Sunshine returns

A night at the races
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31st March - Saturday

We wake up to sunshine, what a relief!  The day is spent lazily, wandering around Tauranga town, and letting Matthew run off some steam at the local park.  The routine is working well, and me, Matthew, and Lloyd get a good nap in the afternoon.  In the evening we hit the "Speedway", and go watch some stock car racing.  It is an excellent night out, finished off with a spectacular fireworks show which puts Southend's fireworks to shame.  Lloyd was excellent, fascinated with the cars, and the noise.  We covered his ears during the fireworks, and checked to make sure he hadnt gone death afterwards!!

watch some stock car racing

Us in our tent
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Matthew did get bored after a while, but once we let him play on the floor with his glo-stick we bought him he was fine.  You have to remind yourself that you can enjoy things without Matthew having to enjoy them also sometimes.  It is easy to get frustrated if he doesnt want to join in with what we like, but he is only a toddler with a short attention span.  So once we let him do his own thing he was fine, and me and Steve had an excellent time.

1st April - Sunday

Chasing waves
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Again it is good weather, though a little overcast.  Feels warm though, warm enough to take a dip in the sea.  So that's what we do, Matthew and me chase some waves for a while.  We are parked a few metres from the beach so is easy to go back and forth to van for gear.  We get the sun tent out, park ourselves, and Steve takes off for a while to find out about fishing.  We must have spent 3 hours or so on the beach, is great in the sun tent as protects LLoyd completely and keeps the sea breeze off.  Matthew falls asleep as soon as we put him in the pram on our return!

We were thinking about moving on today, but Steve has now found a fishing spot, so we look set to stay a while.  I'm not bothered, there is so much to do here I could stay here for the next 3 weeks.  The Bay of Plenty is a lovely place, and Tauranga and the Mount are great towns.  I can quite see why so many people are moving to this part of New Zealand.