New Zealand July

Just a note: All of the good photos on the blogsties are actually taken by Jonah. He's the man with the camera. I just put them on here and pretend that they're mine. The only ones that Jonah didn't take are the ones with him in them... so, like three.

I'm actually staying in a motel right now, so I'm not inclined to spend too much time writing... too many beds to jump on and too many ice buckets to fill. But here is the last of the New Zealand photos! Above: Ana got to have two different casts, and this is the first gigantic one. She needed eight pillows to support it for bedtime.

The kids are smiling while we move out of our rental house with 24 hours notice. Glad to know that our anxiety didn't rub off on them. Oh, and the lamb was a TON of help.

Cam had his last day of school about five days after we moved out (we stayed with friends that lived about 30 minutes from his school). He only had ten kids in his class, so they were really sad to see him go. He had the best teacher, best school, and nicest kids in his class. You can't beat New Zealand elementary schools.

The only bad thing about Cam's school was the jungle gym... luckily Ana just blamed that singular playground and not all playgrounds.

One more shot of Cam's elementary school. He still asks me about every day, "Can we please go back to live in New Zealand" or "I'm going to live in New Zealand for the rest of my life". Lucky for him that since he has NZ citizenship, he's the only one in the family that could actually easily do that.

Cam's great kindergarten teacher, Mrs. McFall (or MacFoawl, in Camspeak).

On Cam's last day of school, we surprised him and picked him up in our new home--the Backpackers Campervan. EVERYone was excited. Even me. Those things are so easy to clean! There's only like 10 s.f. of floor to sweep.

We took the campervan on a middle North Island tour, visiting some old favorites and exploring some totally new places too. Here we are in Mt. Maunganui, where we stayed right on the beach in the middle of town for three days. The RV Park is actually at the base of an extinct volcano, which we hiked up.

From the top.

I look like I have a hunchback. Actually, that's usually how I feel after hiking with Elsie for a few hours.

Didn't Ana get the "wear red up the volcano" memo?

Seriously. That country is awesome. There are beaches EVERYWHERE. Oh, I guess that's because its an island. But still, I can never get over how stunningly gorgeous the scenery is there.

Awww... the twins. Also, check out the amazing croc-robot-fur lined boots Ana's wearing.

When Ana comes out of her room wearing a fancy outfit she says, "Fashion!" I think Elsie could say the same thing... Fashion!

Cam hates fashion.

Most beaches also have a playground. The kiwis are like-- hey! another beach! let's put in a crazy playground with a super tall zipline.

See, the kiwis have learned that the kids don't injure themselves on the crazy, fast, tall playground equipment--they know kids always hurt themselves on the boring stuff, like just dropping from jungle gym bars and losing their balance and falling on their arm.

We drove out into the hinterlands and found some very sparsely populated areas with killer vistas.

Is this the most awesome house ever, or what?

This puppy got 28 mph!

The only bad thing was the small, inaccessible windows.

We found many horses tethered (!) on the side of the road with a stake and a rope around their neck.

For a moment, I thought I was in Hawaii... but then I realized I had a sweatshirt on.

This is the driftwood beach that ate all the other driftwood beaches.

Yep. After awhile you just take all the beauty for granted. That's why its been so fun for me to post all these photos now after two months--I had simply forgotten how visually blessed we were.

The driftwood beach also had bajillions of flat rocks. How does that happen?

This is the most common window view--green pastures and wood/wire fences.

We truly truly lucked out because during the 17 days we lived in the campervan, we only had four days of rain. On one rainy day, we found a good waterfall hike since you always get wet on those anyway.


This is the campervan during the day without the beds set up.

We visited Napier and the National Aquarium.

Ana and Elsie are so not squeemish, and Cam is wouldn't even go near the touch tanks. Gender roles reversed once again.

After her school got out for winter holiday, Aniva (Ana's New Zealand BFF) joined our family in the campervan. Here we are at the Auckland War Memorial Museum the next day after we parked/camped right in a downtown Auckland church parking lot for the night!

We visited some Auckland Regional (State) Parks and camped at Shakespear Regional Park, which had a great beach and even better hikes. Above is Aniva with a beach monster.

Ana always looked like she had arms to spare.

NZBFF.

Its like Anna Paquin in The Piano, but not quite.

Aniva always wanted a little sister (she has two younger bros), so it was great to have her around for a few days to dote on and take care of Elsie and make sure Elsie didn't fall off the giant photo fram.

This was our hike... sheep fields!

Can you find the four volcanos in Auckland Harbor?

I love how the hills are all groomed by the sheep so that they are always green, even in winter.

Hiking in Shakespear RP.

That's Auckland behind us.

Shakespear Regional Park was originally the site of some WWII bunkers where Kiwis waited in vain for invading Japanese. Just imagine Murray from FOTC doing his army training here.

They were the original hobbit holes.

Ana luckily got a new sleeker cast halfway through our campervan excursions. It also glowed in the dark.

She made poor Aniva come with her to all her checkups for emotional support. This was the last day with the cast; she got it off two days before our plane flight back to the USA.

I know--Cam's jumpsuit is awesome.
Here are all our kids' best buds.

So, sadly, we drove our campervan to the airport and took our ten giant bags and loaded up on the airplane and came back to the USA. Lucky for us, our first stop was Orange County, where my mom spoiled us for a few days until we got over our jet lag.

On our first full day back, she took us to the circus in Anaheim which was actually really fun and entertaining... especially when we stole some strangers' popcorn.

She also helped us switch over from winter to summer with some trips to the beach where we could actually wear swimsuits and get tans.
Notice the sand.

And more sand. And the sand in the smile.

You'll never guess what happened-- on the ride back, I picked up some unusual illness that was a lot like Swine Flu! On our drive leaving Orange County (in our old car that we had stored in LA), I got really sick and was pretty much incapacitated for a whole week. Glad to get that out of the way.
Anyway, we were only able to stop in Saint George for about 40 minutes on our way up to Bear Lake for Jonah's family reunion because I didn't want to contaminate anyone. But, we did accomplish a short visit to see Cam's friend Heath. They were both very happy. Can you tell?

We stopped for a couple days in SLC on our way up to Bear Lake. Everyone noticed immediately how much Elsie's hair has grown while we were overseas.


Mark my words--she will look exactly like this when she is thirty. Except maybe she won't have a gap in her teeth and hoepfully will have more hair.

I was so relieved to finally be able to put Elsie's hair in a ponytail... except that was the last time she ever let me do it. Dang.

The kids in front of the temple in SLC where Jonah and I got married.

Okay. Only a few more events to blogify. Thanks for sticking with it... Yea!!!