Moving along....slowly.

Well I'm not sure when Summer is really going to get going properly here. We had a couple of hot and sticky days last week which prompted us to get the pool going and then had to turn heaters back on Thursday and Friday. A five minute drive and we have amazing views of snow covered mountains once again. Crazy!

I am having a slow and not very enthusiastic lead up to Christmas this year. I should have taken advantage of the cold days and got stuck into the baking I need to do and I should be looking through the recipes my gorgeous daughter sent me trying to work out Christmas lunch. Instead I have been doing lots around the house, studying and still more gardening. Not sure if it is procrastination or just total avoidance at this stage. I have managed to get the Christmas trees up and have pretty much bought all the presents I need to buy though. Just easing my way into it I guess.

Those lovely little creatures above are the discarded skins of the Cicadas which are all over and under the plane tree in the middle of the side lawn. My son pointed out a couple of not so successful Cicadas, stuck in their old skin forever, having failed to break free. As usual nature does not run to plan for some.

Flying over glaciers.

Nicky read my post yesterday and these arrived this morning. I figure that my life is pretty mundane at the moment so I may as well show you her fun and interesting life instead. (Although she is now back in the real world and there are just brief flashes of fun and interesting now.) 

So here is the helicopter ride over the glacier. She loved it so much there was mention of getting lessons but if she drives a helicopter the same way she drives a car then I'm a little worried. 

You would never get these views from anything but a helicopter ( or jumping out of a plane!!)

So the explorer has conquered yet another mountain. Clever girl.

Nicky and her partners in death defying acts.

She'll jump off anything!!

My eldest child and only daughter has the travel bug. She has done a couple of months in Malaysia and Cambodia and recently had her second trip to New Zealand.  Today Jody posted a photo of her gorgeous girls 13th birthday and I was remembering my daughter and how relatively easy she was as a teenager.

There is something about New Zealand that brings out the dare devil in my girl. Last time she bungee jumped.

This time she found a couple of new things to give her mother nightmares for years to come.

 That's her and Megan hanging in the air from the platform at the front!!  That platform at the back is where she bungee jumped from last time.

Not content to fall backwards ( and then go back again to fall front first!!) she decided that jumping out of a plane at 15,000 feet might be fun. 

I'm sure the view was amazing

from up there.

and she did seem to be enjoying it.

But I must say this is my favourite photo.

If I had photos of the helicopter ride over the glacier I would put that in too.

So now that smugness I used to have over a relatively pain free time living with a teenage girl has gone cause it seems she is making up for the lack of stress back then by tripling it now she is in her 20's.

(So far the three boys have kept their feet on the ground.)