Day 17 Wellington, New Zealand

This is the colossal squid they have on display in the huge tank at the museum.
This is Enoch and Ezra designing their own squid on the touch screen. Each time we have gone back to the museum they check their squid to see what it has been up to. Very Fun!

this is Ethne trying to turn the tentacle hook around. It feels just like a real one. Very much like squishy rubber with sharpened bone.

Ethne feeling the beak.

Garrett has started working this week-so as of yesterday he is working full time now which is 50 hours a week. This means we really have no more time to look for housing and do a lot of things. We only have the one loaner car that Garrett takes to work while the kids and I who are downtown have access to lots to do on foot. Today we walked over to the museum for the first time yet and had a lovely day learning about birds and sea life including colossal squid. We learned that they have beaks and that their tentacles have hooks on the end. We got to study a giant squid that was in a tank preserved in some kind of fluid. The beak was preserved and the eggs they found inside telling them it was a female were preserved and so was one of the tentacles. I have pictures of the kids doing a few of these things if they will work I will post them. We brought PBJ's and had a Serene lunch outdoors in their little gardens. It feels rather like a big tree house out there. very fun. After that we came home and since Ethne had fallen asleep in the stroller on the walk home so I transferred her to bed and had delusions of sleeping while the other kids slept as well. Enoch and Ezra were hungry again so after they ate I put them down for a nap and Enoch fell right to sleep. I curled up on the couch outside their door with my new book "The Song of the Cardinal" and hoped to fall asleep after reading for a few minutes. Ezra decided to not go to sleep and instead torment Enoch and I by coming out of his room banging on walls,, playing with things that made loud noises, etc...SO no nap but Enoch did get to sleep for about 1/2 and hour before Ezra woke him up so that was good.

When Ethne woke up the cleaning crew finally decided to show up for the first time in 3 days and we went down stairs and tried to put the laundry in but of course it was full seeing as how there is only ONE washer. We waited for a little while until the cleaning people were finished and then went back into our clean rooms to find something to do indoors since it was raining. We pulled out the kids "Animal Sequence" game and played a few rounds. The kids had a great time because we were actually spending some fun time together and that made us all happy :) Next I got out the kids "hard Animals" (their Schleich animals) and they played while I made dinner-heated it up rather. We had some smoked white fish chowder with noodles and sliced apples. Not exactly what I would have put together normally but the kids LOVED IT!! I was hoping for some crunchy bread instead of noodles but Garrett did the grocery shopping :)

Garrett got home kind of late but the kids were obedient and happy today and so it was an awesome day. LOVE THAT! Now Garrett and I are going to plan our Christmas vacation.

Goodnight!