Vive la rentree!

The rest of the heiva, July and most of August have passed in a big long blur! It's been great, but exhausting, and I must say the return to school last week is a most welcome breather!

 We celebrated Heimana turning 7, she got a new bike.

 

Then it was the horse races on the 14th, after never saying never, Viriamu rode his champion and won easily, despite having a kilo or two on his previous jockey!

 Amai spent some time with dad, male bonding!!

The whales made their appearance on cue for the start of August, and kicked off our busy season. We haven't really stopped since.

Between all the work we still managed to have a little bit of fun, toasting marshmallows....

....flying kites,

......and as August has been mostly warm and sunny we've spent time on the beach and in the water!

I have been managing to keep even busier with my translating work - it's fun, absorbing, time-consuming and I love it, so am now trying to juggle that into the schedule......add four starving puppies that we've adopted into the mix and you may have an idea why I've been off the blog for a bit.

 

During all this Matotea also made a first solo trip, to Tahiti to shop for everyone's back-to-school supplies and visit meme in Mahina! A big step for my ever growing girl!

 

She has suddenly got back into loom bands (elastic band bracelets) and I have to say is REALLY good at following YouTube tutorials, so we have once more a houseful of little elastic bands and bracelets! But I won't complain too much about finding the little bands EVERYWHERE, as it really keeps her occupied and she's even able to design her own patterns now. Glad to see the craft genes have been passed on!

Lastly, it was someone else's birthday a week or so ago, here you go Granny!