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Today we rode into town on Mundo and what did we find when we got there? Another Mundo! Kitted out with two soft spots and two sets of stocker bars. What a pleasant surprise.

While parking up a man came up to ask if he could take a photo as his son commutes with kids on a Mundo as well.

Turns out Mundo has a few friends out there in Wellington.

I used to be a religious Saturday morning vege market goer. It was our outing, Ella and I. Or I would go alone on the scooter. It is a great place to get a weeks supply of yummy food, and if for some reason Saturday didn't take our fancy, there was always the Sunday market in town which made for a great family outing by car or even better, by bike. Sometimes we even bumped into friends there! Bonus.

But time got away with me, and we lost the habit, not helped by my regular appearances at the Wellington Underground Market at Frank Kitts Park with my Hoopla Kids stall. No excuse, but I chose my battles, and staying home, having a relaxing morning and getting into the garden with the kids is the way it's been rolling over here lately.

So, to avoid stopping by the supermarket to get a whole pile of over priced produce, or alternatively just not having any because I was too stubborn to buy it at the supermarket, in a moment of busyness I thought I would try a vege box. And that turned to a few more. So when the last box arrived I thought I would do a tally up of what had arrived:

• 400g Asparagus
• 1 x Fancy lettuce
• 1 x Broccoli
• 1x Cucumber
• 1 x Green cabbage
• 1 Punnet blueberries
• 880g Oranges
• 940g Apples
• 460g Green kiwifruit
• 550g Red onions
• 520g Brown onions
• 1.3kg Red kumara
• 1 x Bunch of silverbeet
• 1 x Fennel bulb (560g)
• 2 x Avocado

So all in all a nice big box of food that generally lasts us at least a week, if not a bit longer supplemented with some carrots, bananas and sometimes some beetroot as these are staples in our house that aren't always delivered.

The cost: Vege box $48, delivery $9.

And being that I have slightly geeky tendencies I thought I would do a comparison. How much would it have cost me if I had bought this food at our local supermarket? Not organic, just the standard produce on the shelves. So I collected some prices:

Total cost for the same produce: $51.88

So, I would have saved $5.12 by buying it from the supermarket. But would it really have been a saving? If I'd been to the supermarket what would I have added to my basket that day? Chocolate at $3.50 on special? Some bread that I didn't need as I could have just baked some instead, $3.50 per loaf. A packet of biscuits? And what if I had driven there. Sure its only about 1km each way and I probably would have taken the bike. But for the sake of comparison the IRD mileage rate is 77 cents per km. So my 2km return journey cost me $1.54 in mileage.

So already I'm at $56.92 just for the mileage and the chocolate I bought and the produce wasn't organic. I'm down to a saving of 8 cents, and you know what, if I set it up as a regular order I would save $2 per box.

At the end of the day, I got a box of yummy ORGANIC food to my door which challenged me to try new things and find new ways to use new ingredients I wouldn't have normally bought. And it probably saved me money in the big picture by keeping me out of the supermarket. It suited me these few times but it won't suit always. After all, I hope that soon we will be eating more from our own garden, at least a little bit.

And I do also realise, that if I was organised I could probably save a lot more money by getting down to the vege market, and I might even have fun doing it. But perhaps that's a comparison for another day . . .

 It's time to farewell old friend Blue Mundo. It's off to Christchurch to haul more cargo for a new owner.

But a bike of this size is a double box pack so today I collected box two. And how else would you collect a bike box on an unusually calm Wellington day? By cargo bike!

Last week it was my nearly three year old who informed me she wanted "whole eating peas" and not "opening peas". We ventured to the garden to collect our supplies and she proceeded to munch.

Today on a pea hunt there were handfuls of spinach being eaten straight from the garden. But best of all it was my one year old who wandered back into the house with a pea in hand. He has discovered the joy of picking the peas out of the opened pods.

The bike that changed my perception of riding and converted me to the world of cargo biking with kids.

Hi,

I’m Kirsten. I’m Mum to two small people (update Dec 2015 - now three small people) and wife to Andrew. We’re kept company by four chooks and a lovely ginger cat called Put Put. I’m a Piano Tuner/Technician. And I run Hoopla Kids, a small business specialising in fun, colourful, creative and practical kids clothing from Scandinavia.

Together we all live in a little house in Wellington, New Zealand.

We are just a normal kiwi family, but like every “normal” family, we have our quirks.

I get around with the kids on a cargo bike – fondly known as “Mundo”. We have a large vege garden which has the potential to produce lots of delicious organic food. And scattered around our 612 square metre section we have 12 fruit trees, a grapevine and LOTS of berry plants – strawberries, blueberries, raspberries, currants, blackberries, boysenberries and gooseberries.

This blog is about many things. It’s about life with small children, being a stay at home mum, and running businesses. Its about growing food, running a co-op, trying to live a greener life. And about how much fun a family can have with a cargo bike. I’d love you to come along for the ride. And I hope that maybe some of my posts will inspire you to try something new or do something different.