School's Out For Summer!

Fun in the sun these holidays

After Christmas has been and gone, it would be easy to feel sad after waiting for it for so long. Luckily, the end of Christmas just means the start of a nice long summer holiday for me - thanks to the super-long school break.

This year we've had a real summer heatwave, which meant bye-bye rain, hello trips to the beach. There was so much sunshine we were able to visit lots of different beaches this year - all of them close to home (not that that stopped me moaning about how long it took to drive to them).

As well as playing in the sand and racing into the waves, we even got to see some unusual creatures at the beaches this year. On one visit to Castor Bay we watched a little green turtle slowly plod his way across the sand. He looked so small we think he must have come from someone's house somehow.

Another time, at Waiake Beach, we saw a dead stingray washed up on the rocks. We were pretty sure it was dead, but I still stepped carefully a long way around it, just to be certain the scary stingray wasn't just sleeping.

But we haven't just spent the whole summer lazing about in the sunshine. Most of it, maybe, but not all. We've also done some walking, scrambling over the rocks along the beachfront with Dad and Mum, and biking along some tracks with Grandma near her house.

So with all these trips to the beach and fun in the sunshine, you'd think it was the best summer holidays ever right? Wrong. I also had to go to Greenlane Hospital for a day to have surgery to remove my tonsils and open up my nasal passages. I didn't even know what tonsils were - but they were causing problems, so the doctors had to take them out.

Everyone who knows me knows how much I love food. So I was pretty sad when I found out that lots of the types of food I like were going to be off the menu for a couple of weeks. If you want to see the difference, just look at these pictures: before surgery I could eat the yummy cake Grandma made, but after surgery I could only have drinks and iceblocks.

Luckily my throat and nose were back to normal (actually, better than normal!) by the time the end of the holidays came and it was time to go back to school. I was looking forward to a fun year with my friends in Year Three, but then, only a couple of months in, came the coronavirus.

To be continued...