Super biker Sophie takes the long road home!

Sophie beat her personal best and rode 10.6 km on Sunday!

We’d spent Sunday morning enjoying the delights of the food market in the city, but when it came to head home Dan and Sophie took to their wheels!

Charlotte and I took Alice home for her nap and had a restful hour or so, before reuniting with the amazing super biker girl Sophie and her awesome Daddy down at Lyall Bay.

Charlotte then joined them in cycling a shorter distance round to Princess Bay.

(She didn’t want to over-exert herself as she was saving her energy for the ‘magic mountain’ – Mt Ruapehu! Seeing as her school was closed for two days, Monday & Tuesday, her Dad thought it was time for a bit of a ‘father – daughter’ road trip and some real snow action!)

At Princess Bay we enjoyed a wonderful family time, gazing in awe at the snow on the Kaikoura mountain ranges on the horizon.

Charlotte took some beautiful photographs of her sister Alice and me playing in the sand and looking in the rock pools. We found a huge black-backed gull feather.

And someone had fun throwing the biggest rocks he could find into the sea to make big splashes! Ba doom! Splash!

We then took it in turns to turn the camera on each other for some family portraits (of course Alice features in all of the photos!).

First photographers’ Charlotte and Sophie take a turn each…

And then I get a go at trying to capture my lovely hubbie and his cheeky daughters in a few family pics…

Finishing up with photos from Dan of his girls…

As you can tell we had fun and enjoyed the sunshine! Such perfect weekend weather with which to recharge.

Dan and Sophie finished up by taking a walk over the rocks from Princess Bay to Houghton Bay, whilst Charlotte, Alice and I took the bikes home.

They saw a beautiful Shag sitting on the rocks, (Sophie and I were fortunate to see a fur seal the last time we climbed those rocks, which she wrote about here!).

Charlotte, Alice and I drove the bikes home and then met up with them for a final play at the local park before the sun started to dip down for the evening (It was amazing Sophie had any energy left, but she did! Incredible!).

Half the neighbourhood was at the playground, making the most of the fine weather. It’s only a few weeks till we turn our clocks forward and come fully out of hermit status for spring – whoop, whoop!