Hello friends!

The feijoa have ripened, and they are amazing! One fun thing that we've been able to do living with an amazing garden, is to collect fruit and share our excess through connections with the Salvation Army here in NZ. The girls and I have taken a few large bushels of apples and plums to a food kitchen not far from our house. It's been a fun way to learn about caring for a garden and harvest, and meeting the needs of those less fortunate in our community. That being said, there is no guarantee that the feijoa will make it to the less fortunate- these are disappearing fast.

We have been taking in all kinds of sights in NZ. Some close to home, and some not so close. There is a lot to discover in a pretty reasonable amount of driving time, so we've been able to take lots of day trips, like the Rakaia Gorge, Southwest of Christchurch. We took a 10ish Km hike along the gorge, and while there were complaints along the way, I think we all appreciated the view. The pictures really say it all. There are some days in NZ when we forget that the rest of the world isn't like this, and aren't awed by what we see. Isn't that crazy?

In Mid-March we drove to Nelson (North part of the South Island of NZ) to visit our amazing friends, the Davis family. They were over for a short trip from their home in Bowling Green, Ohio, on a work trip for Tim (the Davis Tim). It is always a good time when our families get together, and this trip was no exception. Heaps of hiking and general roughhousing for a few days with these guys does our family good. Brings a bit of chaos into our quiet and fairly predictable lives. Somehow, we always end up finding great playgrounds together. Our kids 'get' each other.

Amity, Joel and Celia.

Edie and Lachlan.

NZ Stick Bug.

More playground fun for this crowd.

Jardine and Davis kids at the geographical centre of NZ.

In early April, we took a trip to Kaikoura so that I could participate in a half-marathon run that took in the Kaikoura peninsula, and ended in the foothills of the nearby mountains. We were so excited to see Kaikoura- the mountains are spectacular, and the wildlife there is second to none, we were told. Unfortunately for us, it rained for most of the time we were there. The only time the rain let up was actually during the race, I had 2 hours of sunshine and Tim and the girls got a chance to find 8 geocaches. We call that a win. While I was running I got to glimpse the mountain peaks, which made things so pleasant. The first half of the race was up and over the peninsula, which was a whole lot of uphill running, which I love, and will miss back in Saskatoon. It wound through a reserve and through sheep pastures, and ended up back at the raceway where we started. The second half of the race took us through a pine forest on a mountain bike track- it was spectacular running. The half-marathon runners doubled back on this track and I'm embarrassed to say that I ended up crashing in to both the first and second place runners on their way back through. My default is to go to the right side of the path when meeting an on-coming runner, it is not the right way in NZ. Lesson learned. All told I came in 13th, with a time of 2h05. I am pretty happy with that. The same day of the race we took a drive north of Kaikoura to visit a very gregarious fur-seal colony. It was really raining at that point, so it was difficult to take it all in without freezing- it was pretty miserable out, the seals didn't seem to mind.

Kaikoura range in the background.

Freezing, and trying to enjoy watching the seals.

Look closely, there are hundreds of seals down there.

Closer to home we have been busy enjoying all that NZ has to offer. The girls finished up their 9 week surfing lessons, and did so well. They are both super confident on their boards and are able to catch their own waves. We're so proud. For the past 2 weeks the NZ kids have been on school holidays, so we have taken advantage of a 2 week holiday surf camp, and have been going out almost every day for 2 hours. I joined the kids for this and we've all been having fun. The 3 of us caught a 'party wave' together (which is surf talk for all of us catching the same wave at the same time). It was amazing. It's getting rather cold for surfing now, so this week will wrap it up for us. It's been fun.

We've been on a 20 day caching streak where we've found at least 1 geo-cache a day, with 14 caches being our biggest day. #sabbatical goals. It's been great for getting us to places around the city that we wouldn't explore otherwise. We have a few favorites- one requiring Tim to climb up a tree to retrieve a nano-cache from a tiny bird nest, and another requiring us to figure out a passcode to a birdhouse with a series of switches that needed to be flipped in a specific order in order to get to the log-book (a Hitchhikers guide to the galaxy themed cache). Edie got in to some tree nettle at one site, which turns out to be a very nasty plant, even a brush with it causes a stinging, itching reaction, and in at least 1 extreme case, death. Edie required a few days of anti-histamine. Never again will we go crashing through the bush without looking hard for tree nettle in the area.

