Christmas Day

Merry Christmas! Such a treat to enjoy it with my family in New Zealand. We have been very busy this past week exploring parts of the North Island. My family spent the second (and third...and fourth) day nursing alot of sunburned skin. But they are mostly all back to normal now and applying sunscreen on a regular basis.

So far things have been going smoothly. We have only hada few hiccups (i.e. getting stuck in a hotel elevator going from the basement to the sub-basement and back for about 5 minutes).

We are now busy prepping for Christmasdinner and tonight we head to the South Island. Just a few photos to give you an idea of what we have been up to.

I anxiously await the arrival of the family.

Hurray! Tim looks less excited...

Hot Water Beach

Cathedral Cove

My family in NZ!

My early Christmas present

We are heading to the airport at 6:00a.m. on Sunday morning. Why, you may ask? Because my WHOLE FAMILY is arriving that day! I'm just a bit excited.

We have a full two weeks itinerary planned, so stay tuned for updates.

Sailing, sailing

For those of you who are not aware, I can't really swim. I can doggie paddle to save my life but that's about it. Can't even float very well. Because of this, I have always preferred being on top of the water as opposed to in the water. Last night we had the privilege of going out sailing with our friend Geoff from church and Mark's cousin Joel who is visiting at the moment. Being out there on top of the water was amazing!

I was pretty busy taking photos and video to do much of the sailing. But I did self appoint myself as First Mate.

The view of the Mount from the water is really cool. It is so interesting to see it from a different vantage point.

Mark was extremely excited to be at the healm. (I called it "driving" at first, but Geoff informed me that was not sailing lingo....)

Joel was also at the healm for a while. There was a bit of a sketchy moment where he felt the wind was leading him in a different direction than planned, but it turned out ok. Actually, I don't think it was sketchy because Geoff didn't seem to mind. He was at the front of the boat (aka the bow), however, doing something important at the moment so we don't really know how he felt about Joel's "driving".

When we got back into the harbour, I did some maintenance. No big deal.

It was a great sunset sail. There were also lots of jellyfish floating in the waters and we saw a few penguins bobbing along. They are cute, but they look like ducks when they are floating so sometimes I forget they are penguins...

I probably won't become a pirate anytime soon, but it was very fun to be out there for a couple hours. Such a beautiful place we live in. Sigh.

Koslowski's at the Mount

Photos courtesy of Melanie Neilson.

Thanks, Mel. You have a real talent :)

Last Weekend

Sometimes we can go weeks without much exciting happening. And then we have a weekend like our "U2, Harry Potter, Thanksmas, Shire" weekend. Which is pretty much self explanatory. We did those things, in that order.

Let's start at the very beginning. The U2 360 concert is amazing. Great sound, great stage, great show. We sang a lot and my feet were sore from standing the entire 2 hours. I would recommend going if they come to a town near you.

Harry Potter 7 - Part 1. Mark and I are nerds and we like Harry Potter, but this was even better because we watched in on the world's largest screen in lazy boy recliners while having dinner and dessert delivered to our seats. It's called La Premiere and it was.

Then we had a great holiday celebration combining Thanksgiving and Christmas with our Canadian "family" up in Auckland. We love them all so much!

To top it all off, we visited Hobbiton on the way home. Now, I can't show you photos of the actual site because it's confidential. I'm not just trying to sound cool - I had to sign a release. They aren't wanting any images to leak on to internet before the Hobbit movies are released. The sets are totally rebuilt and it is so cool. I have already admitted to "nerdiness" earlier in the blog, so who cares what you think. It was awesome.

There are still a lot of things for us to see here in New Zealand. I'll keep you posted. Pun intended.

Smelling the Roses

I'm a bit split on how I feel about roses. Long stemmed, popped in a crystal vase with baby's breath and some greenery = my worst nightmare. However, still on the bush or nestled in a monochromatic bouquet, and I think they are pretty nice.

There is an abundance of roses blooming here right now. They smell beautiful and look lovely. I took a quick trip to Robbins Park rose garden in Tauranga to capture some of the blooming beauties.

The ones above remind me of the Kapiti white chocolate raspberry ice cream bars that are so delicious. I should remember to buy some of those...

The garden has a really cool view of the sea through some hedges. It feels very Victorian. One of those places I would love to nerd out and live a Jane Austen novel. Ooops, did I say that out loud? Anyways, hope this reminds you to stop and ..... you know.

Taste of Taupo

I do not like beer. There is something about the taste that I just don't appreciate. And I can say this pretty confidently, because this past weekend we had a beer tasting day with some friends in Taupo. About 2 hours away from Tauranga, the city of Taupo sits on the beautiful Lake Taupo - makes sense. Lucky for me, our travelling companions were up for a little bit of sightseeing so I could enjoy some of the locations listed in my Lonely Planet before tasting a lot of beer.

Huka Falls - the most icy blue beautiful water ever and I dressed to match! Combined with the flurry of white that comes from the massive amount of water going down the falls every second, it is a beautiful sight. Apparently, enough water goes over the falls to fill five olympic sized swimming pools EVERY MINUTE! Yikes. Some crazy fools have tried going over these falls. Other less crazy people take a jet boat to bomb around the bottom.

Megan and Ben were our gracious hosts for the weekend. We started with a lot of different exotic beers. Since I do not like beer, nor do I like to drink very much, I was granted half glasses to taste. After each beer, we all rated on a scale of one to ten. I think I gave most of them a four. Honestly, they all kind of tasted the same to me - some less appealing than others. I only poured one of them into the bushes. And ok, yes, I did pour half of some of the others down the sink. BUT I did finish at least three glasses. Probably.

Anyways, the beer lovers had a great time and so did I. The company was great and we had a really fun, lovely, sunny day.

The next day, Mark and I visited another Lonely Planet recommendation - L'Arte Cafe. Really neat tile mosaics and pottery.

We also stopped at a glassblowing studio where everything was amazingly beautiful and amazingly expensive. And lastly, there was Puzzle World. A bit of a desperate attempt at a tourist trap, if you ask me. There was a maze, a lego/hologram room (???), remote control boats in a very small pond, a model train set, and lots of puzzles for sale. Needless to say, it was NOT in Lonely Planet.

We had another great weekend in NZ, but I will stick with trying the fantastic wine this country has to offer instead of beer.