fun for free: art gallery

We hoped to take the train to britomart and get all fancy in the down town precinct then the weather looked iffy and we thought, ugh all Olive will want to do is crawl about and we will be wrestling our 9 month old on our shoulders for so many hours. Today the forecast had changed and we had a rethink about where we actually wanted to go and realised the art gallery was a great plan.

We braved the bus into the city. I know! 

Dad chose my socks. 

15 minutes into the journey we were still in Onehunga and I was loosing my nerve. The girls were having a blast, Olive waving at our fellow passengers and Ada chomping on some crackers or looking out the window. I was busy worrying about the fact it was 25 more minutes till we got off. Cam talked me down and I reassumed positive outlook and lo and behold no meltdowns on the way there! Hallelujah! 

Finally using hand sanitizer?!!

Our bus dropped us outside the Civic and we went across to the takeout Korean Pancake place. Yum! We ordered cinnamon, beef and cheese and vege and cheese. These are delicious filled pastry-like pancakes and are cheap as! We ended up eating them in the art gallery cafe, no askew glances noticed by me, so they probably didn't happen. Ada said no and ate all the feijoas instead. No problemo the cinnamon pancake went very well with my long black. We try to not just go to a cafe each Saturday, but lo and behold, there we were again. We had a little book to ourselves overlooking the rotating L's outside. "Look they're turning!" Ada could sit in the high chair and Olive could walk around the buggy and not get covered in mud. Win win win people. 

The art gallery did not go as smoothly as our trip to the Wallace Centre, only that the girls attention span was getting short. We did get a good 15 minutes in on the ground floor but there was only paintings there. Olive walked a good 8 steps in the big rooms! Ada would point out one she liked in each room, I couldn't always decipher why each one was liked. 

Considering the brush strokes. 

The education room was good fun though! Tables for drawing, a tv playing peekaboo, placard signs to wield! Olive looked adorbz playing in a round window until she hit her lip. Blood not so adorable. She stopped crying super quick but we went outside to the bean bag book corner for safety's sake. 

Crazy eyes.

We only hung about in the city for a total of 90 minutes but Cam and I totally felt like it was a breath of fresh air. So many little victories. We took just enough snacks. Go raisins! Go crackers! Ada is toilet training and on the bus home she told me she needed to do a wee wee, so I whipped off her tights and threw on a pull up. Success! No wees on me or the floor! Finally 15 min from home, the bus taking the full HOUR to travel home, Ada got to look through photos on Cam's phone and then when we were almost home Ada said she was tired and it "might be bottle time". We made it. Home and two girls asleep in beds in 10 minutes flat. 

I am a big believer in plan b, or what's the worst that could happen, we can always just go home, not today! In the words of Dora and Boots  "we did it, we did it, yay we did it!"