Tons of fun in Hamilton

Cosmonauts and caracals

It's been a loooonnng time since we last had a trip away. We had the sunny beaches of Fiji last year, and we have the excitement of America next year, so what would we do this year? Two nights in a city close to Auckland surrounded by fields? Hmm...

Anyway, a day off school and a long weekend is always good in my book, so we packed up and headed south to Hamilton. Ironically, we'd booked to stay at the Heartland Hotel. Not quite the right spelling, but maybe they'd let us stay free or something. No such luck.

Before we even got to the hotel, we stopped for a visit to Hamilton Zoo. The last time Mum and Dad were here was before I was born, and it's where they bought me my giraffe money box, which I'm still using today, 11 years later.

Animals are one of my favourite things, so I had a great time seeing the monkeys, rhino and tigers, though my favourite was the caracal - you can see it in the first photo below. I'd never even heard of one before, but it kinda reminded me of a wilder version of Bailey, just with weird-shaped ears.

Another place we visited was this awesome Space Museum, which had loads of cool things about space travel, including some helmets, gloves and other things from real Russian cosmonauts.

It also had a VR room where we all put on headsets and went on a journey through space visiting other planets and going through a black hole. It was really fun, and now William and me are pestering Mum and Dad daily to get a VR headset of our own for Christmas.

But it wasn't just the VR - we also got to dress up as astronauts, master a game landing a spaceship on the moon (which Mum couldn't do but I aced), beat high scores in space quizzes, and complete some activities to get Space Cadet badges. Naturally I scrambled to get as many activities done as fast as possible so I could get a higher-level badge than William.

Something Hamilton had that most places don't these days is a secondhand bookshop. All of us three boys dived in there to scour the shelves for any great finds. Me and William came away with two books each, but Dad left empty-handed.

One of the best parts of going away is the food - buffet breakfasts and yummy dinners. Each morning I started the day with about 4 plates of pikelets, muffins, bacon, fruit and loads more. Big full plates too - the sort you have to carry carefully with both hands. Then in the evening I had a massive pizza, followed the next day by a massive burger. Going back to cereal and chicken slop after we get home is going to be so hard!

And that was Hamilton. Actually much more fun than it sounded. The best thing is, there's loads more fun to come, with Christmas and summer holidays just around the corner. And just wait until you see my spooky Halloween costume...

Ice-capades & Cat-astrophes

Spending time in wintertime

The months are flying past so quickly this year, it's hard to keep this blog up to date. Of course, it'd be easier to come up with stuff to write about if we'd been doing lots of super cool things, like jetting off on overseas holidays, but that's a story for next year...

I've been busy this year at intermediate school, learnings lots of fun new subjects (more on this later...), but one thing I've still not learned is balance. Some people have such great balance they're made to be skaters. Other people are like me...

Ouch! Well, that ended badly. And of course, Mum was there to capture it all on video so we can watch it over and over again, forever. Nooooo! But soon we were at the emergency clinic having a doctor check my teeth and jaw. Everything was fine, but I might stay away from skating for a while.

One of the best things about intermediate school are the different tech subjects we learn. Every month we do a new one, like cooking, photography and drama, but my favourite so far has to be DML: Design, Make, Learn. We had to design and then 3D-print something over the course of a few weeks, and being a big cat fan, I decided to make a cat. And here it is...

Unfortunately during the making of it, the cat's tail broke off, but I was able to cunningly fix it so no-one would ever know. Now that deserves a round of a-paws!

Getting crafty with new tech is fun, but sometimes the old ones are the best. So every school holidays, William and me unpack the masses of Lego pieces we have and get creative. Most times hours go by while we're building, and it's only when my tummy tells me it's food time that we take a break.

Next month it'll be October, and that means even more fun with a long weekend away and trick-or-treating at Halloween. Can't wait!

Jobs For the Boys (part 2)

Let’s get down to business

Now that I've started intermediate school, I'm not a young primary kid anymore. In only a few years I'll be able to get a job. Which will be handy for buying all those expensive toys I'd like, or that even more expensive Playstation 5 which I've asked for and Mum and Dad have refused to buy.

But what will I do for a job? Will it be my dream job of paleontologist? Or a games designer, since I spend so much time on Roblox and Minecraft? Or maybe something else. Maybe there are clues for what me and William could be in the future from how we are today.

