February - March 2002

Happy Birthday Lydia!
Lydia celebrated her very first birthday on 19 March 2002. We can't believe how quickly her first year has gone - and what a wonderful year it has been!

We threw her a big party two days earlier on St Patricks Day. We hired out the clubhouse at the domain just down the road from where we live. It was a great venue, ideal for a kids party with plenty of room for them to run around, and a great playgym with swings etc close by. We took along some climbing gyms, tents and kiddy cars for the children to play on and we put on a barbeque lunch for the grownups.

It was quite a turnout with 27 adults and 19 children (ranging in age from 6 weeks to 7 years). We couldn't resist dressing Lydia up for the occasion in this gorgous pink fairy dress which made her look quite the party princess!

A clown called BJ came and did a great job entertaining the children with magic tricks, a ventriloquist act and giving them all funny balloon animals. Lydia was fascinated by the clown and watched him from the safety of her Daddy's lap for quite some time, before going off exploring, at one point amusing us greatly by diving headfirst into one of the kiddy cars!

After that we finished the day with a big "Happy Birthday to you" as we cut Lydia's special Teletubby birthday cake (made specially for her by her Mummy) - the cake was popular with the kiddies and quickly disappeared! It was a great day which everyone seemed to enjoy!


BJ plays some games with Ashley


Lydia's serenaded by a balloon guitar!


It's fun with Daddy!


"Lets see what speed this can do!"


"Is this the way to get in?"


Cutting the Tubby cake
Lance and Pers' Wedding Day!
On Saturday 9th March we were thrilled to attend the long awaited marriage of our good friends Lance and Pers. The wedding ceremony took place at the Wintergardens in Auckland Domain - a beautiful backdrop which truly shone in the fabulous sunny weather that Auckland turned on for them! Lance looked nervous and excited as he stood alongside his 3 groomsmen (Murray, Mike and Alan) and his mother Pat (who performed the ceremony for them). Pers of course looked stunning as she appeared after her bridesmaids and gorgeous flowergirl, hand in hand with her mother. The ceremony was wonderful and we all clapped and blew bubbles (!) as they were announced for the first time as Mr and Mrs Roskilly!
After some group photos we met up with our friends again down at a bar in the America's Cup village while the formal photos were being taken.

It wasn't long before it was time to board the M.V. Osprey for a fantastic reception cruise around the Auckland harbour. We all had a ball, ate a delicious meal, and danced up a storm on the upper deck as the ferry cruised alongside the nightspots on the waters edge of downtown, which really added to the great atmosphere on the boat!

We had a wonderful time thanks, Lance and Pers, best of luck in your new life together as husband and wife!
Welcome to the World little Liam!

On 7 February 2002 Brent's cousin Owen and his wife Jo were delighted to announce the safe arrival of their bouncing baby boy, Liam Claud MacKinnon, weighing in at a very healthy 7lb 15oz. I visited them with Lydia later in February and Jo seemed to be coping admirably with the broken sleep and constant feeding, winding, changing, settling that goes with these little treasures in those early weeks! [I looked at Lydia and appreciated just how easy she is to look after now - and realised how much bigger she is!].

Congratulations Owen and Jo on your handsome little charmer, and best of luck in the months ahead!
Lydia's Week of Fame

The last week of February proved to be a high profile week for our photogenic little daughter!

Six weeks earlier, Lydia had posed for her first modelling job in the Farmers catalogue, and it was this week that the catalogue was distributed around New Zealand! [For those of you overseas, Farmers is a national retail chain, similar to perhaps Coles Myer in Australia]. She had to pose in this very naff pink outfit, together with a little boy of the same age, and she'd done pretty well, staying put where she was supposed to, and smiling occasionally while the little boy kept crawling off and putting his hand in his mouth. In the end, the photo they used wasn't such a great one of Lydia, but at least they were sitting together!
We were surprised to find out that a photo of Lydia was also in the Woman's Day (NZ's largest selling woman's magazine) that same week! A couple of weeks earlier I had emailed in a picture we had taken of Lydia (on the beach up North) into the magazine [I've never done this before, of course, its just that one day I saw a very average photo of a baby in the magazine and thought "I've got better photos than that of Lydia!"]. I had forgotten all about having sent it, so was very surprised when I found out that she was in there! Needless to say, sales of the magazine must have increased somewhat with all our friends and relatives rushing out to buy themselves a copy!


Farmers Catalogue


Woman's Day magazine (NZ issue)
 

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