Back on the bike

And so today, it marked the day of my first time back riding my bike- I had no pain in my knee it was so good! I haven't ridden my bike since at least May (when I had the surgery) and so to be back on it as the warmer weather is showing now, getting warmer leading up to summer!

On the way we stopped for lunch, then we saw the damage from the recent storm that passed through which happened to be at its strongest when it is high tide, on a king tide so the sea levels were rather high and took out a lot of the built up sand around the coast, you can see evidence of this all along the Orewa Beach stretch of the coast which is a good few kilometers long (five I think).  There is barriers all up along the beach front and the grass just goes straight down and all the tree roots are showing- that is all that is holding the beach front.  There is still a lot of debris on the beach as well.

I don't have pictures of the South end of the beach where the damage is a lot worse as the height of the sand/grass walls are a lot higher!!!

Even old steps were uncovered... 

This use to be covered in sand...

Saw this mailbox too- very cool!

We then went and got ice-creams...

And Allie got licks too- her treat :-)

S'more cake anyone?

I spent this afternoon at home with a friend baking, we made s'more cake... you know:

Marshmellows cooked over an open fire, Squished in between graham crackers with chocolate in it too...

But this version was a cake, it was crushed up biscuits in cake like mixture, with chocolate chips and marshmellow mix spread in between the two layers of cake with the marshmellow mix all over the outside of the cake coating it.  We put the rest of the crushed biscuits from the cake mix all over the outside of it, but the recipe did say to put the chocolate chips on the top instead.. we did both :)

Danielle mixing the cookie, and evaporated milk in with the rest of the mixture.

Allie decided that she wanted to be under the cake when we were putting cookie all over it... she ended up covered!!!

The clean up crew- Allie and Ollie

Danielle has taken the cake home with her, to put in her fridge as we don't have enough space and she is going to bring it to school with her so that at interval everyone can devour it.

Update: It got devoured all right.. it actually tasted quite good too, to be honest!

Cutting the cake.. Out on the bench in the freezing wind!

The masterpeice S'more cake!!!!!

The Art Gallery

Yesterday afternoon I went down to the city to the Auckland Art Gallery with Carla, Lisa, and Toni.  Art may not entirely be my thing, but there was some pretty amazing works of art there!  Some being of original art of New Zealand artists mainly, there was some pretty amazing landscapes that I throughly liked!  I love architecture type things, so the 3D models of buildings on the top level where we went and saw last were totally right up my alley, they even had little paper (1cm tall?) people cut out and put on to show the size in relation to life size that we see.

I think I have been to the Art Gallery before at a trip for primary or intermediate school, but I am not entirely certain.

It was definitely an awesome experience, that I got to have with people I love :)  We would have been there for nearly two hours looking around, and going through the different exhibit areas.  It was a very nice and chilled afternoon, having dinner out in New Market (Epsom) afterwards.

SkyWalk

I did it, and I made it out alive!!

Myself, Dylan, and Lisa- before we went up to go and do the SkyWalk.

"On the Edge", as a sort of challenge Dylan (Instructor/ Guide- he was Canadian and knew more about Auckland than we all did.)

Dylan got Lisa to come over to me and pretend to push me off the platform.

Lisa and I.

Larissa, myself, and Lisa- We had organized Lisa and I to do the skywalk together and Larissa must have been booked into do it at the same time too.  She is a german AuPair who has been here for five months, and will be here for another two.

Looking over the edge! Scary at first then I got use to it and could quite happing lean over and take a good look around the amazing city of Auckland, New Zealand.

This was an absolutely amazing experience that I got to have, I am so happy that I did it and I now and thinking of doing the SkyJump too.