A good job for me could be something that involves researching, finding and collecting things. I definitely have the collector gene, like Dad. My Star Wars obsession is pretty well known in our family. For example, here I am at a sci-fi collectibles event, standing next to R2D2, wearing my Darth Vader t-shirt, on my way to buy a Darth Maul figurine. If I had Star Wars undies, you can bet I’d be wearing them too.

Maybe it could be something more practical, like designing or building things. William and I have made some pretty amazing forts over the years, including fully covered forts and some open-air “Funtime Areas”. I'm not sure if they make buildings like this, but they should. They're much more interesting-looking than the places I've seen Mum work in.

How about William though? A couple of years ago I had some ideas about what William could do for a job, but he's grown up a bit since then. He’s pretty nimble and can rolly-polly his way across the floor really well, all the way from one side of the lounge to the other. So maybe a gymnast or some sort of job in a circus.

Waaaaaaay back when I was just two, I had a few different ideas about what I might do for work. Top of the list was something to do with animals, mostly because as a baby I was constantly cuddling (or throttling - sometimes a mixture of both) our cats. We used to have three cats, but now there's only Bailey. Hopefully that's a coincidence.

Anyway, I've still got plenty of time to decide. I'm happy to leave Mum and Dad with all this working nonsense for now. Me, I'm off to go do some gaming and eat snacks...

Favourite Things 2024

Doing our best

One of the things Dad likes to challenge us with is coming up with a list of our favourite things. That’s not as easy as it sounds. If we had to suddenly leave the house or the country, and could only take a couple of things with us, and we didn’t know when we were coming back, that’d be a really tough decision.

It’s been over two years since Dad last set us a favourite thing challenge. I bet quite a lot has changed since then. So while we’re working out what our favourite things are, here’s a musical interlude.

Okay, it was a tough decision, but William and I have both collected our favourite things now. Dad asked us to find our favourite book, movie or TV series, and toy, plus something that represented what we want to be when we grow up. Want to know what we chose? Just watch the vid.

Probably no big surprises with mine - I am Star Wars obsessed after all. But I have to admit that William’s selections were pretty good too. But if we do both end up being palaeontologists it’s going to be a mad race to see who can discover a new fossil first!

End of an Era

School’s out!

Waaaay back in the middle of 2018, I had my daycare graduation from Learning Tree and had my first day at primary school. Skip ahead five and a half years and here I am now, a ten year-old about to graduate from school.

It’s strange thinking back to when I started, I can hardly remember it. That was before anyone knew what a coronavirus was, and Mum and dad were working in offices every day, so I’d be at school about 7 every morning and not picked up until 5. Not much time for after-school gaming or iPad-watching in those long days!

One thing that stayed the same throughout my time at primary school was my love of the library. Just about every long break, after I’d scoffed down the last of my lunch, I’d go to the library to read, look for new books and just hang out.

Eventually I was there so often that I became a reliever librarian, helping to check books out for other kids and returning books to the shelves. It also meant I could get into the library at times other kids couldn’t, which was a dream.

One of the things I’m most proud of from my time at school was in Year Five, when I was the only one in the whole school to complete the Science Club. Sure, Mum and Dad had to nudge me (okay, tell me) to do the work on the weekends sometimes, but I proudly received my badge at assembly and wore it every day after.

Near the end of Year Six we had to come up with what we thought our ideal job would be. This was an easy one for me. I’ve always been interested in dinosaurs and know lots about the prehistoric world. I fantasize about discovering a new species and being able to name it the Olliesaurus Rex. So my sign on the wall read: “Future paleontologist”.

In my time at school, I’ve had some nice teachers and made some good friends. Some have moved away, some are still around, and some will be going with me to intermediate next year, where the next era for me begins.

Bula Vinaka!

Goodbye winter, hello pacific island

When the coronavirus hit the world, it meant we couldn’t leave the house, much less the country, for months. By the time the world opened up again, it was years later, and we hadn’t been overseas for about three years, since we last went to Australia. It was definitely overdue!

This time it wasn’t going to be a sightseeing holiday – it was all about beaches and relaxing. So we dusted off our suitcases, packed a week’s worth of books, and flew off to sunny Fiji. William impressed the stewardess on Fiji Airways when he very politely thanked her in Fijian.

We were staying at Plantation Island, a kids-friendly resort with four pools, a waterslide, inflatable playing area, kayaks, and the clearest, bluest water I’d ever seen. We had some awesome snorkeling, seeing so many different coloured fishes swimming around us, even right up close to the shore.

