And while we work hard up the mountain Jenny works hard back at home............

November comes around and we have one more week of skiing left before the mountain is closed. A blue bird day so we head up again (Alex and Angus, Olie playing cricket!) A climb to the top of Ruapehu is on the cards. A good hours climb and we make it up, well worth the hard work, the views are.....well what do you reckon?

So at the end of the week we left Ruapehu looking beautiful and Olies' smile the way it has always been!

...and of course the kids did no jumps or other dangerous activities......

Just to make Jax happy that we weren't taking the kids anywhere risky..............

First week of the school holidays Olie goes up to spend a week skiing with Briar, John and Angus. 2.30pm on the first day I get a call at work to tell me Olie has had a slight accident!! Racing Angus he wiped out and his ski tips made themselves acquainted with his front teeth! 9am the following morning he was at the dentist, 10.30 and his teeth were rebuilt almost as new. Amazing. Three days later I took him back up the mountain(BAD father!!) and we had an amazing end to the week in perfect snow conditions.

August and after one of the early big dumps I took Olie, Alex and Angus up to sample the delights of Ruapehu under a blanket! An absolutely awesome day finished off with the boys insisting on messing in the snow on the way back down.

Tempus fugit and all that... We survived the winter!! Long, cool and pretty wet. But buckets of snow up on Ruapehu. We hit a snow base of over 5m this year, normally a good year we are on about 2.5m so WOW!! did we have some snow?!!

Jenny was the only one who got some winter sun, her school choir were invited to perform in the Sydney Opera House so mid-winter she pottered off to Sydney. They had put together a musical arrangement of traditional and contemporary songs that told the story the ANZAC soldiers through the ages. An awesome arrangement which we hope to get on Youtube at some point for you all to see!

They all seemed to have a great time, they had some spare time so they did some of the Sydney beaches and the Home and Away location. Apparently they were challenged by a fellow passenger on the flight over to Sydney so they gave an impromptu performance on the plane!