What happened to March 25th?

We have arrived! We left Edmonton at 5:00p.m. on Wednesday, March 24th and landed in Auckland at 6:00a.m. on Friday, March 26th. Good thing nothing too important in our lives happens on March 25th each year, because we did not experience a March 25th in 2010!

The flight was a long 14 hours, but it went by pretty fast and the 11 babies on board were great

and only screamed during take off and landing. Once we arrived we had no troubles- all four pieces of luggage arrived intact and the customs agent barely said three words to us as he stamped our passports with working permits. I guess we look pretty harmless?

Our wonderful hosts, Brandon and Kristen, picked us up and have been very good to us. Here are a few highlights thus far:

We went to a park called One Tree Hill and took a walk up to the top. There used to be a tree there, but now there is an obelisk. I didn't quite catch all the details on what happened... The park also had sheep that roamed around without fences. They are pretty skittish.

We went to a beach called Murawai. There was much to explore.

We went to another beach called Sunset Beach (how can you go wrong with a name like that?)

A praying mantis jumped on Mark's face.

So, it's been a pretty good few first days. Monday we start the job hunt and hopefully that goes well. Although being unemployed when there are so many great things to do does have it's advantages... :)

Keys, please.

I only have one key to my name. It's true. My car key is the only thing left on my key ring that actually belongs to me. The other two are for Mark's parents house (where we now live for the next two weeks) and Mark's mom's car.

It's a weird feeling only having one key. Mark thinks it's "freeing". But he also wanted to just burn everything in the house so we didn't have to move it. He thought that would be "freeing" as well. I did not agree - although, I do agree that moving is the absolute worst. Even though I am not on the "burn it all" bandwagon yet, it would be nice to not have to move ever again. Why do we have so much stuff?

Anyways, I miss our little house a bit, but now I can look forward to the next one. Bigger and better (I hope)!

We have a few details left to take care of in the next couple of weeks, but we are pretty much set to go. Getting more excited now that we have no jobs or home here. It's becoming more and more real everyday.

Anyways, we are off to collect our cheque from the house sale. That will make us feel good - until it starts disappearing rather rapidly!

Now, where did I put my key?

Sorry, we leave when???

We are moving to New Zealand. For approximately one year. We are leaving on March 24th, 2010.

Most people now ask the obvious question, "Are you excited?"

Mark answers with an enthusiastic yes.

I mumble through some sort of explanation about how I am excited, but there are a lot of unknows and I sometimes have some trouble with change, but it will be great when we get there, blah blah blah.

It's going to be a good adventure, that's for sure. We don't have a lot of plans, but that's ok (I keep telling myself this). We are currently looking for jobs and hoping to stay in one place for the majority of our time there. We will miss all our friends and family here, but we will not miss winter. We are excited to see our friends, Brandon and Kristen in Auckland. And the beach. We are VERY excited for the beach.

I decided to keep a blog to help keep in touch. I am not yet sure if I will be good at keeping it up, but I'll try my hardest. Maybe I'll even be able to convince Mark to write every once in a while.

So stay tuned! If you want.