Giant sand dunes and Mangawhai Heads

Ready to board!

Billy catches a wave

Wonderful tan lines!

The Grave

The Penguin

The beach

Dani the lollypop!

It was pretty windy at the top!

The past few days have been good fun. Our Surfing lesson was rescheduled on Monday to very early tomorrow morning, so we finished off the barge board instead without spilling any (or very little) of the paint, which was a pleasant surprise. In the afternoon we went to the infamous Sand dune, with our boogy boards (body boards for those not in with the lingo) and surfed down the vast plains of sand with Josh's school teddy bear in the lead. When you stood up at the bottom you were surprised to see the dune still standing after half of it poured out of your shorts.

Today we have been spraying gorse in the garden, and Rosie fell down a 'hole' and needed rescuing (it was actually a footprint made by a cow but to be fair, it was a big footprint). We went to the beach this afternoon and went body boarding with a swarm of gulls, terns and petrels, who were either fishing or seeing who could hit the water the hardest. I found a dead blue penguin washed up on the beach, so to stop the lingering young gull from having a penguin for tea we buried him in the sand and put a rock and cross on his/its grave (unfortunately we didn't have a trombone or a BB gun to give him a proper burial but we did our best). We helped set up Mainly Music which is kind of a music time for toddlers that Chris runs, tomorrow is a water day which we thought was brave. We also got some home grown grapes which Rosie was very excited about, so I don't expect to see again.

Going to sleep now as we have to get up rather early in the morning for our surf lesson!!!!!!!

Good night (to any kiwis reading this) and Good morning (to everyone else)

Billy and Rosie

xxx