Still no baby yet!  At the end of each day I tell myself, “another day down, only a few more to go” and remind myself how lucky I am to be able to carry a baby to term.  It’s a blessing that not all women get – I try to keep that in mind when I grow impatient.

I am, however, quite ready for baby boy to be born.  If I could walk this baby out, it would have happened by now.  I’m walking everywhere all the time.  Chris will ask, “Why don’t we take the bus?” and I say “Nope – gotta walk!”  That, and I’m cleaning a lot.  My aunt shared with me that after one cleaning frenzy weekend, she went into labor.  Can’t hurt, right?  Not at this stage!

One place where I walk a lot is our local park, which I’ve come to affectionately think of as our backyard.

Pretty nice backyard, huh?  Or perhaps since I’m in NZ, I should refer to it as our back garden 🙂

I try to head over here at some point most days to walk the circuit a few times.  There have even been 1 or 2 times where Chris has walked over from the office to join me for 15 minutes.  Its a nice break for him and quite close to where he works.

Of course, getting to the park takes a bit of doing.  Here’s the first set of stairs that I have to climb {the fence, wall, and barbed wire surround a construction site, not a prison!}

Then I get to climb another set of stairs…

Nice bit of exercise, right?  Of course, if I don’t feel like stair-stepping, I can always take the gentler, longer route:

This path slopes down and curves around the bend to meet the street a bit further away from where we live.  Personally, I like taking the stairs, but this will be a good way to go once I’m using a stroller.  Can you imagine carting one up all of those steps?

It really is a lovely park with lots of big, shady trees.  And I do mean big trees.

But remember, we’re in New Zealand – it’s not all deciduous trees over here…

I love seeing the palm trees.  It makes me feel warm even when it’s chilly outside.

And then there are the flowers and plant borders.  The grounds crew does such a good job with this park.  I’m always impressed by how neat things look, and very thankful that we have such a nice place to visit.

I had to take a photo of the ornamental grasses for my mom.  She loves ornamental grasses 🙂

Lots of people come to this park to walk, eat lunch, and visit with friends.  It’s got plenty of places for that sort of thing.

One of my favorite spots to sit is around the fountain…

And you can’t beat the view as I walk back home…

The Sky Tower

Thanks for walking through our park with me!  Hopefully, the next walk I take in there will include baby boy 🙂