Child Labour is Awesome Labour

I knew having kids would pay off one day...

Mt Smart

Every good day starts with a wade across a creek

Heading towards the highest col on Smart, the summit is the high point, right of center.

I had my old lady legs on and couldn't break trail without cramping and wailing like a cat in heat. So of course Travis, the manimal, took the lead most of the day.

Almost there. It's STEEP here, well over 45deg, maybe more, I don't know.

Looong way down! At the far end of the slide path in the center of the picture were trees piled up in the forest and branches broken 50' above the ground. That's almost 3km from where we are! Must have been a huge avalanche! It was pretty white when we started down, which made the steep skiing pretty exciting!

Fine fellows

I don't know what it is about these pictures of Nick that make me think he's just a little frenchman.

Mais oui, le jus de pamplemous!


Awww...

Awwwww....

AAagh!!

These guys have been such stars these days, especially Tobin. I'm not sure what the change is, perhaps because he can now make it through the day without requiring a nap. But he's suddenly turned into this engaging, happy outgoing little man. He has some funny things to say as well, very observant things. Like "you like awesome things, dad." (this, of course, refers to me pointing out monster trucks and huge airplanes or diggers or anything destructive or powerful.)

I got to go flying around in my helicopter, sightseeing on Kinbasket lake this past week as well. I guess it was work, but it was pretty fun. We were looking for moose....

But we saw these instead:

It's not often you get such a good view of six fat, blood covered wolves lounging around in the middle of the ice. It was an amazing, stunning sight. Very lucky to see these wild, beautiful animals.

However, much of the time was spent doing this: