Tickets!

Hubby and I just booked tickets to Rarotonga!  I am sooooooo excited.  And more than a little nervous.  Last time we went I booked the domestic flights and stuffed up on the dateline thingy.  Yep, I was the idiot that booked flights for the day before we were back in the country.  I was red faced with embarrassment, scraping coin together to book more flights and in the middle of a rather large fight for a couple that were just coming home from being married on a tropical island.

Dreams are slowly falling into place.  Now just to hope that the accommodation I am looking at is available and as good and cheap as the website says.

Just in case anyone ever stumbles across this little ol' blog of mine and wants info on getting to Rarotonga, here are the facts:

• We booked through Air New Zealand.  We could have gone through Pacific Blue but it would only be cheaper if we lived in a major city and didn't have to travel domestically first.  And Air NZ worked out the domestic and international tickets for us (I am seriously terrified of doing this, pathetic I know). 
• Flights for the four of us (two adults, pre-schooler and infant) cost just over $2,700NZ.
• We are looking at staying at Tiare Village.  As it is cheap and cheerful and seems to get pretty good reviews.  

I am over the top excited. 
Hubby has fallen asleep five minutes after paying for the flights.  
The kids are asleep and oblivious.  
How I love being a tiny step closer to a big dream.
Blissful.

Tiare Village Pool.  One of the reviews I read said it is only 1 metre deep.  Suits me fine with the kidlets.  I think Tiare is a flower. 

Jeffs

Fabulous new (to me) website.  http://www.cookislandsholidays.com/ by 'Uncle Jeff'.  Loads of helpful advice for visiting the Cooks.
Jeff is also the name of my two year old daughter's favourite imaginary friend.  It stems from many hours spent in SCBU watching a video of The Wiggles over and over again, when her sister was born ten weeks early.  I'm not worried as many of her friends around the same age have imaginary pals and our wee pal, Jeff the purple Wiggle seems a harmless choice.

Jeff the Wiggle (the imaginary friend).

Uncle Jeff, owner of the most helpful website for DIY Cook Island holidays. 

Action (or at least planning for action)

We have made a couple of steps towards our big dream of living in a tropical paradise*. 
The first is we have found the money to go for a holiday to see if we really do love the place the way we think we do.  The second is we are having our house valued by a few real estate agents tomorrow.  Both are pretty big and sensible steps if you ask me.

I've also been trying to hunt out some practical, recent blogs by other kiwis who have made the move to Rarotonga or are in the process of doing so.  Have only hunted down this one so far.  Maybe this blog I am hiding my thoughts in might be useful to someone in the future?


Our next step is to book tickets to Rarotonga, confirm accommodation and get to work on making things happen!

*Whenever I think about Rarotonga as paradise or hear someone else call it paradise I am reminded of a fishing charter owner I met on the night of my mine and hubby's wedding (yep, that's where our love affair of Raro started).  We were at a bar and just after hubby and I finished our compulsory first dance, this rather drunk and brooding local asked me "Why did you want to come here to get married?  It is the worst place on Earth!"  This memory always makes me giggle.  Eye of the beholder comes to mind.

The wisest men follow their own direction

Euripides 484 BC - 406 BC

Enough said.

The Dream

Three times I have sat and tried to put into words what this big dream of mine is.  Three times I have wiped the post.  Maybe because I'm not exactly sure just what this particular dream is.  This time I am just going to purge myself of my latest desire and try to put into words the way it looks in my head (today at least).

To be read in secretive, hush-hush tones. 
I want........to run away to an island. 
I want to take my family and live a simple, peaceful, vibrant life in Rarotonga.  I have ideas of how this will work and I have ideas of what the obstacles are going to be.  I am completely aware of the fact that I actually know bugger all of what I need to know and in my opinion that is at least a start.
Ok, back to a normal reading tone.  Thanks for tolerating my nervous whispers :)

So now I have done it.  I have began the sharing of my wonderful Kanuka day dream.  May this diary blog lead to an actual happening of these apprehensive hopes.

An extra-large photo for an extra-large dream.

Blogger?

I had a conversation with a non-blogging pal yesterday.  We discussed the whole point of blogging.  Who is a blog for?  Why blog at all?  We were quite distracted by our wee parade of tots so we didn't come to much of a conclusion (I remember the days when I could finish a sentence without having to chase after a child heading towards the pond/road/poo...).  I didn't even get the chance to tell my friend that I have a secret blog.  Or to tell her why this blog is secret.  So I will instead blog about it.

My blog is a secret blog for two reasons.  The first is my husband's career.  If the secret little plan I am hatching was public it may inhibit his opportunities in his job.  He is great at his job and hence opportunities are always presenting themselves to him.  I love this but sometimes I also hate it.  I hate it because it makes picking up and moving or any other adventures a bit tricky.  It also means that his career will always come before mine because he is able to earn a lot more than I.  On the other hand I love it because he supports us so well without any complaint, he enjoys his job and most importantly I am able to be a stay-at-home-mum.  Contrary anyone?!

The second reason is more about myself.  This blog is for me.  The only person that knows about it is my darling husband and he is in on all my secret dreams.  We love to bounce fabulous ideas for the future off each other.  We are like kids with our incredicle, completely impractical and almost (almost) impossible ideas for the future.  I am putting these little dreams of mine(ours?) into some kind of concrete* form so I can look at them and start to believe.  Once I believe, I KNOW I can make them happen!

That brings me back to the question 'who is a blog for?'.  This blog in particular is for me.  It is a diary* if anything.  It is my secret little place of fabulous, incredible, impractical and almost impossible ideas.  It is my little page of dreams that I am hiding out there in the world wide web.

So, who blogs?  I guess I do!

*Hmmmm, not sure if specks of colour on a screen are concrete but not techy enough to know exactly what is going on with this whole bizarre internet thing-oviously.

*I have since learned  that there are different kinds of blogs, blow me down!  One such kind is a DIARY BLOG.  I guess I am a diary blogger :)

 

Kanuka Dreaming

I have a darling kanuka tree that loves me as much as I love it.  It is ever so appreciative of the fact that I cut down the neighbouring trees that were fighting for space and sunshine and let it become the Queen of my yard.  Under it my darling hubby built our baby girls a sandpit that the tree kindly  shelters.  I am thanked every spring by my lady kanuka with a blaze of  pink flowers.  I love to sit under the tree while my two year old picks strawberries and my tiniest girl snuggles into me, and dream up the most wonderful plans.  I am working up the courage to thump my nervous fingers on the keys of my laptop and make them official, if only to myself. 

Wishing I Were Her

Woman in the Waves (1889), Paul Gauguin

Shhhhhhhh......

This is a secret blog.  I have a secret dream.  Well actually my husband and I do.  I'm afraid that if I don't make it semi public then it will just fade into that place where many other dreams have disappeared to.  That place where things never happen and you forget that you ever even had a passion to make them happen.  The place where all of a sudden it is five, ten, twenty years later and it is too late and the excuses and obstacles have won.
So this hush hush blog is my place of making it happen.  'It' is yet to be revealed.  Teeny weeny baby blogger steps :)

P.S Two posts in one day.  Is that allowed?

Baby Blogger

A baby blogger is:
a) Somebody new to blogging,
b) Somebody who is laying on her bed, typing while her two babies sleep on her.

I am a baby blogger.

Post one complete.