Easter Weekend

Term One ended on Thursday and the holiday season began on Good Friday - 3 April! 

Tony had heard about a fun family bike ride along the Rimutaka Rail Trail so we borrowed a bike from the Watsons and hit the trail for ourselves.

It was an absolutely stunning day! Sunshine, no wind, the smell of pine... stunning indeed!

 We were all trucking along just fine until - PSHHHH! My front tyre blew! 

 Good thing Tony had his kit and we weren't on a tight time schedule... he did manage to repair the puncture without even taking the wheel off! He's amazing!

  We managed to make it to the summit and then the big adventure through the dark train tunnel...

Woot Woot... we made it through the tunnel... and started back on the way back... it was a gentle downhill ride which suited tired Helena just fine. Seriously, it was a pretty long ride for that little determined one - the only one without gears on her bike. All was going well until... PSHHHHHH! The same tyre got another puncture! This time we didn't have anymore gas to blow it up and nobody seemed to have a tyre pump so Tony, thinking it was only about a kilometre from the car, offered to walk the bike while I rode back with the kids. That was a slight miscalculation... it was actually over 3 km! But again - amazing Tony made it back to the car and we were on our way to enjoy dinner with friends. 

 Anthony & Tania Watson have a wood-fire pizza oven and they're always keen to have friends come over to use it. Anthony showed us how to make our own masterpieces, then he cooked them up and we all gobbled up the most tasty pizzas ever!

Good Friday was indeed good!

On Saturday, we joined up with a bunch of folks from ARISE to pass out hot cross buns around the Strathmore Breakfast Club area - which ended up including a few streets near our home. We partnered up with Alana LeHeux and Carmin Peters and a few others to pass out tangible goodness to our neighbours. It turns out that a couple of houses share an elevator to get up to the top of the hill where their doors are - so they let a few of us have a go! Just a bonus...

On Easter Sunday, we got up early for the Sonrise Service at Mt Vic. This year it was ARISE's turn to host the annual interdenominational event. Ps Ben preached a great message and in typical Arise fashion, we served hot cross buns and coffee with a fantastic People Care team.

 Sunday's services were excellent.

We took Julieth & Tatianna with us... which was special!

 I had wanted to do the Whittaker's Egg Hunt, but we got a bit distracted and in the end we missed it... oops - next year!

  

 Easter Monday was off to an early start for Tony and some of the ARISE cyclists - but worth it!

 A bit later the Burrows bunch came over for some quality time together. I guess this is what 'cousins' do, eh!? 

This was a great weekend - in fact, the holiday didn't end here - Tony had two weeks of 'Long Service Leave' so he had a bit of time to see the kids while getting his reading done.