The summer continues

The weather has been so good this summer, mostly sunny and warm, good beach weather- good flying weather LOL.
Yes, I had another flying lesson again today, still revising, but it's going better than I thought it would. This instructor today had me flying over the hills behind where we live, it was just so beautiful- I tried to take it all in- the hills, the bush, blue sky etc, but I was busy trying to fly the plane too LOL so missed seeing all I wanted to. This picture is of the island we flew around last week.
This is one of the valleys we flew through today- just behind where I live is a range of hills that are about 1500m (about 4-5000 feet) high but this is a lower valley not far from town.

These are the hills- they're very pretty, quite forbidding, and trampers are frequently caught out by weather changeds when tramping here- some lives are lost every year. Much better to fly over them!

I Flew!

Yay for the first time in a year I had a proper flying lesson today! I was nervous, that's for sure, and pretty rusty and had forgotten some things but it actually went better than I thought it would. For most of it I had fun too- until we came to finals and the landing! Then I got stressed- that runway comes up pretty fast! However I enjoyed the rest of it, including trying to get the plane to stall (all part of the training) and flying through some turbulence. The instructor also took control and flew us behind the Island off our coast- we got to fly below the level of the summit just out to sea, so I got a great view of the cliffs and the bush.
Andrew goes for his second trial flight in the helicopter tomorrow- and guess who gets to pay for it! That young man has got to get a proper job fast!

Lovely Day

Well my "baby" Andrew is 20 today! No more teens left! To celebrate we went flying. The weather was just fantastic today. Alex who I work with, took us for a flight into Wellington, which is a very busy domestic airport. They even made an airforce 757 wait for us to land before clearing it to take off! Wellington Harbour just looked glorious today, very pretty. We flew back to Paraparaumu along the coast. Then in the afternoon I paid for Andrew to have a trial flight in a helicopter. He loved it, and wants to go for another flight again soon. To finish off, we had BBQ for tea.
Very nice day!

Happy New Year!

Had a busy New Year weekend, my friend Gwen stayed, she came Friday after work. Saturday night (new year's eve) I looked after Kaya and Anahera. So much easier with 2 of us. We took them to the beach in the evening, then they helped take down the Christmas decorations. On Sunday morning we took them to McD's for brekfast, then to visit my mum, then back to the beach for a swim before dropping them home. Gwen and I then packed and we went away for 2 nights. We stayed in an old cottage on a farm over in Hawkes bay, we had a lovely relaxing 2 days.
Back at work again, sigh!