Those two dots on the left are my Water Babies.  Swimming and watching some learner kite surfers.

Perfect tidal pools, and little ‘islands’ as they called them.

Love it.

And have you read The Water-Babies, A Fairy Tale for a Land Baby, by Charles Kingsley?  It is quite lovely, and imaginative.  Some of the most memorable illustrations I’ve ever come across, just give it a google.

I love a bit of wild play, especially at the beach.

My family moved from Auckland to Snells Beach when I was 11, and I spent many, many hours at this beach.  Safe for littlees to swim anytime, shells, trees, sand.

The kids and I went for an early morning beach walk, after breakfast with mum.  One of the characteristics of Snells Beach is how far the tide goes out, leaving tidal pools to explore and rocks to climb.  That’s Kawau Island in the distance.

The beach has changed dramatically since I was a child, is was mostly sandy, with the occassional patch of eel grass – which the parore or the black snapper eat.  Now the beach is almost covered by the weed.  I used to help my poppa put out and empty the net of fish when I was little, stunning, gutting fish and cleaning the net.  I know this beach well.

The population grows, run off from streets and houses increases, effecting the ecology of the bay.  I even found a mangrove seed putting down roots, or at least attempting to.

Environmental changes aside, it was a great morning of exploration for Luna and Blake!

All the usual suspects.

Yes, this is a juvenile flounder, we followed it for a while.  The tidal pools are full of small fish.

Beautiful.

The last few visits to mums’ were during the school holidays, and I was astounded that whenever we went to the beach, which was at high tide everyday, and the occasional low tide walk, there were almost no children (or adults actually) to be seen.  I wonder where the children are?  Inside?  In school holiday programs?  Another reminder for me to get out doors, and get my kids out too, we all get on better with all that space and freedom for creative play.

(The kids and) I love building huts and nests, with a few stormy days there was a wash up of palm leaves on Pt Chev beach, so we quickly gathered them all and whipped up a beach hut, fun times!  We are really fortunate to be just a few minutes drive from a beach, although it’s an inner harbour beach, it’s still worth a visit, we’ve been most days and is a perfect little outing after dinner when there’s a bit of energy to burn off.

Luna collected Pohutukawa blossoms, and fresh pine needles, and it’s perfect.  I even got to bust out some of my long forgotten weaving skills, this was still there a few days after, for summer and sunshine!

And those blossoms…

Lots of photos… not many words.  We’ve taken few days out to spend time with Rob’s parents and this time the weather has been kind to us!  Phew no ‘trapped-in-doors-with-small-children’ days.  Just warm sun, cool, cool nights and morning frost, as you have seen already.  Good times to get the girls out and take some happy snaps.

No shipping containers this time…  just icy water and warm sun.

Kids in bare feet can you believe it!  It was freezing today.

Wheel shells.

I just wish I had my sewing machine *sigh* it could be a tad unsociable though I suppose.

Great day for the beach!

Freezing though.

Check out these rusty old steps.. the dune has worn away heaps.

Good times.

Sea stars!  Luna got into a bit of drawing at Piha today, shouting (and dancing) “I did it!”

We all got into it…

In the rock pools, chitons…

Barnacles… tiny muscles and blue snails.

We’re pretty lucky here, we live just 5 minutes drive from a beach, it’s a city harbour beach, and it’s one of our favourite places to go after dinner to see the sun go down.  We had some heavy cloudy days last week, with thunder and showers.  It all makes for a moody looking harbour.

Besides watching the gulls, Luna set-to and immediately began collecting wood to build a fire.  She had a good plan, the wood was accompanied by some green sea weed, there had been a bit of a wash up of wood and weed after the storms.

And a couple of spare crab nippers.

I’m so very grateful to live so close to a beach, and that we have the time and space in our lives to go there and just wander it.  Or build fires and huge sandcastles.  This kind of play opens up converstaions too, we are all learning the names of more shells, about ecology, and have talked about collecting wood for our fire before winter comes, what you need to build a fire…

This is one of my favourite times of the day, I love the beach, and there’s something healing about watching the sunset.

I have been reading here and there about the benefits of keeping toys to a minimum, choosing toys that are simple, and keeping play fairly unstructured.  I’ve never really liked single use toys, or educational toys (that sing the alphabet, count to ten or whatever..) so things have kind of just worked that way with us, though we have been gifted so many toys, I try and limit the plastic, and gendered toys (Disney Princesses and the like) we have made some of our own toys, and picked up some good old second hand blocks and so on over time.  Though, I do still feel there is too much, and I think there probably will always be.

And the books… don’t even start!  But that is another story, and don’t mention my toys…

When you have a small person that occassionlly rises before six am, you get to see some beautiful sunrises.

Today was no exception, though I was outside Auckland and could take in a sea view of sun up.

With coffee.

I know it’s obvious, but sea stars are some of my favourite animals.

So while Luna was after as many green lipped mussels she could cram into her hat, I was oooh-ing and aaaah-ing about some stunning sea stars.

Look how many they are?  They were just amazing, lots of little (and *cough* big) getting up close with these babies.  Each was unique, their colours so varied.  They felt like jeweled reptiles to touch, and I remembered what a deadly predator they are, exuding their stomachs onto their victim, then slowly digesting them…  I’m glad I’m not a mollusc.

This one was mauve!

So many, oozing and squeezing into the rocks.

Really, there is so much to explore and see at the beach.  A good day at Piha is completely exhausting for us all, clean water and life in and around the rocks.

A bit too wild for swimming in the sea for the little ones, though we found a perfect tidal pool, complete with tiny fish.

Luna is really keen on green lipped mussels just now, and she was bagging any she could find.  After a converstation about only taking empties with us, and remembering that there was an animal inside the shells, we reduced the risk of finding smelly shells in the back yard.

And limpets!  Luna found these ones.

Beautiful day.

Watching the waves.

Sand and space.

Happy new year!

You might have been following what has been called our worst maritime disaster, the container ship MV Rena ran aground in October, resutling in oil slicks, damage to marine life debris washing up on beaches..

A couple of days ago the ship broke apart, and there were reports of containers washing up on Waihi Beach.  We were staying not far off so it was something to see.  See that pile up there ^ bits of wood, a sack of milk powder and sachets of instant rice, gross!  The sack of milk powder is covered in oil, on such a pristine beach, brought me to tears.  The scale of pollution was overwhelming.

The next day we were heading home so stopped off to see how things were going..  I was very impressed to see the clean up was thorough.  The thing is, I wanted to help, with two littlees in tow, it was not practical, nor did I have any gloves, or somewhere to put the stuff!  It went from this:

to this

and this

to this

Hard to believe it was so long ago now, and we are seeing wash up and pollution as far north as Waihi Beach, and dissapointing to hear that the ship is still leaking oil.