What Doesn't Kill You

Month seven in New Zealand and we've run into a serious patch of bad luck. Here's what happened:

After a few months of looking for a job that would help support the family and offer some sort of challenge, I found a great job doing sales and marketing for a local manufacturing company. Working through a recruiter, I went through the interview process, got hired, signed employment agreements, and found day care for the kids, bought new clothes to fit the company's strict dress code...I was ready! Two business days before I was to show up for work that the offer was rescinded through no fault of my own. They just "couldn't hire me."

That same week, we found out that the furnished house that we are renting has been sold and that the owners wanted to come in and take the furniture. We have no idea when the furniture is going - we still have to figure that out. Nonetheless, we found ourselves looking for a new place to live in a tight rental market and only once piece of houseware to our names. Appropriately: a wine bottle opener.

Weekis horribilis to the maximus.

Looking to lighten the mood around our house, I suggested we take our kids to Dunedin to the Moana Pool. The Moana Pool is a complex like nothing I've seen before. It's got something like seven pool including a wave pool for kids, a fast flowing river to float along, a separate kids learner pool, lap pools, a diving well with spring boards and another lap pool with high diving boards. Most impressively, it had water slides.

Big water slides are new to Pea and Little Hunter. They were excited about the slides but didn't exactly know what to expect. So while the boys were getting dressed for the pool, Pea and I decided to try them out together. She and I climbed to the top of the slide and I could tell she was about to chicken out. I suggested we go together and I'm so glad we did. What absolutely blissful fun it was to hear her scream with glee.

I found Little Hunter who had just come out of the change room and I brought him up to the slide. He liked the idea but was nervous. He insisted I carry him up the ramp to the slide. I told him I'd do it once and once only. After that, if he wanted to slide, he had to do the work.

Once he got to the top, he grabbed my neck like a monkey and wasn't letting go for anything. The look of horror on his face that his own beloved mother was going to take him down that slide and worse yet, looked like she was enjoying it was priceless.

Two turns down the slide later I heard screamed into my ear, "This is fuuuuuuuuuuuuuuun!"  He was hooked: running up the ramp and careening down that slide like a machine.


Sunday at the pool reminded me of the most joyful, blissful parts of being a parent. There's nothing in the world like an afternoon of good times and good laughs with your kids.

We'll work on our New Zealand adventure. Weekis Horribilis aside, I refuse to leave this place without a great story, a great experience or a great lesson. Certainly, I'm having a great time with my kids.