Walking the bridge

Auckland is an isthmus, and requires many bridges to complete its roading network.  Most of the main ones are bottlenecks for traffic.  Whenever you mention "the bridge" in Auckland, everyone assumes you mean the iconic one - the Auckland Harbour Bridge.
We live by the other harbour and its bridge.  It's quite crucial actually, as it is the main route to the airport from the CBD.  And the traffic issues were getting ridiculous - even government ministers were missing their flights due to it. 
Sunday just gone, on a beautiful blue winter day, we got to walk over the latest solution to the traffic woes: a brand new bridge, just like the one already in use.  So now we have one bridge for going north, and one bridge for going south.

It opened to traffic this morning - nearly 6 months ahead of schedule.

Rainbows

I like rainbows, and my girls do too.  Lucky we live in Auckland, then, cos the weather conditions here are perfect for seeing lots of them!  Rain on a sunshiny day is sooooo not usual here.  In fact, whenever that song comes on the radio with the chorus "have you ever seen rain coming down on a sunny day?" we yell at the radio "often!!!"  We get double rainbows too.
Here's a single one I snapped about a month ago as I was leaving work:

How can you not love that?

I lied...

when I said "last leotard for the year" some posts back, cos here's one more:

Having such fun making these!

Think there might be one or two more before the season ends...

...while the cross stitch lies neglected, oh well.

Views from the fog

Jess allowed me to video her routines at the recent Spiralz comp, so for you diehards out there, here's the link:
Jess at Spiralz 3jul10

Evil Gym Mom thinks her eldest baby is gorgeous (while eldest baby does eyeroll behind my back)

Fog update

The full results from the Spiralz comp have been posted on the NZ Gymsports site, and Evil Gym Mom had to brag...
...cos Tamsin did better than we thought!

4th in Ball, and 10th overall

Go Tinkerbelle!!!

Look who's come to stay!

It's Henry!

On loan to us from Floss

Another foggy day in Te Awamutu

And Tink's competition went much like it did at Counties - ok free, ok ball, shocker hoop.  She wasn't last though, due to the unfortunate habit of the Spirals gymnasts to forget their routines half way through and run off crying.
But - she smiled at the judges during the routines, looked gorgeous and had fun.  Whereas some of the girls, including the really talented ones who have skills to smile about, don't and look like little automatons.

And, when we got home, we got a txt from the Fabulous Floss to ask if we might have room for Tim and one of the Blondinis to stay.  Do we have room?!  For our fave Sth Is friends???  Too right we do, and Tink gets to be with her missing twin (hello Henry!!)
Yippee
Can't wait till Jess and I go down for Southland Champs in mid August to stay with them.  Happy days.

One foggy day in Te Awamutu...

It's the Spirals Competition this weekend, held at the very pleasant ASB Stadium Te Awamutu.  This is a very nice, well run, friendly event; and only two hours drive from home.
Jess, being Level 4, was due there to warm up for her session at 9am this morning.  Tink, as a Level 2, is due there to warm up at 9.45am tomorrow.
So, joy of joys, a double road trip.

Anyhoo, here's the mid comp report:
A very foggy trip down - SH1 runs by the mighty Waikato River for most of the trip, and Hamilton and environs are damp and low lying.  The stadium was warm though.
There was a good turnout of clubs - Tristar, North Harbour, Shore, Topaz, Howick, Spirals, Argos and Capital (all the way from Wellington).
Jess did a much cleaner ribbon routine and upped her score by nearly two marks; did an ok hoop routine with one oops so slightly lower score from Counties; did a clean and energetic freehand and just missed getting her first 16 for the year - so here's hoping for the next comp at Shore.
Prize giving was announced very promptly (so promptly that several of the L4s were still in the adjacent pool complex!) and much to our surprised delight we got:

3rd overall, and 2nd in ribbon!!

Jess is absolutely stoked, and Evil Gym Mom is very proud of her eldest baby.