Location

For this short two week housesit we were located just around the corner from my family’s house in Raumati South. This was really convenient for christmas day and catching up with everyone. Raumati Beach is a lovely little village on the Kapiti Coast.

Pets/House

On this housesit we had the privilege of looking after Holly, a sweet little Cocker Spaniel. Holly had a soft yet big personality and loved human affection. She would follow us around the house wherever we went, then lay down and wait. As soon as we left the room a pat pat pat could be heard as she followed us to the next room, it was very cute! Her favourite game to play was fetch with the tennis ball. She would bring the ball over and drop it about a metre away, then sit back and wait patienly until we noticed. As soon as we picked it up she would start bouncing around in excitement and chase it down the driveway at top speed. Some of our fondest memories of her was when we got home after being out and she would jump around doing twists in the air because she was so excited to have us home. A dogs love and loyalty is a beautiful thing. Although Holly loved humans, she was not so keen on other dogs and would vocalise that clearly.

What we Did

Being the christmas season we did a couple of christmas related activities. The first thing we did was go around and look at christmas lights. It’s a tradition we do every year and its very magical to experience peoples gardens decorated with christmas themed lights.

James has been asking to make a gingerbread house for years and we finally got to this christmas. We headed to the shops to buy ingredients then got to making the mixture. I was in charge of rolling and shaping the dough, while James did the baking. After it was cooked we got to the fun part of assembling the gingerbread house together. We ran into a couple of issues like the icing not setting fast enough so we had to use objects to hold it up and the roof did collapse a little. But it tasted amazing and was a fun thing to do.

James' family flew over from Australia for christmas, so we decided to take them to Nga Manu bird sanctuary. There we got to see some cool birds including, kakariki parrots, kea, pigeons and ducks. Unfortunately the kiwi was hiding so we didn’t get to see it but there were lots of tuatara. There are some lovely bush walks around that area too.