A chillaxing kind of day

March 14th – This is the first day I mentioned Covid-19 in my journal. The reason for this was simply because it hadn’t really hit NZ yet. We saw the daily news coming in from around the world and saw how serious it was getting for certain countries. And, we also saw it declared a pandemic by the WHO a couple days beforehand. We understood that the world was changing around us but in NZ we felt safe. Only 8 cases at that point. The NZ government was responding but with caution. We emailed our travel agent to figure out what if anything we should do. She responded with “carry on as planned”. At this point Trudeau hadn’t asked for Canadians to come home and all flights were a go. We were suppose to leave for Australia in 5 days. Everything was still open and operating normally. Well almost normally.

We were about to have our first experience with restrictions because of the coronavirus. We were suppose to go to the Pasifika Festival in Auckland. It’s why we came back to the city. But the NZ government had recently, like two days before, cancelled/banned/closed all gatherings over 50 people. Things were starting to change with more frequency but still no alert or panic communicated. We were bummed about the festival but obviously realized it was for the best. So we decided that we would carry on as planned. Who knew that all that would change in less than a week. However, for now I will stick to the point and time in my journal. So back to March 14th in Auckland.

Got to sleep in. Yes. I finally slept. We had a slow moving start to the day before heading out to the mall not far from the house. We wanted to drop off a couple of cards in the mail and the kids wanted to look for a soccer ball, handball, sweatshirts and some odds and ends. We didn’t have any luck at the mall but heard we should head over to this shop called Rebels. Eureka! Handballs (a new sport for the Monkey) and a soccer ball. the Monkey was thrilled but Peanut had no luck. Apparently, it was still too early (read: hot) for sweatshirts/hoodies. They only come out in winter which was in another month or two.

We headed back to the house and decided to have a wonderful relaxing (read: day drinking) day. We plopped ourselves on the deck while the kids went and played on the beach.

We made a lovely vegan dinner that night. Roasted vegetables. A real trend in NZ right now for vegetarian and vegan cuisine. When it is done right you don’t miss the meat. This is coming from a good little carnivore. I really got inspired to eat a more plant based diet from our time there.

But first things first. Cocktail hour is serious business.

Finally having a slow day meant the kids could catch their breath and take it all in.

We stayed up late and solved the world’s issues. You all must have a felt a little shake in the universe that night. Not a great idea since we were leaving early the next morning to head north. This fun idiot never learns…