Mt Kaukau

 Another one of the must do things while we were in Wellington was to take Ethan up My Kaukau (approx 500m above sea level). This meant a tough slog for Jason carrying Ethan in the backpack!

The first few sections are really steep, but it flattens out and becomes a bit easier after that!

And lets face it, the views from the top are awesome!

 We don't get many family photos! So we took advantage of pretty much the only fine day in Wellington!

 Wellington, there's no city like it really! Perth is lovely, but Wellington holds a very special place in my heart!

 Ethan loved frolicking at the top of the hill!

 Ethan and me checking out the view! I showed him all my favourite running places in Wellington!

 Ethan, me and Grandma waving to Jason!

 Here is a stitched together photo of the view from the top of Mt Kaukau! STUNNING! (click on the photo and you will see it a little bigger!).

There are lots of things I miss about Wellington, and this is one of them!

Otari Wilton Bush

One of my favourite activities on our trip to New Zealand was taking Ethan to Otari Wilton bush and playing in the creek! This was a firm favourite of mine growing up so I wanted Ethan to experience some NZ bush!

It was raining pretty heavily the day we went but that added to the whole experience I think!We got out of the car and Ethan started jumping in puddles saying "water, water, water". His joy was infectious!

Here we are at the entrance to the bushland reserve.

Given the rain and the clouds it was really hard capturing how lovely it was, but here are some shots of the bush! 

Otari Wilton bush brings back many happy running memories for me... when living in New Zealand I would run through there at least once a week! Ohhh how I miss some of the running in NZ!

Here is the nice shallow stream that we played in with Ethan! It was just lovely!

Ethan and I playing "boats" in the stream!

We don't have many family shots. I love these two family photos!!

Its always good to get a nice photo of Jason and me as well!

Ethan had an absolute ball throwing stones in the creek and using leaves and sticks as boats.

At one point Ethan just waded right in above his gumboot height!!!

Uh oh.... who's watching the toddler!!

All in all it was a really awesome, albeit wet, outing! I loved it and I know Ethan had a ball!

Trip to New Zealand

A couple of weeks ago we headed to New Zealand to visit with Jason's family. This is a general post on the Wellington visit and over the coming few days I'll do specific blogs on some of the activities we did while in NZ!

We travelled to NZ via Melbourne which meant Ethan could have a run round in between two 3.5 hour flights. We were very lucky to have an extra seat allocated to us the for both flights. But unfortunately Ethan did not sleep a wink while we were travelling. Luckily Ethan has finally gotten used to using headphones and he could watch all his favourite movies on the iPad!

We got to Melbourne airport and Ethan ran round like a crazy lunatic for half an hour...Here he is just hanging at the airport watching planes (after running around like the crazy lunatic!)....

We arrived in NZ at around 11pm (which was about 8pm for Ethan's body clock). By the time we got back to Jason's parents, had a quick catch up, played with some of the cool toys Grandma had for Ethan and got Ethan down to sleep it was 2am NZ time. I've had more relaxing flights, but all in all it wasn't too bad.

The next few days we had very strange sleep times for Ethan (i.e. sleep in to 10 am, day sleep at 4pm and bed at around midnight!).... but he slowly bought those times back. Although we never got him to bed any earlier than around 10pm. These timings worked for night time activities though - we got to go out in the evening without the 5pm witching hour! 

Wellington was a little colder than Perth... here we are all rugged up!

Wellington sure has better scenery the Perth! This is the view from Jason's parent's kitchen window (on the days that we weren't clouded/fogged in!).

Ethan enjoyed the table and chair his Grandma got him!

One of our evening activities was a trip to Te Papa! Ethan LOVED it! We went around 5.30 pm and it was virtually empty. It was great as we pretty much had free rein over what we wanted to see and when. It also meant that Ethan could run round a little as well!

Ethan particularly loved the outdoor bush exhibition at Te Papa!

