffee lesson with Kyla and visit to Atomic Cafe to get the barista essentials, lunch and shopping with Jenni and Anna on Friday - we took Anna to her first scrap-booking shop but I think she recovered - , dinner and drinking and dancing with the girls on Friday night, lunch and shopping with Kate on Saturday before collapsing for a quiet night in dining and drinking and gossiping. Then a very early flight on Sunday morning to be home by afternoon tea on Saturday. I hope nothing earth-shattering happened on Wednesday because I missed it. Like the double weekend though. It was good to know nothing had changed, and everything will still be there when I go back. I didn't check on the house but I assume the agent would let us know if it had fallen down. Matt and Taine seemed to have fun without me - certainly don't seem to have missed me in any way :(

The last week of school went fine. Taine got a good report although the comment said he could be a bit sensitive and sometimes had problems sharing. And he still didn't know his calendar. It's graduation madness here. The school had a graduation for the kindergarten kids, with gowns and diplomas and all the works. The Tradewinds hotel over the road from us seems to have ceremonies and proms every night, which has made for some difficulty getting to sleep as another version of Dancing Queen pounds across the street.

Matt's busy at work. His IT guy went back to Guam this week, so we went and got his furniture for our place. I now have two scrapbooking desks and Taine has bunk beds which he's very excited about. His usual pattern is to go to bed in the top bunk but go to sleep in the bottom. Fine except for when it comes to making the beds in the morning. Matt did have a round of golf last weekend, but he's not rushing back. He reckons he got every 3rd shot to go in the general direction he wanted it to. And all the carts were recharging so they had to walk, which is tiring in 30+ heat.

Helen commented on Taine's accent when we were skyping this week. He got me yesterday when he was asking for a wrench sandwich. Took me a long time to work out he wanted ranch dressing.

We went to see Up yesterday. It was very good, much better than Monster vs Alien. Taine was really enjoying the house flying across continents by helium balloons, talking birds, mad scientists ... until he whispered "This is silly, dogs can't fly airplanes".