Family Times

Phaedra eating her first ever birthday cake :)

the weekend of oct 7th was a momentous occasion coz it was my neice phaedra's 1st birthday. HAPPY BIRTHDAY!! cool to be there for her milestone. so we cruised into rotorua for some home comforts at my sis mel and bro in law steve's house. steves bro's matt and jimmy and steve's parents were staying there too so it was a full house! therefore we offered to sleep in the van... which reminds me.. the bed in the van is AMAZING!! its so comfy and has no roll together and despite what many of my (male) friends like to think - we did not spoon!!! anyhoo... em and i had previously talked about how when we went metro to visit people we were often offered the blow up air mattress/the couch/the fold out couch etc... we always took people up on these offers but really, the van was so much more comfy i don't know why we did! so the van was a good place to be
went out to lone star on that friday night for dinner. jimmy works for lone star in chch so we went as anonymous diners and had to rate our experience. i have to say the service was pretty shit. and by some unfortunate circumstances me, jimmy and em, all veteran hospo workers, were all sitting together at one end of the table so the poor people didn't stand a chance against our combined critical eyes :) when we got home we busted out aladdin as turns out steve's fam are big fans too! i'm sure it ws annoying for everyone else when we were all reciting the lines and singing along to the songs. but really.. thats what disney movies are for!! oo and heres some disney trivia for you... guess who the voice of aladdin is? for all you 80s kids out there that remember full house... its dj's boyfriend! haha! scott someone-or-other
so dawned saturday... THE BIG DAY!! phaedra was LOVING all the attention from her attentive extended family. i have to say that she has matt and jimmy wrapped around her chubby little fingers! mel's brother's family joined us for the day from hamilton. as did mel's mum. so was quite the family event (em being a hanger-on of course) we had some good food and chatter and presents were opened. what do you get a 1yr old?!?! i got her jandals. they were so cute i couldn't resist! and really.. every kiwi kid needs jandals! i think we had more fun opening the presents than phaedra did. in the afternoon me, em, jimmy and matt had the most mammoth game of frisbee ever! we started off playing vortex which was all good and well until someone threw the vortex into this ginormous tree. we spent the next 15mins throwing things at the tree to try and get it to fall down. it didn't. in fact the tree just seemed to suck up the sticks and rocks too! so eventually jimmy had to battle through the dense branches to get it out. haha! hence we started playing frisbee. i suck at frisbee. but eventually got my groove on. we were in a reserve out the back and i was in the 'badlands' were there were heaps of ruts and random holes in the ground. not surprisingly i twisted my ankle. who twists there ankle playing frisbee? apparently i do. the next day we were all rather sore from our frisbee experience. though jimmy was the only one really complaining about it :)
a nice soak in the hot pools sorted us out though. me, em, phaedra, mel and steve went. good times! though there was a FREAKY lifeguard who was rather obsessed with phaedra. he kept following us around the pool, waving at her, popping out from behind poles to surprise her, he even grabbed her hand at one stage without asking! FREAKY!!!
now you may think i haven't mentioned phaedra all that much in this blog. but c'mon people, she is only one so there is only so much you can say about her! but shes cool. and i have seen her since and she is turning into a cool little person :)