Book, bike and a train

Saturday 24th: Ruth needed to watch Asher for a bit while I got some kitchen work done. I was really pleased to see Asher happy to look at books with her. They were counting all the wheels of all the pictures.
Soon after Brendon was home from work, Rachel and Ruth headed out for a bike ride. I wanted them to wait till Brendon was home so that if they needed to be picked up, he was able to go get them.

I didn't need to worry though as they did incredibly well. They travelled the 9.2km to Waikari in just 45 minutes. Stopped for their picnic lunch, had a hot chocolate at the tea rooms and then headed home. The home trip is harder and they managed it in just 50 minutes. Well done girls.
Ruth has a Cycling Guide camp coming up in October with 25 km to ride on the Saturday and again on the Sunday. The leader rode it in 2 hours, but they plan to take 5 hours with the girls with 3 nice long stops along the way (for ice-cream, lunch and activities). So with the successful 18.4 km done today I am feeling a lot more confident about Ruth coping with it all.
Rachel sent me a text once they had arrived. Just before they were going to head back I sent a text saying she should perhaps get a selfie of the two of them. She wrote back that she had already taken one - and Ruth had commented that she is become too much like me. ;-)

I got the big lego container out while the big girls where out and it was so much fun to watch Hannah and Hezekiah playing so nicely together. They had such a great time. This was after they had already spent ages outside with wonderfully imaginative games going on. It got a bit too wet out though, so the game just moved indoors and had different props. :-)

Asher enjoyed the blocks through today too. This evening she spent quite a bit of time packing them. Either packing them away or taking them out the box to give to Ruth for her building. All the while alternating with her ball game. She has been really obsessed with her ball routine lately and is getting more and more into the habit of having at least two things going at once.

Sunday 25th: We didn't go to church this morning as it was a Parent to Parent Family Fun Day today with a trip on the Weka Pass Steam Train. Hannah had tried to get an outing with Dad on Saturday afternoon, but it was just too wet out and so she asked that they head out early this morning. It's wasn't exactly dry, but she didn't want it put off till next weekend. :-) Brendon took a great photo of them.

And then we headed off for the train ride. We had Asher's pram with as we were not sure if we would be able to get her to sit in a chair for the trip. She generally loves running in new places. So we had to wait in line with all the other wheelchairs as there was only one wheelchair ramp (and far more wheelchairs on a day like this than any other for them).

By the time we got on board there was no room for her to be in her pram anyway, so we had to take her out. We were also then too late to try and get chairs together, so we ended up on two different carriages.
At one point the organiser came around with some "morning tea". She had made sure there was a gluten free option as well as a gluten and dairy free option. I was so very thankful for her thoughtfulness. It was such a nice treat for us.

Hezekiah and Hannah sitting opposite each other.

And Rachel and Ruth just behind them.

Thankfully Brendon and I managed to find two doubles opposite each other with just one lady (her children where in the single chairs on the other side of the isle). So we managed to sit together with her. We had a lovely chat with her and we were VERY relieved that the activities that I had brought with were enough to keep Asher mostly in one place. The iPad especially helped as we started as it gave her a lot of familiarity, but she could look outside regularly too.

She played a lot with the little rings too. It was a huge relief to having her sitting in one place. Brendon and I had pictured her just running up and down the train the whole trip.
It's always fun for the children to watch them turning the engine around. They were amazed that just 3 men were able to move it.

We had thankfully managed to get a 2 double seats around a table for the return trip. This was a great help for Asher as I had some small puzzles with which she (and Hezekiah) enjoyed building.

I had told Hannah that we could spend a bit of time on the open carriage on the return trip, so we headed down.

Hannah stayed for a while and had a great time. I went back to suggest that we bring Asher out for a bit. She loved the rain on her face. We asked a fellow passenger to take a photo - so it was nice to get a family photo from the trip.

Just after we got back to our chairs, Asher had a 1 minute Tonic Clonic seizure. Her mouth went quite blue, so I was really thankful that it stopped so quickly.

Rachel and I then headed out to birthday party that she had been invited to. We enjoyed the extra time we got to chat on the trip there and back.