Farhana's Birthday

Mum's Birthday, 22 February 2009.

My birthday was a big adventure. Having spent a couple of days in Christchurch figuring out how to use our Motorhome (I realize now we are not in a Campervan which are much smaller and for the under 25s) we decided to celebrate my birthday by going on a day trip away from the crowds. We chose (at random) to go to Mount Sunday which we then realized was a famous Lord of the Rings location (Edoras in the Kingdom of Rohan, North or Mordor...so Isaac says). Although it was only an 1.5 hours from the city, it felt like a thousand miles away. The mountains were awesome and we only saw a handful of other cars the whole 24 hours we were there. The way was mostly a gravel track which the Motorhome, thanks to Mike's excellent driving, coped with very well. After a walk on a "braided river", we made Isaac's favourite meal (salmon pasta). It felt like such a treat to eat a hot meal & have tea by a treasured spot that we were instantly converted to the joys of motorhoming. Instead of cake, the children had made/chosen very fitting cards and forked out on some lovely presents (a binoculars and some watercolours and an astronomy calendar) which are proving very useful in the holiday as we gaze at the stars. After dinner, as we were all very tired, we decided to pull over on the road and sleep in full view of Edoras rather than drive back! At dawn, we had lots of lovely views of the mountains as well as one other car.  So you can see we got the hang of this motorhoming lark all in one day! 

We decided to return to Christchurchto see the motorhome rental people because Rafi's car seat needed to be seen to and we couldn't work out why our microwave and toaster wouldn't work. We spent the day going to the Antarctic Centre where the children saw blue penguins & experienced a realistic blizzard (-18 degrees and lots of wind) & then a range of accidents happened: Rafi tripped on some ice; Safi fell over on the ice-slide & split her lip and then to top it all Aliya fainted! I felt like a very bad parent! We decided to stay in a better class of holiday park (or at least mum, safi, aliya and Rafi did) so as not to overdo the outdoor life too much. We all need to get some rest! What a dramatic 3 days!

f