Our Travels

I thought I'd change the design. However the moment I hit change I regretted my decision ha ha! Typical! It sure looks refreshing though. So we I've hardly used a camera much these days but totally rely on my phone for pictures. I feel sad about this because my second born's life are on a phone camera and not so much on a proper camera. So I feel I may regret this when it comes to printing pictures for their quality. However I plan to print and make a collage and have yet to even do that so hmmmm. I find the system that downloads our pictures to the computer is so user unfriendly. I can't just copy pictures to the blog anymore hence I don't have many pictures on here. I can't even seem to save pictures to my usual albums scheme on hard drives. Utterly frustrating. I guess I should just get my stuff sorted and get it done. Rant over...

School broke out on the 13th and my kids and I were on the flight headed for NZ on the 15th. 19 hours of flying and 12 hours layover later we landed in Auckland into the arms of my social media star sister and niece in the freezing winter. We drove past my other social media start sister's house to drop off said niece but alas she was not there with open arms so on to our base for the time being. We all went straight to bed, had a good night's sleep and woke up the next day to seize the day, ready to watch Samoa v ABs game that very evening.  I had planned to make the game to surprise my almost 9 year old for his birthday but he decided that he didn't want to come and sit for 90 minutes of rugby while his mum, aunties and uncles drink too much beer around him. We agreed that was a fair call so Mum, aunties and uncles game night it was. My sister was busy making pales tinged with blue for the Manu for us in the afternoon and our good friend Saki from Brisbane was at home e...

Filmed by Fagogo mai Samoa's dear friend Henry Tunupopo of our Mum doing the taualuga at the Life-Con fashion show. I was in tears when I saw this missing my mum and so proud of her spirit and pride in our culture. I count my blessings being born to this amazing woman who dances to her own tune in life. 

On our first day at Obereggen, we checked our boys into their respective classes and I decided to ski nearby so I could keep an eye on how their first day went. It didn't take long before my big boy got his confidence back and he was happily going up and down the piste with his class. Then I saw my little one on his first time on skis enjoying the experience as if he'd been born on skis. It was wonderful to see and felt good to know that we could do this more often as a family. Hubby in the meantime went for a hike through the forest realised his shoes weren't quite right drove to a nearby Decathlon Store to buy the proper hiking boots.  In the afternoon he was breaking in the new boots by hiking up the first mountain to meet us for lunch at a restaurant at the top. We had a wonderful first day par some very sore legs and feet but we all agreed it was a beautiful spot and we were in for a beautiful week. We enjoyed the village teepee and returned to the hotel for late aft...

Day 1. We left our dear friends place in the morning and made headway for Obereggen on Saturday morning. The drive from Milan is just magnificent through North Italy. The flat becomes mountains blanketed by terraces of grapevines! I was a passenger in between snoozing I marvelled at the grape growers expertise in traversing the sloped vineyards. Rivers run through vineyards as well as train tracks as a train chugs along through the perfectly lines. And we are on a road that cuts right through this work of art. We ascend higher and higher into the mountains and it's still very green. I'm inwardly worried that there may not be any snow for us to ski on and we were all so looking forward to the snow. We drive through Bonzano and it is warm and the sunshine hitting the green trees is just beautiful. As we ascend the winding road it's still green much to our pleasure coming from the desert however at this moment we'd like white snow! It is of course very late in the season...

We had a lovely Christmas celebration here in Oman. In the morning we woke up to our boys excitement that Santa had arrived the night before. Everyone opened presents and played with them. After breakfast we proceeded to get food ready for friends who were joining us for Christmas lunch. We invited friends and for everyone to bring a plate. Alex, Mike and Koni prepared the umu in the backyard and they started cooking from 8am. We had taro, cassava, pork, lamb, chicken and beef cooked in the umu. The smell of the umu on Christmas day was reminiscent of home and knowing it's a special occasion when you smell that earthen cooking in the air. I baked pavlova and coconut buns and made a salad and set up the place for our lunch. Everyone arrived with arms full of food. There was so much food. There was beef curry, prawn curry, potato gratin, cheese pie, more salads, tiramisu, trifle, cole slaw and all the meat from the umu. There was a lot to eat. There were also a lot of kids in the y...