My little flower-fairies

.....back from the taro-fields in Avera, sporting fine willow head-dresses

Cooking with Mr. France and another Rurutu wedding

This week signals another holiday for the kids and general excitement for us, we spent the last week slaving away 'spring'-cleaning the house and starting the yearly paint job. Now we have guests to see to as well as kids to juggle. Viriamu's mum is back from Tahiti, she's been staying there with my fater-in-law who's got some problems with his lungs at the moment, but this week she's tied up in another family marriage in Moerai - just like ours there are gifts galore, including the inevitable trussed pig, taro and lots of TALC!

 

 

 

 We've also had a tv-crew in filming for a tahitian cookery programme. So I had to demonstrate one of our closely guarded secret recipes! The presenter of the show is a past Mr.France, a local lad, David Meitai, so that was a bit of excitement. They also filmed Viriamu's horses and the marae, not to mention doing a fair bit of shopping for jams and monoi, while they were here.

 

Today is the day of the final wedding feast as well as the day Viriamu's goats arrived on the boat from Tahiti (don't ask!), the excitement never ends.

Growing up!

We're back in Rurutu after a week in the 'Big Smoke' (Tahiti)....we were there for the salon du tourisme, and also to do countless chores......most particularly getting spare parts for this and that machine, inner tubes for bicycles, nylon for the strimmer, joints for the leaky tap, spare flushes for the loos, you name it we've traipsed around Tahiti looking for it. The salon worked out well and we've managed to fill our books for the next few months, it's always nice to know that the bills will be paid. The jams went down a storm as usual, it's getting to be a bit of a regular feature....but I wasn't anticipating the success of my seurettes (Tahitian gooseberries), they went down a storm, sold out and even had people battling for the last pots!

This was a bit of a milestone visit to Tahiti, it's the first time we left Matotea with her cousin Meisi and set-off with just Heimana. Matotea was very brave about the whole thing, but we were all very glad to be back together on monday....the blow was cushioned by the 'kitchenette set' that she had pre-ordered from us before we left, though she was just a tiny bit disappointed that it didn't actually work! She's growing up faster than I can keep track and is sharper than a tack. Since trying the bus with her cousin Meisi, she's decided she wants to go to school on the bus too, so now she hops on the bus at the bottom of the garden, it's quite a relief not to have to trek over to Avera twice a day, and she clearly loves it.