Johanna

Last week was the school holidays and we had my cousin Johanna, who is 11, come stay with us.  She is one of my 5 cousins on my Dad's side (plus 1 more that we never really knew about, and ex-spouse's children who aren't really "legitimate", if you know what I mean, so we don't count them).  My Dad only has 3 sibblings, and each only have 1 or 2 kids, so it means there aren't really very many Bruntons out there, except our hord of course.  So it was really cool to have her come and stay.  She's such a great kid. Has had to grow up faster then she should have, and knows things 11 year olds shouldn't, but man is she awesome.  So helpful and polite, but still managed to let her hairdown and have a blast.  We stayed up late eating junk and watching movies, had endless phase10 battles, baked, went swimming, went walking, and just had fun.  She's already told her Dad that she wants to come back every school holidays.  Most of the pictures are on her camera, but here are some of the ones I took.

We had a picnic with all the kidie winks of one of the unseasonally warm winter days. Most of the picnic food that us mummys worked so hard to make ended up being fed to the ducks, and we had a few munchkins make a break for the water.  But it was a really great way to spend a morning.









Johanna made huts and beds and all sorts of cool things for Malachi.  He just adored her. He kept saying to her "Johanna you're my big cousin and I love you." And after a day, Vili was all over her.





We did a ton of baking.



We went out to the temple to see it at night. Johanna had been there to see us come out after our weddings, but it looks cool at night. Then we stopped at McD's for icecreams, only to discover the had $1 cheeseburgers, so it was icecream AND cheeseburgers for dessert.







We went to Te Awamutu to these awesome pools.  It was so good, super warm.  After wards we ate lunch at some gardens down the road.











We had a dessert night with all the fam bam.  Other then our weddings, it was the first time Johanna actually met most of us, that she can remember.  So that was nice.  She was so excited to see everyone, kept making sure that we were all coming etc.





We took Johanna to the Museum, now that we're recently acquainted with it.  She didn't appreciate the woolen garden as much as the munchkins, but she could actually read and I didn't have to worry about holding her hand, so it was good.





It was so good having her stay.  I'm a firm believer in family relationships, infact I'm hoping to have our first Brunton Family Reunion in the next year.  So it was really nice to have another Brunton around for a week.