Easter

Last Easter was a pre-dawn trek to Cobb's Hill to watch the sun rise (which we couldn't see) where someone played the guitar and we all convened at our apartment for pancakes afterwards.

Yesterday, I woke up in a tent with Adam and Sam (who ended up rolling his sleeping bagged self onto my mattress and flailing me in the face half the night) whereupon we all staggered to the living room for breakfast and chocolate eggs. Glenn and Tracey had been up since 5:50 to milk and shooed us out to cause mischief elsewhere. We mucked around at the little quarry for a while watching Adam build a rather successful BMX ramp and Sam shriek like only a little brother can when Adam retaliated with clods of dirt to Sam's own impish barrage. Georgia (also 10 and another rental) and I just wandered a bit until Adam suggested we find the caves.

Adam came in sixth overall for his age group in last week's motorbike race so our ride on the quad involved wheelies, skids, and small jumps. It was really rather impressive with all four of us holding on for dear life to the back. We tried in vain to find the caves and ended up down by the river where Sam "went swimming" as he told it which amounts to him stripping and getting in half-way before hightailing it back out of the cold water. We skipped rocks; Adam and Sam tried to make a boat out of an old log to no avail, and then we hear the shrieks of an animal and realized Bella was missing.

Adam looked along the river and we looked from above and found her along the river bed shaking the life out of an opossum. It took a few whacks but Adam finished it off. I was only a few feet above on the steep embankment when he picked it up by the tail and held it out to me.

"Here, Jesse. Take it." Duh. Of course I reached for it and slid down to the same level as Adam and then I took it by it's tail and found it surprisingly heavy and bald where Bella had gotten to it. Adam scampered up to higher ground and took it off my hands.

Things became a little more tame after the morning's escapades, but Tracey made some delicious scones after and we discovered just how cheesy the first Superman The Movie is. We went to Matamata to the hot springs and Sam and I went down the pool slide and counted to three before jumping off the side with Georgia. I went for a run when we got back and considered how much damage running barefoot is doing to my knees. All in all not a bad day. Tracey also made this fantastic concoction called pavlova which is basically egg whites, sugar, vinegar, and cornflour that has been whipped into submission and slowly baked. The neighbours came over just after we finished that off. Their son James was supposed to stay over in the tent with Sam (hence the pile of my sleeping bag and pillow on the floor inside) but his three older sisters convinced him there were monsters that would get him so he went home with his family and my stuff went back into the tent.

I dreamt of people dying by lightning, my ninth grade biology teacher saving his daughter's life, me nearly adopting a puppy that was a periwinkle- tan colour, and making pavlova. It was only disturbed when Sam woke up flailing around (this time I was a safe distance away) and shouting. I've just learned a good night sleep is a bit boring and I can function fine on a few solid hours.

In less than a month I'll be in California, reunited with my best friend and hightailing it up the famous west coast!