Bye bye Grandad

Sad news last week when my grandfather "Tom" passed away. He had a great full life and was 93 so it was expected but still sad none the less. We headed down to the funeral in Milton (just past Dunedin) on the weekend stopping at Christchurch on the way. We took the ferry across which was really exciting for the boys and then headed to Chch. It was wonderful to see Uncle Austin and Aunty Liz who the boys adored, they spent most of the time asking Austin to play in his race-cars (which he did) and we had a great time. Adrian also managed to take the boys to the museum in Chch on Sunday afternoon (I remember sitting on this horse when I was a girl - pic right) before we had a bbq with Uncle Peter, Aunty Judy and Uncle Michael.

Monday we headed down to Milton stopping along the way in Ashburton which had a great playground including a huge castle that Tom fell badly flat on his face and when he took his hand away from his face it was covered in blood, thoughts of spending the day at the hospital fixing broken noses flashed through our minds but these boys are so bullet proof after a bit of bleeding it was all fine and we headed south again. As we drove away Jack turned to Tom and said “are you ok now?”, “yeah” said Tom, “have you stopped bleeding now?”, “yeah” said Tom, “that’s good” said Jack – we’d forgotten he would be frightened by it all! Next stop was Moeraki to see the boulders which was lovely but much more exciting was finding a sting ray that had been washed up on the beach.


Once we arrived in Milton it was wonderful to catch up with all the family including my grandmother (Nanny Nora) and my Uncles Karl and Peter, Aunty Val and Aunty Sandy and my cousin Fiona and her daughter Jordan, Colin, Tange, Rocky, TJ and Nikia. The boys also loved staying in a motel and loved the spa bath!


Tuesday was the funeral (and also my grandmother’s birthday) and it all went really well, I was very brave along with my cousin Fiona and we did our speeches on behalf of the grandchildren and we were also pallbearers so I think grandad would have been very proud of us! The boys were fascinated with it all and still haven't worked out why "my grandad got into the box". Tom was convinced they were talking about him the whole time and was very upset when it was over and he didn't get to a "turn to tell a story". We then had a lovely afternoon tea and Tom and Jack loved the cake and treats and turned to Adrian saying "this is a great party daddy" (my grandmother loved that!).


We said our goodbyes to everyone on Tuesday and headed back to Chch for the night before heading off to the ferry again on Thursday. The boys did exceptionally well considering all the hours of driving and absolutely loved seeing all the family and being the centre of attention! We had such a lovely time with all the family, thanks so much to everyone who housed us, fed us, cleaned up after us and played tea parties and eye-spy X