by Mary Beth These are some games that Annie likes to play: 1. “Does This Hurt Your Ears?”: Annie makes a noise. Sometimes it is a quiet noise. Sometimes it is a deep, sonorous noise. Usually, however, it is a very high-pitched noise and usually it is quite loud. Then she will ask: “Does this …
Year in New Zealand: 12 Months 12 Songs is an audio journal of an album, that is being written song by song, month by month. Each month a new track is posted at https://petervansiclen.bandcamp.comThis is the fourth in a series of posts breaking down the story of each song Cora has a cold. You might say that …
Annie knows that her dance class is called “Tiny Tots”, but she prefers it to be known as “Big Kid Tots”, as she finds “tiny” to be offensive. The Big Kid Tots recently had a dance recital. Annie and her classmates had been practicing their routines for weeks now. The other classes – full of …
Cora usually finishes her dinner first. This is because Cora operates on the principle that, if either of her parents are eating, this means they have forgotten about her and she is going to starve to death. To protect herself from certain death, she shrieks at the top of her lungs, which causes her parents …
ligar Bay The last day of the trip, the family left after breakfast, to give themselves plenty of time to get back to the airport. They were in such a hurry to leave that they did not have time to fill up the car with gas, or to leave the keys to the house behind. …
ligar bay The last full day that the family was in Ligar Bay, they decided to go on another adventure. They decided to drive north, as far as they could go. The farthest-north place on the South Island of New Zealand is the Farewell Spit. They drove for about an hour. Mommy and Daddy got …
ligar bay The next day, the family took it easy. It rained in the morning and there was a big rainbow in the sky. Annie studied it but said the colors were out of order. Annie is very strict about rainbows having colors in the correct order. Her daddy tried to argue with her about …
It was not until after another lovely morning hike that the family decided to go salmon fishing. The morning hike, at the Grove Scenic Reserve, wound its way through the jungle. Trees grew on the tops of boulders, their roots creeping down the sides like snakes, or dangling like woody vines. Moss grew on the …
Ligar Bay Annie did not approve of the name “Pupu Springs”. She did not approve of the full name of the springs, Te Waikoropupu Springs, either. When her parents told her that they were going to visit Pupu Springs, she instructed them to refer to it simply as “the Springs” which they tried to do …
Ligar Bay The stress from the trip was starting to catch up to Cora. She was with her mother constantly, so she always felt a vague sense of unease – her mother might disappear any moment. She didn’t want to sleep because she might miss some time with her mother. She took naps in the …
