Holidays can be wonderful. Especially if you get to go somewhere that involves passports and free accomodation. For us, that was our holiday last week to New Zealand.Highlights: Seeing my sister Jenny's new house & being swept up in their family dynamic for a week, making a campfire in the backyard & toasting marshmellows, indoor camping/sleepover for the kids, discovering quirky shops, cafes and architecture (I fell in love with the Hampton-style houses in St Johns and surrounds), fish & chips at Mission Bay, walking around Mt Wellington and the kids tumbling down the green Shire-like hills.
Unexpected delights: being contacted by an old friend & sharing a spontaneous plate of oysters, wandering the grungy K-Road with Dan - a tradition which we began as uni students, reconnecting in idyllic Matakana with a family who'd spent a 'gap' year in Melbourne and attended our church ("Why did we never do this in Melbourne?") and picking out a caseload of scarves, jewellery, knick-knacks and gifts from Jenny's warehouse to take home...My sister & bro-in law run a gift wholesale business, so it shouldn't be that unexpected, but I'd forgotten how fun it is to raid her stuff! As teenagers she'd tell me off for 'borrowing' her clothes...But she's more than made up for past angst now - even providing an extra suitcase to carry all the extra luggage.
Material aquisitions aside, the biggest delight for me was seeing the cousins having a ball. Nothing like spending a week living together for family bonding! My niece is 9 and has 6 male cousins so was over the moon to meet Evangeline and spend 'girltime' with her.
No family is perfect, but I feel incredibly blessed to have these people in my life.