Most of our meals were all you can eat, and boy did I put that to the test, especially when it came to the deserts. Every night I’d go back for a second and then a third helping, before finally admitting I was full. William loved the never-ending bacon so much at breakfast that Mum and Dad had to put him on a bacon-free day after one morning when he came back with almost a whole pig curled up and roasted on his plate.

Something else William was obsessed with, even before we left New Zealand, was coconuts. From the day we arrived, he was searching the lawns and under the trees for a fallen coconut he could claim. There was one hanging from a tree that he thought was loose, and he kept throwing rocks at it trying to knock it loose.

He soon found a couple on the ground, and we got one of the workmen to open them for us with his big knife. Then him and Dad were hacking away at their coconuts with breadknives to get all the coconut out, looking like they were trying to carve a statue. Eventually William ate so much he got sick of his and couldn’t finish it (Dad finished his though).

All good things must come to an end though, and after a week we had to pack up again to head home. It had been the best holiday ever and both me and William were crying on the boat as we left our island behind.

Crazy Costumes

From superheroes to Slappy

Clothes are pretty boring most of the time. In the morning you’re either putting on a uniform for school or some hacky clothes for whatever we’re doing on the weekend. Not very exciting. You can pretty much bet that if one of the presents under the tree at Christmas is some t-shirts or pyjamas, that’ll be my least favourite present (Santa, take note!).

That’s why getting dressed up is something all kids love. It’s our chance to beat the boring, lose the lame, and make clothes fun. Luckily this year me and William got the chance to dress up in a few different crazy outfits.

First up we had the colour run, where we both wore clean white t-shirts and had to run a course through school where teachers and parents threw bright dye all over us. Apparently it was to raise money for the school – maybe they needed a new laundry to wash all those t-shirts. By the end of it we looked like we’d been caught in an explosion at a paint factory!

Only a few weeks later I got to dress up again, but with Mum this time. We were doing a Shore-to-Shore fun run, and everyone was encouraged to dress up in costumes. So me and Mum went as superheroes – I was Superman/SuperOllie and Mum was kind of a Batgirl. I looked awesome anyway. It was really fun but I was so tired by the end – running is not one of my favourite hobbies.

The last dress-up event was probably the most fun. Our school had its annual book day, where all the kids come dressed up as characters from their favourite books. Over the last year I’ve been obsessed with reading all the Goosebumps books and must have read dozens of them, so I decided to go as one of the creepy characters from there – the ventriloquist dummy Slappy.

For some reason, William decided to go as Hairy Maclary, even though he hasn’t read those books in ages. I think he just loves cats and we already had half the costume. Mum did a great make-up job on us both.

Worst Blog Ever

The summer of storms

It's around this time of year that you'll find me writing my blog wrapping up what we did over the summer holidays. But this summer was a bit different. Because we didn't have one. What we had instead was the Worst Summer Ever (official title). Lots of rain, plus flooding and a tropical cyclone. 

There were super high winds smashing against the house so hard I was worried the windows would blow in and my cukkies would get wet. Hard to make sandcastles when the crazy strong wind is blowing all the sand off the beach!

It rained all day for a week – so much rain that the park we used to walk around and kick a soccer ball on was completely flooded. Some nights Mum and Dad would get up in the middle of the night to check how high the water was outside our dining room in case they had to rush out with a bucket to stop it coming into the house. Finally the storm stopped and we felt like the summer had been so lame that we needed a mini break.

We drove down to the Awhitu Peninsula to visit the lighthouse there. It seemed like we must have been driving in a big circle though, because it took nearly 2 hours to get there and then when we arrived we could see the Sky Tower in the distance - which we can also see from our house! After 2 hours in the car we were about as close to the Sky Tower as we were when we left the house!

Lighthouses are always cool though, so it was worth the journey. It was the first lighthouse I’d seen for real and it was fun walking up the stairs inside it to the light at the top. And we got to have a swim on a nice, peaceful, deserted beach. Well, peaceful until Dad started popping seaweed to squirt us with seaweed water anyway.

While we were there we also walked around these big water gardens and had a ride on a steam train. Not only did we get to ride on it, we got to have a look in the engine too. It was boiling hot in there from the fire which the driver had been shoveling piles of coal into.

That holiday also introduced us to another “Worst Ever”: the Worst Motel Ever. From the outside it looked like a dump, but actually, when we got inside, we found it was… still a dump. Most of it looked like it hadn’t been updated since it was built back in the time of the dinosaurs. The bedroom me and William shared had a bunch of flies buzzing about the window. Even they were desperate to get out.

Even though it felt like it was officially the worst summer ever, we did get to spend some time in the sea between all the wind and rain.

