Hi,
What a marvellous weekend. It all started horribly too. Mike pulled me aside at about 1400 on Friday and said his project was turning to worms and he might need to work all weekend. Not only that, but because we had committments to drive people up, I'd still need to go with Toby. Yikes!
So, I went to collect Toby from soccer and saw the last 10 minutes of his game. It was the play off for third place in his league. And they won 2 - nil. His team got third place! Hooray. They have a trophy but Toby seemed much happier getting the Freddo Frog chocolate.
Then we drove back to work and Toby coloured-in for a while until I had to leave to collect strangers to take them up to Ruapehu. Mike managed to avoid the need to work over the weekend and he drove up behind us (2 hours or so behind) in the little green car. I drove two people up and was very pleased that Toby was his sparkling best and provided almost continous questions all the way up to the mountain. He was the only one of our passengers that didn't fall into a coma.
We found a room to ourselves in the lodge and we got ready for bed. Toby was so excited and when Mike texted he was there Toby leapt out of bed to find him. By the time I guided Mike up the hill to the lodge Toby had conned someone into making him a hot Milo. How does he do that?
Next morning was very wet and misty and Mike's summit bid was called off. So Mike joined us on our easy tramp. Toby got it in his head that rain meant sitting in the lodge playing his DS Lite all day. He was most put out by having to wear wet weather gear and start tramping through forest. Because of the conditions our tramp was changed too. We walked through lovely beech forest instead of exposed saddles. Toby took about 30 minutes to stop yelling and moaning, and another 30 minutes to start enjoying it. It stopped raining by about then and Toby enjoyed the rest of the 4 hour tramp immensely. He was quite a bit slower than the rest of our group and we split up before lunch and the Gilbert trio became our own tramping group. That was the key for Toby to fire up his imagination and Man Vs Wild became the order of the day. I think it reached its zenith when Mike pretended to eat a bug and popped a bobbly looking twig into his mouth and munched it. Toby's eyes nearly popped out of his head. The rest of it Toby seemed to be the camera crew for Mike's attempt to tame the Wild. It involved lots of quicksand and bugs.
We got back and I read my book in bed and snoozed until dinner. Toby wasn't hungry as he and Tom (an 8 year old along too) had scoffed an entire packet of chocolate girl guide cookies.
Next morning we packed up and cleaned. Toby was excellent luxing and mopping everywhere. We took off (after buying Toby a helmet for the ski season) and Toby and I were in the wee green car and Mike was driving the not-quite-so-much-strangers to the venue for the next walk. We walked up the Old Coach Road outside Ohakune (drive up Old Station Road and Marshalls Rad to the start of the walk) and it was lovely. There is an old viaduct for the train line and the walk across that was great. Toby loved this walk and Mike and the two boys beat me back by 6.5 minutes (I was chasing hard after them - but they were running). We have to go here again and again. Easy, lovely walk.
Toby and I drove back to Wellington with a stop at the Levin Adventure Park. The best thing was the hamster wheel we ran inside. Toby thought it was hilarious.
We all crashed into bed early.
Have a great week.
Love,
Angela
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