What, me blog? No way.

So, the final straw was thrown when my college roommate Amy sent me a message that I better blog, or else! I know, I know... talk about a slacker. No blogs for three months!! Its a new record.

So, the most common questions asked to us are:

1. Where are you?
2. What are you doing?
3. Where are you living?
4. Why does your car smell like that?

Answer #1 changes daily. The #2 and #3 are "I don't know". #4: It eats Chinese food.

Truly. Right now we are BACK in the USA and we are homeless. It's great. The worst part is that our old laptop got a H1N1 Swine Flu-like Virus and my photo editing program is no more... and that is the TRUE reason why I haven't blogged for so long. Oh, that and we never have any internet available. And we live in our car. But, all is well. Here is a summary, and photos will come soon (like, less than three months from now), I promise.

June:
Cam kept going to school. We had some fun in New Zealand. I finally got accepted to the Masters Programme at University of Auckland, and then I turned it down because the professor I wanted to work with was going on leave. We decided to apply for longer visitor visas since I wouldn't be getting a student visa. Ana did home school and Elsie chased chickens.

THEN, around the middle of the month, all h-e-double hockey sticks broke loose. First, Ana BROKE HER LEFT ARM at Cam's school right after he performed his poem to the whole school at an assembly. Her arm brake was SO SEVERE that she was rushed to the hospital, underwent a two hour surgery, and had to stay in the hospital for two days. All that for just a broken arm! They were afraid she wouldn't evver gain feeling back to her hand, but miraculously the surgery went really well and she is finally getting some feeling back to that hand and is starting to move her fingers even!

THEN, a few days after we came back from the hospital in Auckland, our landlords went BERSERK! All of a sudden, they went crazy and demanded a bunch of money and told us we had two days to get out of the house and we better take our cows and other animals with us or they would shoot them!!! (A lady in the area filled us in that they are likely meth addicts). It was one of the craziest experiences of our lives! We moved out in a day and moved our animals to friends' and neighbors' houses (the neighbors filled us in that they knew our landlords were crazy all along and were afraid to tell us... they told us some ludicrous stories about things the landlords had done in the past when they lived in our house). Even though it is against the law for them to kick us out like that, we decided to just get out because they were SO crazy (like, they came at me with a baseball bat when I came back up to the house to get the rest of our stuff) and we didn't want to put the kids in danger. Oh, and they LIED to the tenancy board and said WE were violent with them and that we stole their sheep and that we never paid our rent (even though we paid it all and even had receipts!) and somehow convinced the tenancy board to give them our deposit!! It is seriously the weirdest, most illegal, most crazy thing. I really think they are the most psycho people in New Zealand because everybody we've met there is very nice, kind, considerate and honest. Yes, we managed to find the worst landlords in NZ. But, we made it out alive to tell the tale, so we are grateful. However, I do not think we will ever rent a house again. I'd rather live in a tent.

July:
So, at the end of June, we began our homelessness. We stayed with Sonna and our friends the Graces until Cam's school got out on winter break and then we rented a motorhome! I used to always wonder about RV-ers, wondering what the appeal was, but it was SO FUN. It was only $60 a day (just a little more than our rental house) and we could go wherever we wanted. We travelled to a bunch of places in New Zealand that we had never been before and revisited a few of our favorites. We "camped" in our friends' front yards. The kids loved it. I highly suggest it.

Since we already had round trip tickets back to the USA, we decided to leave New Zealand's winter and come back for the family reunions and weddings we didn't want to miss. We had to change our tickets because the doctors needed to remove Ana's monstrous cast before she could fly. So, after a living a few weeks in the 30' "bus house", selling all our stuff that we had stored in a storage room, and finding homes for our animals, we dropped off our motorhome and got on the airplane back to the USA. Of course, the day we left, the weather was warm and gorgeous, but we were in any case glad to leave the coldest winter in NZ in 20 years. Lucky us. Easy flight back to LAX where my mom picked us up and took us to her home in Orange County.

We were SAD to leave my sister and her husband and my darling niece Ruthie who had just moved into central Auckland into a tiny apartment that had a heated indoor pool in the complex that we only got to use once before we left. Sonna will be in NZ for at least another 6 months to finish up her contract with Sony/BMG and while also working for a music studio as an administrator and sound engineer. I know she's already missing when my whole family shows up in her little apartment and wants to party and eat ramen noodels.

July and August:
So, back in the USA, we loaded up in our old car that we had put in storage and drove to Utah for Jonah's family's reunion and then to Washington to visit my dad in the San Juans and my aunt in Redmond. We also checked out some places in the Northwest to see if we can find somewhere to move. Now, we are back in Utah for Ana's birthday and baptism on Saturday!

Future:
So, I don't know where we are going to go our what we will be doing, but we think we are going to wait to move back to New Zealand for a few years: the exchange rate is STILL horrible for the USD, the immigration process is very tight right now because of the poor economy there, and we just weren't feeling the love towards the end there (although Jonah might go back to press charges against our landlords)... we still LOVE New Zealand so much, but we also know we just have to go with the flow and go where we are led.

In any case, I don't mind being a gypsy for awhile. In fact, I get nervous about ever settling down somewhere because we've been so free for so long. But, its time. the kids are starting to get tired of homeschool and I miss having a piano. Jonah misses having a garage and an easy way to filter used vegetable oil for our car. We also kind of miss having income, but when you live in a car/tent and your fuel is free, your costs are low--real low-- and we're doing fine. Usually, we end up finding free food somewhere at some community party or Costco food demonstrations or something. No sweat. I'm glad I can be putting my Harvard anthropology education to use in some fine foraging skills.

We will probably end up in the Northwest for a few years, or maybe the big island of Hawaii. These are the requirements:
1. No serious snow, but rain is okay.
2. Not dry.
3. Cheap enough for us to be able to afford a few acres.

Any places we are missing? We would love some suggestions. We feel fairly confused.

Well, Amy, I hope you will forgive me. Best blog I can do for now. I'll try and get some photos up soon. TTFN.