Marine Education and Research Center (MERC)

Greetings :)  Last week, Devin & I went on his school camp at Sir Peter Blake's Marine Education & Research Centre in Long Bay. It was two action packed days of adventure, challenges, personal development and more importantly, great fun. 

I went along as a parent helper and also joined in some of the challenges, competing against the students. Of course, as parents, we cheated and were disqualified on many occasions, but that just added to the buzz with the kids!! However, we did manage to succeed in one challenge. We were all split into groups and given about 6 pieces of newspaper and some tape. The challenge was to build the highest freestanding tower that had to stay up for the longest amount of time. As you will see in one of the photo's below, the parents tower took the prize and that it also stayed up overnight.

It was such a well planned and enjoyable camp that included Rock Climbing, Surfing, Raft Building, Sailing, Snorkeling, Kayaking, Abseiling as well as many other land-based activities. The kids (and parents) came away with some newly founded confidence and excellent memories :)

We Will Rock You!!

Hey there :) Went to "We Will Rock You" - the musical by Queen and Ben Elton the other night at the Civic!! Bloody awesome!! Always been a bit of a Queen fan and thoroughly enjoyed it!! We took Devin and even he was really impressed!! It was really well written and the songs were well chosen. And of course, the infamous undertones of Ben Elton's humour - similar to Blackadder but in relation to NZ places/shows etc. If you get the chance, I thoroughly recommend you see it!!


Here's the blurb:
We Will Rock You is an enormous multi million dollar musical featuring stunning costumes, sets and lighting. The multi talented international cast includes New Zealand's pop princess Annie Crummer as the Killer Queen and rock star INXS finalist Miguel Ayesa, who reprises his West End success, in the starring role of Gallileo.

We Will Rock You is a futurist adventure set in the year 2350, a time when live music is banned on earth, but the kids are in rebellion, fighting against the all powerful Globalsoft Corporation which controls their lives and feeds them a diet of synthesized pop.

We Will Rock You features 24 of Queen's legendary hits including Bohemian Rhapsody, We Are The Champions, Radio Ga Ga, Another One Bites The Dust and Crazy Little Thing Called Love.