Example of a nano-cache.

Over the few months that we've been here and home schooling, we've been looking at local insects and critters in NZ, studying life-cycles and learning about their habitats. We learned a lot about cicadas, and in the last days of the summer, we actually caught one. We built a little habitat for the guy (we could identify it as male from its tymbal covers) and when we went to look at it the next morning, it was dead. We felt kind of bad about that, but since it was the end of the season, he was bird-food anyway. He has made a fine specimen in the 'museum of death' at the School of Hard Knocks.

Once it started getting colder, we discovered that Bradford Park, which we visit practically every day, is one of the parks in the city where Monarch Butterflies overwinter. Apparently Christchurch is one of the only places where Monarchs do overwinter (in NZ, anyway), due to the temperate climate. They hang in clusters off of trees, and if it gets warm enough in the day they'll leave the trees to eat, and return at the end of the day. I have never seen so many Monarchs in one place, every night we can find their clusters. We truly live in an amazing place. One night the girls came home frantic that they had killed a Monarch when they found one under Edie's scooter helmet. I went over to check it out, and the Monarch was on the ground, alive, but not very active. Having heard that rats are a predator to these Monarch clusters, we decided to bring it home and leave it in a leaf-lined box with a cover over the top. The butterfly never really recovered. He'd (again, we could identify it as a male- two little raised bumps on their lower wings, close to the body) get a little more active in the warm sunshine, but not active enough to fly away. After 3 days, he too joined our museum.

Close up with a Monarch.

Monarch clusters.

Around the same time, the girls and I were parking the car in front of the house after a day of exploring and Celia yelled out "Stop! What's that?", looking over to where she was pointing we spotted a little hedgehog on our neighbour's driveway. We've seen these over in the park, and have even been shown how to handle them, so we carefully picked this guy up and brought him over to our yard (yes- our third male specimen). They are not very aggressive, and Celia's been itching to get closer to one, so this was our opportunity to watch one find its way around our backyard. After a few minutes of bumbling and snuffling around I noticed a few bad signs- fly larvae behind its ears, and a rank smell coming off of him. Shortly after, we noticed that he was bleeding. So, we got in touch with a hedgehog rescue group in the city and took him over. It turns out he was badly wounded by a cat (most likely), and while they treated him and cleaned him up, he didn't survive the night. So, we're 0 for 3 on keeping the critters we're observing alive. We've been so grateful to have such access to nature, but we've had some hard lessons learned.But it was cool.

Celia and 'Merle'.

Celia turned 8 in March. She, Edie and their friend Savreet spent a session at our city library learning stop-motion animation with lego. It was a truly Jardine party compete with fake moustaches. The libraries in this city are a real treat, and we have used them extremely well. We are going to miss them.

Having fun building sets for stop motion animation.

Celia turns 8.

We have taken in a Crusaders game and will be partaking again tomorrow night. This is Christchurch's pro Rugby Union team, and while we don't know all the rules, it's so much fun to be in a crowd that big and watch really good rugby. Fun happening the first night- Col. Sanders arrived at half time in a helicopter, and a bucket of chicken the size of a house was wheeled out on to the field. The Col. saluted us, and heaps of decked out KFC employees ran around passing out buckets of chicken. It was pretty weird. Made me feel like maybe KFC is a bigger deal here than it is in Canada? Not sure, but it was memorable. They actually used footage from the game to make this commercial. So very strange to have been part of that.

Go the Crusaders!

Big bucket of KFC on the field.

Last week we hosted my travelling cousin Lesley, who's been backpacking through Thailand and Southeast Asia since December. It's been nice to have another Sweeney in the house, and she'll be dropping back in mid-May before she flies back to Canada after exploring the south island of NZ. It's nice to have visitors, and we're looking forward to being back home.

Enjoy the pictures- Love to all!

Laura

The girls in Diamond Harbour.

Having fun with math.

Problem of the week from University of Waterloo.