Blogger Recognition Award

Well I have now been tagged in the same tag a grand total of twice. :O This tag really is making the rounds of the blogosphere!

I was tagged by Lexi (Times and Seasons of a Beautiful Life) and Paige (Paige's Pages). Go check out the blogs of these lovely ladies! :)

In between my answers to the requirements, I'm going to be inserting some photos of my siblings playing on the trampoline. Because trampolines are awesome.

The Tag Rules (because all blog tags have rules, right?!)
❤ Thank the blogger who nominated you. THANKS LEXI AND PAIGE!!!!
❤ Tell a little bit about how you started blogging.
❤ Give two pieces of advice for new bloggers.
❤ Nominate 15 other bloggers.

How my little blog started:
So I had some friends who blogged. (Their blogs are here, here, here, and here, if you're interested!) After reading/stalking their blogs for a while, I decided to bite the bullet and give it a go (I'm never one to miss out on fun for long...). I created my blog in January 2013 which means next January is my four year blogiversary! I've never stopped blogging for long. The longest break was, I think, the three week break when I went to China last year.

If you want to find out more about how my blog began and why it is still continuing, feel free to have a read here.

Advice for new bloggers #1:

Don't try to make your blog into something that you are not. Let it reflect you. Let it reflect your personality, your life. Don't try and copy other people's blogs because your blog should be a reflection on you, not on other people! :)

Sure, allow other people and their blogs to influence you. But stay true to yourself.

If you try to make your blog something that you are not, it will feel forced. You will rob yourself of much of the joy in blogging!

Don't let other people tell you how you should blog. Listen to them politely and weigh up what they are saying. If it's helpful, keep it. If not, continue to do you.

Advice for new bloggers #2:

Interact with other bloggers! :)

This is super important. If you just write a blog but don't bother about interacting with commenters, commenting on other people's blogs and finding new blogs, you'll be living in a pretty stagnant corner of the blogging world. Besides, meeting new people is a good way to get more followers yourself. Plenty of people will follow you back if you start interacting with them.

Finding other awesome blogs is super easy. Just go to a random blog (like mine - it's easy because you're already here! :) ) and dive down the rabbit hole! Go through the list of followers or read the post/page comments and click on the blogger's names. Read their blogs and find their followers and commenters and continue the process until you find a (or several!) blog you're interested in.

When you find a new blog you like, comment on their 'about' page or one of their recent posts and introduce yourself. Follow their blog and tell them you have. Everyone is thrilled when more people start following and commenting. You make someone else thrilled and you've found a new person who will potentially start reading your blog, too. Everyone wins!

Nominations

Well actually I'm not going to nominate anyone. I feel like most of my bloggy friends who would do it have already been tagged.

Unless you want to do it... in which case GO FOR IT! And in that case.....

Hope you guys are having a nice life! ❤

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Photo Dump: Dugout, Cute Children + Chickens

I was thinking it must be time I shared some photos. These were all taken recently (by me unless specified). Enjoy! 

You know you're from a big family when....

You're never lonely... or alone.
There's always someone to play with, practice card tricks on, tickle, tease, read stories to and go crazy with. However, get used to the fact that you're not alone very often!

You're really good at sharing.
And knowing exactly how many pieces to cut things into. Twelve people = four oranges and everyone gets a third each. Twelve people = five croissants so everyone gets half each apart from the two people who aren't home today... what they don't know can't hurt them. :P

Family Holiday 2016

Good morning!

I have some sad news to share with you first of all. My Grandma (Dad's Mum) passed away on Monday night. We'll be heading down to the bottom of New Zealand for the funeral (held on Friday) today then spending time with relatives for the weekend.
We'd appreciate your prayers for both our family and the extended family at this time! Thank you so much.

*the rest of this post was written a few days ago*

Today I'll be sharing with you the photos from our family holiday to Hokitika and Picton. These are my favourite ones from my cellphone. The photos from our family camera are yet to be uploaded to the computer cos life has been hectic (as I am sure you can imagine) but when they turn up we'll see if I will share some of those too in the near future.

Here's Dad, trying to pack all of our stuff into the van before we left. We have rather a lot of *necessary* stuff. But it all must go in somehow!

These two aren't helping much!! :P

We're off, driving over Porter's Pass and Arthur's Pass to get to Hokitika.

A rest stop in the Arthur's Pass township.

We're there! Having lots of fun at Lake Kaniere. We stayed in a little house not far from the lake. (Lake Kaniere is about fifteen km from Hokitika township). Caleb's in the canoe, the motor boat is manned by some other random person.

Daddy the frog-man... 

Fun fact: Dad loved snorkelling and yachting in his younger days. He was also a fully qualified amateur radio person which means he had to learn morse code, which he still knows.

We went for a walk to Dorothy Falls

Here's my family by Dorothy Falls! I'm taking the photo, hence why I'm not in it :P

Up the Water Race track

What's a good way to get a photo of everyone, including the photographer? Selfie of course! 

There was some lovely native bush around the house where we stayed. (And lots of sandflies, surprisingly.)

Here's Ben and Johnny in one of their rare 'They agreed to pose for the camera!' moments

Sophie by the lake

Danella by the lake

Launching our little Optimist yacht a friend gave us

Look at this cutie! Jana is such a water rat. She LOVES the water!

*sings* I am saiiiiling....

Daddy in the dinghy (hey that was some cool alliteration)

We watched the sun set from Hokitika beach one evening. Now, Hokitika has an annual sand and driftwood sculpture competition every year. The hand in the picture was from the competition. Someone made it out of driftwood. Can you say, 'talent'? :) It looked cool in front of the sun going down.

See the size of that dragonfly???

Now we're on to our Picton photos. We drove home from Hokitika, spent a night back home then headed off the next day for Picton on the Saturday of Waitangi weekend. This photo shows some of us at the railway station, watching the trains.

We spent some time on the foreshore of the Picton waterfront. It's a lovely spot. They had this pond where you could sail little boats.

Jacob and his boat

They have all sorts of interesting things on the waterfront!

One of the things we did in Picton was a 45 minute walk to Barne's Dam. It's a pretty impressive dam and a beautiful bushwalk.

The dam wall is really high

A beautiful sunset one night from the window of the house we stayed in  (a friend's holiday home)

All of us except Mum and Jana went on a boat ride out to Ship's Cove, which is where Captain Cook landed when he arrived in New Zealand. It's a beautiful cove in the Queen Charlotte Sound.

It was drizzling with rain but still a lovely stop at the cove

Really interesting

The boat

Cove view from the jetty

I saw two adult oystercatcher birds with their two little babies. The babies are about one third of the way from the top of the image. They were covered in grey fluff and were so cute! The adults did not want me going anywhere near their precious babies. :)

On the boat again - a sister selfie!

Oh look, there's the ferry coming in! (The ferry goes between the North and South Islands of New Zealand, from Picton to Wellington.

And that's that... hope you enjoyed the photos!