The other thing we spent a lot of time doing on the beaches was looking for sea glass. Have I mentioned that William is crazy about sea glass? He looks for it everywhere. As soon as we get to a beach, he's walking around with his head down, searching for more of it.

He's got a pretty impressive collection now - so much of it that him and Dad decided to turn some of them into a piece of art. So with Mum's help, they created this pretty cool-looking fish, all from sea glass, with a small shell for an eye. Glub, glub...

So that was summer. One where we could literally say we had a wild time - certainly wild weather anyway. But luckily we didn't have any flooding, and the house survived the strong winds fine. And of course, it all gave me a chance to spend more time indoors reading, and I'm never sad about that.

In One Year, Out The Other

Our 2023 Wishlist

It's a new year! 2023 is here and there's lots to look forward to. Some of these things we've already got planned. Others are things I'd like to see happen.

Wills and me put our thinking caps on and came up with our 2023 wishlist - the things we're most excited about, or would most like to see, this year. Watch the video to see what we came up with. 

Spoiler: changing my favourite Darth Vader t-shirt isn't one of them (see last summer's blog).

Lots to look forward to, so let's get started!

That's a Wrap on 2022

Looking Back at Year End

So that was 2022 huh? The year's gone by fast. So fast I've hardly updated my blog lately. That may also be because Dad has been writing his book though. But that means it's the perfect time to look back on what we've been up to through the year.

We started the year enjoying the last summer holidays, with beach trips and boat rides. We took the ferry to Motuihe Island and had a great day exploring the ruins and beaches. In fact, it was ferry ferry nice.

And of course we visited a whole bunch of beaches, including mine and William's first visit to Piha Beach. This is us moments before a wave came in and drenched us both. We weren't smiling so much after that. Mum and Dad were though, grrr.

The biggest news of the year was us buying and moving into our new house. That was after two annoying lockdowns (one near the end of 2021 and one at the beginning of 2022) made it hard for us to look at places. But luckily everything turned out great. You can see the before and after photos below: before we moved in, and after we moved in, with empty boxes galore!

The house is much bigger than our old one - more rooms, more space, more playing areas... but less grass and less fruit trees. Hopefully one day we can plant some trees of our own. Mum's already started a cool vege patch with lettuce, beans and tomatoes. Which should keep her busy gardening and not busy falling down stairs (which she did a couple of months after moving in and had to be on crutches).

Of course we got another year older, and had our first birthdays in the new house. Two delicious cakes with chocolate and lollies. I could eat that for dinner every night.

In the middle of the year we went away for a short holiday, down to Waitomo Caves and Taupo. The first couple of nights we stayed in this cool farmhouse surrounded by fields and animals. It was super misty in the mornings. We also visited the Waitomo Caves, seeing all the cool cave formations and glowworms, plus going on the underground boat ride.

After that we met up with Grandma and Grandad to spend a couple of nights in Taupo. We visited Puzzling World to see all the great optical illusions and try to beat the maze (which we didn't), plus we had another boat trip across Lake Taupo. I don't know what it is about Taupo but it seems like every time we come here, someone gets sick. Last time it was Dad, this time it was Mum, but luckily it was just on the last day.

There were lots of first times for new things in the new house, like trick or treating at Halloween. We didn't really know what to expect from the neighbourhood, but we got all dressed up anyway and Mum took us out - and it was so worth it! We scored huge piles of chocolate and lollies, enough to keep us going for days afterwards (well, it was when we were forced to not eat them all that night anyway).

Boo! Here's us set to scare the street as a fairy and a cat... sorry, I mean as a vampire and a zombie.

And who could forget our first Christmas in the new house. Christmas Day was at our place again this year, which meant plenty of time playing with all the new goodies.

But while the house is new and the tree is different (we finally got a real one this year), the list of things William and me want is still as long as ever. You can see our lists in the vid below, but something went crazy wrong when Dad filmed it. It looks like we were in the middle of an earthquake, calmly reading our lists!

Just in case you get shaky-eye syndrome from trying to watch the video, these are the lists we're reading, complete with our awesome festive drawings. William's is on the left with the Christmas trees and what looks like a Christmas bomb; mine's on the right with the traditional Christmas tree, presents, Rudolph and, er, light sabre. For when Santa visits the Death Star maybe...

That's about it. There's probably loads of other stuff too, but I can't remember everything. I'm too busy looking forward to all the fun I'm going to have on these long, lazy weeks of school holidays!