Once we got home from Te Papa and dinner Ethan wanted to play on his scuttle bug.... but was just too tired to ride it! But he didn't want to get off it hahaha!

Here are a couple of photos of Ethan that I like from the trip. Here he is watching a movie on the iPad (again)!

Ethan loving his bean bag (and his nondles (jandals)).

Ethan really enjoyed playing with his Aunty Leza's cooking set! Its good to see Fisher Price toys last over 30 years!

Ethan loves helping with cooking these days... as long as he can lick the spoon!

Ethan was in his element at his grandparents place, he got to watch birds, planes and boats - as well as spot rainbows!

One evening after a day cooped up inside we took Ethan for a walk/play down at Oriental parade. As you can see from the photos it was a lovely evening!

Some relaxation time - Grandma knitting, I'm playing sudoku and Ethan is mixing it up between the train table borrowed for the week and playing some of his games on the iPad.

Jason and I try to visit lots of different parks with Ethan and while we were in NZ this was no different. Here we are at the park up in the Wellington Botanical gardens! Ethan loved the slide!

I think this is the last time Ethan will fit in the porta cot!!!

 On the way home we came across a clown and face painter at Auckland airport! I don't think Ethan quite knew how to react! At least he didn't cry!

Our flight home was tough.... we flew direct from Auckland to Perth and true to form Ethan didn't sleep at all... He was also very restless and did not like the nearly 8 hour flight! He was so exhausted by the time we got home that he went to sleep in the car and for the first time ever we managed to get him from the car, changed into PJs and into bed without him waking!!!

That's just a snapshot of our NZ trip. Watch the blog for some specific posts of the activities that I particularly enjoyed and deserve posts all of their own!!!!

Running, running, running...

  A few weeks ago I posted about running a half marathon... well since then I have raced 4 more times!! To be honest by the end of this block of training I was pretty much raced out!

The week after the half marathon I raced a 5km race -  getting the fastest 5km time since before Ethan was born! That race took a lot out of me.... more so than the 21.1 km the week before! It probably didn't help that I had the beginnings of strep throat either!

I had another week of light training, and then the day before we were flying to NZ we drove the Bunbury so that I could race another half marathon! I thought that I would do around 2 - 3 minutes faster over the half marathon than the race a couple of weeks before.... however the events of the week leading up to this race were not very conducive to good sports performance.

Firstly Ethan decided to not sleep very well at all for that entire week! Then I had a really, incredibly busy week at work, which also coincided with a number of surgeon/specialist appointments for Ethan as well as his CT scan! At the surgeon's appointment it was decided that Ethan would be in for surgery the week that we were due to arrive back in Australia.

True to his non-sleeping form, the night before the bunbury race Ethan had a terrible night. As a consequence, I was up from around 2am.... one thing I have discovered since having a baby, is that pre-race rest (or post race recovery for that matter) is just not the same as it used to be!

I started this race well but by about km 9 I knew it wasn't going to be a good day.... from then on I battled the desire to just give up and save myself for another day.... but I carried on and finished the race. I was pretty physically spent by the end of the race and not 100% happy with the result even though it was (very marginally) faster than the Darlington half marathon and also my fastest post baby half marathon.

We flew to NZ the next day. While I was in NZ I ran 2 races. The first was the Lower Hutt park run 5km - which I won.

The second race was a very muddy trail run. Which I one my age group and came second overall for the distance that I did.

So all in all a very busy few weeks for running! and there is no rest for the wicked as I have a few more races planned for the coming weeks as well!

Four generations of Papps men

Last week we had a flying visit to New Zealand to visit Ethan's grandparents and Great-Grandad. Its a very special thing to be able to get a number of generations in one family together at one time, so I have been keeping photos of each of these occasions.

2004 - Our Wedding in Noosa

2011 - Ethan's first visit to New Zealand, Wellington

2013 - Ethan's second visit to New Zealand, Takaka