Karl and Bonnie’s Wellington Adventures 2014
Merry Christmas everyone
2014 has been a rollercoaster ride for us and its great to sit back and relax and reflect and the transformations we have seen this year.
It’s been wonderful to watch the girls grow and learn this year – especially how Rose has grown into a little girl now and the fun of Molly and Lilly-Anne interacting with her.
The best news we had this year was that we finally got to move into our new house in Owhiro Bay – Hooray! Its nice and sunny and has plenty of room for all the family – the silver lining after the fall over of the developer and dealing with receivers is that we were able to treat ourselves to special features that we always wanted but weren’t sure we could afford including having 5 bedrooms, a spanky kitchen with wooden floors, marble top island, walk in tiled shower, underfloor heating, in built audio visual system, decking with glass balustrades.
The landscaping is still a work in progress but these are fun projects for Karl such as a side deck off the bedroom, planting of trees and gated area for the trailer – whew lots to do after a holiday break 🙂
Molly had a good year 6 at school – learning and progressing in reading, writing and maths. It was nice to a glowing report card.
Both Molly and Lilly-Anne took up gymnastics this year which they love and music lessons – Molly learning recorder and Lilly-Anne learning ukelele.
Lilly-Anne’s enjoyed her first year at school, fitting in well and making new friends. She is progressing well in reading and writing – it’s nice to see her start reading books to us now at bedtime 😉 Both the girls love horses, fairies and everything barbie so there is always plenty of chatter at 6.30 in the morning as the start teh day playing with imaginary friends 🙂
View Photo Gallery for all the pics
Rose has been a bundle of joy, quick to catch onto everything she tries and a great sense of humour. Bonnie got her wish for a curly haired daughter that have shown strong in Rose 😉
She has attended Owhiro Bay Kindergarden right next door to her big sisters at Owhiro Bay school. She has really progressed at learning to dance, draw, climb and interacting with others. They use an online service called storypark which is great for sharing what Rose is learning.
Bonnie has continued to enjoy working at the Capital Vision Eye Practice as a Ophthalmic Technician under Prof Tony Wells. She really enjoys managing the clinical trials and will be going to Singapore early next year for training and prep for a new study. Bonnie also enjoys her regular yoga sessions and has been assisting at Te Aro Yoga Studio in the Astangha practice. We are heading up to Gisbourne for the Christmas holiday period for our annual camping, yoga workshops and beach holiday.
It was a tough year as well for Bonnie and Pearl with the passing of their dearly loved brother and son, David, unexpectedly in August in Montreal. She is taking time to heal and having our girls around has been helping them both.
Karl has had a good year keeping fit biking to work and enjoying the mountain bike trails around Wellington and the occasional South Coast waves. He also enjoys regular yoga sessions although he has found it a bit of a challenge trying to practice at home with the three girls playing while he practices! He certainly learnt all about the building process helping manage the completion of out family home and organising all the flooring, tiling, and kitchen suppliers .
He has been kept busy working as a Business Analyst at with Catalyst IT working mainly on government projects and tendering for new work. Boombox Marketing (website development and online marketing) has also kept him busy with side projects
We enjoyed the visits from Jay and Marie this year and appreciated their help in August while Karl was looking after the girls. We also took at trip up to Auckland to visit them, It has also been great to have regular catch ups with Clare, Marco and Joshua here in Wellington.
We look forward to a bigger and brighter 2015 and wish you all a wonderful and relaxing Christmas holiday and a very happy New Year!
Lots of Love
Karl, Bonnie, Molly, Lilly-Anne and Rose Menzies
xxx