four day weekend!

I have a lovely four day weekend!  I have to babysit in the evenings on Saturday and Sunday and yoga on Monday, but other than that, four days off.  Today we took advantage of the 80 degree weather, packed a picnic, and headed for the beach.  We've gone to two beaches here in Christchurch so far.  The first one, New Brighton, was on an exceptionally cold and windy day...so uncomfortable just to take pictures!  The second beach, Sumner, was on Labour Day and was packed with people and a long and crowded bus ride to get there.  So, for convenience sake, we went to New Brighton today; it's much closer! 

When we arrived, and attempted to look for a section of sand to set up our picnic and towels, we found nearly the entire expanse of the beach to be wet.  The tide had come up so far!  We'd noticed that too in Abel Tasman National Park...where the kayaks would take off in the morning from the small stretch of sandy shore, in the afternoon, there would a football field's length of shore, with tractors having the drive the returned kayaks up the beach!  But today we found a dry patch of warm, soft sand and settled in for a refreshing picnic and ocean view.  There was a haze on the horizon, so we could barely make out the snow-capped mountains, but the sun was warm and there was a perfect seabreeze to keep us cool.  We read and listened to music, got in the water (just our feet!), and walked along the beach.  I've really liked how we've tried to incorporate our 'holiday' spirit into our working lives since we've returned. 

Our last stop before heading home was Harrington's Bottle Shop.  Harrington's is a local Christchurch brewery, and Bret has really been enjoying picking up a bottle of their beer at the supermarket every once in a while to add to his collection.  This place was like beer heaven!  They had all of their beers on tap or pre-bottled, and so it took Bret a while to determine what on earth he was going to buy...15 minutes of indecision later we left with two bottles of fresh-off-the-tap beer and headed home!