Winter is a welcome holiday for us Extrava-gangsters. We fill it with buying stock, preparing our shop, maintaining our truck and for our family, making our new shows and practicing them. Not to mention going to school. Well sort of a holiday! The boys had their first day at school and it turned out… they loved it! Mean while I was loving being back at Rudolf Steiner my old school. It was great to see all my friends again, they welcomed me back with open arms and hearts. I had a lovely time.

To begin with we stayed at kina beach. We said goodbye to last seasons shows with a ceremony involving throwing our end of season bouquets flower by flower in to the ocean.

After a couple of weeks we moved to Marchwood park (motor caravan camp ground).

Soon my birthday appeared on the agenda, so we planned a pretty primo party. It involved most of my class taking the ferry from Mapua to Rabbit island with our bikes. We then cycled along the trail to meet up with Mim (our truck) where Mum had set up a party. We ate, played and partied for the afternoon finishing by cycling back to the ferry.

A month later Mum’s birthday came around. We decided to do something special with her. We packed up the car and headed to Golden bay to walk into Wharawharangi hut for a night. Mum and day had their usual mid winter swim in their birthday suits! We lit a fire on the beach (below the high tide line), toasted marshmallows and had a wonderful time. Happy birthday Mum!

A few weeks later we were back in Golden bay for the school holidays, this time with our truck. Daisy beach and Wharawhariki beach were the highlights of our trip.

 

Over the five months in Motueka I enjoyed weekly Dance and Drama classes.

A lot of thought and practice went into our new magic show. Dad and I took Latin dance classes. Poor Daddy!

We also practiced our family circus show about three times a week which was not always easy outdoors in winter.

In September as a late combined birthday present Mum and I flew to Auckland to see in spark arena………… P!nk!!!!!! It was the most inspirational, sensational, performance I have ever seen! She is such a strong amazing woman.

With the end of winter came my school play and my Drama class play. Both high on my list of priorities as when I grow up I would like to become an actor. The school play was a stunning success (surprisingly as we wrote it ourselves). It had me staring as Julia the love struck roman princess. The title was Ludus Roma (roman play). Thank you to all my classmates and our devoted teacher Margot.

In my Drama class play we all got to create our own characters. My character was the sassy Clarissa De Vain, a detective.

The play turned out to be fabulous. The last performance was the night before set up in Christchurch, a tight squeeze. After the play at 9pm we drove the two hours to Murchison, stayed in a cabin then continued with the four hour drive to Christchurch for setup.

Whew what a busy winter! Now back to the Extravaganza. Bye!

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