Birthdays,a Wedding and Time Travel.

The weekend started with a wedding.
The son of Ces (who taught my punkrock parents about The Church and helped get them baptised) and Kim (long time manager of Centreplace cinemas and longer time family friend) - Young Connor McQueen married the lovely soccer girl Krisieta. Highlights of the event were Curtis's 'we're not racists' comment and the EXCELLENT McQueen family thriller dance. Here are some photo's of the fam at the reception ..

Kashykins and I left the wedding early to pay our respects to the street rat Evelyn Hinewaka who turned 21 that day.

Sunday was Churchday. And my birthday eve. Church always makes Sunday a big day, espesh with my current calling. It was the first Sunday of the month which meant testimony meeting and it was so nice to be a part of it, I love the YSA ward's testimony meetings, they are always uplifting however truth be told I was feeling a little perturbed about another year older etc. 

So after church Cam and I headed for the hills and drove to Auckland to forget my troubles. There was no solid plan except to go to the chinese lantern festival however when we got there it was still light. So we went time travelling- I had a hankering to visit the street I used to live on when I was a little girl. So we scaled the harbour bridge and headed for the North Shore.

What is it about the places you lived at when you were little being SO MUCH bigger in your memory? seriously the mile long street I used to live on and hike up - was in reality a tiny cul-de-sac with a slight incline. I felt like gulliver in lilliput. We drove around the shore for a bit and checked out my old school and kindy. Walking around Browns Bay primary with Cam in tow felt a little surreal - like we were visitors from another lifetime or dimension.or something.

We also visited the street Cammo used to live on when he was a kid a mere 20 minutes away from where I used to live - par for course though - Cam's house was as huge as he remembered.

Auckland was full of people, I had no idea the lantern festival was that popular, it was almost like being back in Hong Kong it was so crowded. almost.  It took forever to find a park and when we did find one the pay and display machine wasnt working - both us and the group of 20-somethings in the carpark next to us left notes to avoid fines on our cars.Their car got a fine.

All of a sudden it was Monday and despite valiant efforts on my behalf to stay in bed all day I only made it till 11am due to the constant buzzing of  happy birthday texts and facebook notifications on my iPhone. Just incase you didnt notice I was just letting you know how popular I am. Actually though it was cool for people to remember (or be reminded by facebook) and made me feel a little bit special.

I got some pretty sweet presents this year too - Rose gave me a book of prints by french illustrator blexbolex called seasons. I love it.

  Johanna made me a literal tray of vegan cupcakes that were delish and thus were obliterated she also gave me some A-mazing earrings. Gay made me a rad Rainbow Brite Pillow. RAINBOW BRITE. Thats whats up.

All these treks down memory lane let me pull the birthday card and ask dad to get out the photo box - which is a box of literally all our family's photos. Mum hates us getting them out because they often get ruined, go missing or at least make a giant mess as we ferret through them creating piles of photos all over the living room. As it was my birthday they could not deny me. Here are some photos I stole.

So all in all, good weekend - and as the sun set beautifully yesterday night and I stood out on my parents balcony taking photos of the sunset with my iPhone I thought: Ok. another year. I can do this.