We are engaged!

We are very excited! More to come...




The ring is just a fun ring until we find something better for PE teaching.

Working the camera

More from Marty and Jess' wedding

I like this one...We were having fun cranking out all the poses we could think of and work the camera for Carl and Denise.

Wings over Wairarapa

As I said in the last entry, we went to an airshow this past weekend. Here are some of the pics from the day. Fun stuff! Most of the actual things in the air were too hard to catch on camera, and if I did get them, they looked too far away to really show how close they actually were to us. They had a lot of army-ish stuff on the ground (tanks, infantry doing a mock battle), parachuters in the sky and heaps of explosions going off to make it feel like the planes were shooting at the other planes. Here's a glimpse...

Marty and Jess' Wedding

So Mom and Dad left, but with not so many tears as we have had during departures before. We are getting better at it, I guess. It also helped that Mom and Dad had access to the VIP lounge in Wellington due to their business class flights (from using their AIRMILES points). They got given some special treatment in the lounge and as it sounds, they got special treatment the whole way back to Canada. Except from Mother Nature, however. They left us at 25 degrees and got welcomed home to -25, black ice and lots of snow.

We have been having great weather and this past weekend was no exception. We were invited to Marty and Jess' wedding in Napier, so we headed over and spent the weekend with Carl and Denise, who also went to the wedding. Marty is a winemaker and the wedding was at a beautiful vineyard, with some amazing wine to drink all night long. I may have had a wee too much of the red stuff, but it was hard to resist when it was free and oh, so good.

It was a beautiful wedding, with the ceremony outside, and the hills and vineyard in the background over a terrace. They had a massive picture frame hanging on the deck of the nearby cottage, with a digital camera (on a tripod) set up facing towards the frame. The idea was for all the guests to sit behind the frame, over the course of the day and have their photo taken.

Another exciting moment in the day: Bryce ate fish, and liked it. For those who don't understand about Bryce and fish-->This is huge.


Denise is due any day now and looking glorious in her 9th month. She looks absolutely normal except for a big basketball-looking lump that she tucks under her shirt. Not really, but you could believe it. We are awaiting the phone call...

Bryce and I got out to the Wings over Wairarapa airshow yesterday. I had never really seen an airshow, not that I remember anyway, and really enjoyed it. They had WWI and WWII planes having dogfights and doing aerobatics, helicopters with people abseiling out of them and picking up and dropping cars, then there were jets that flew just above our heads, and even a war re-enactment with tanks and infantry pretending to shoot each other on the ground while planes cruise super-low over our heads. I am not keen on war, in the least, but I understand more now what kind of fear this type of environment would have created for everyone who had any type of war going on around them. Not really, but kind of...

Today we had a public holiday for everyone in Wellington (as it was Wellington Anniversary Day). Every district in New Zealand gets their own long weekend. Nice, isn't it? We slept till ten then gardened all day, followed by some bike rides and a fantastic creamy blue cheese rigatoni combo that topped off the day. I can't really believe school starts again so soon. It will be hard to adjust back into the real world. For now, I chill.....and celebrate living in Wellington.

So much to do, with so much vacation to do it in, how nice!

So, as I write this, Mom and Dad are down the hall in the midst of packing up the entire country which they have bought and are trying to cram into 3 luggage bags. It has been a fabulous visit with them, and the weather has given us many treats with which to enjoy their company.
After the buried village, we celebrated my birthday with mountain bike rides, big dinners, another visit with Pam and Andrew, a super yummy cake, some games with Michelle, Nathan and Clare, and came back to Pram feeling like we had done heaps in the week away.

Bryce had to go back to work for the middle of the week, but still got along to the museum with us one night to see the exhibit of the colossal squid they caught in New Zealand about a year ago. It was massive and not something I would want to find myself swimming beside at any point. They have a beak, if you can believe it, which they eat their prey with, after the long tentacles with rotating claws grab the prey. The esophagus runs through the brain so if the squid eats too big of a bite, it can have some severe head pain (or maybe what we call "a brain freeze?").

We had a great long walk to see seals (which were on vacation until May, oops) but got to explore the south coast of Wellington, nonetheless; and had numerous lunches out including one that involved Dad and I splitting a milkshake that was made up of a Moro bar (like a Mars bar) and chocolate icecream. Oh, snap. That rocked.
This past weekend, we went to Napier to show Mom and Dad the beauty that it is; vineyards, Te Mata Peak, Carl and Denise (who is in her last days of pregnancy), great Thai food, and my favourite memory: getting up at 5am to watch the sunrise with Dad. How special that was!

We got a chance to visit Trish and Craig (Bryce's cousin's) on their site at a campground right on the beach as well, and had a really nice lunch with them. Unfortunately, the weather was pretty chilly and windy and the waves were crazy, so we didn't get to have a "beach day" with them. Mom, Dad and I made up for that yesterday though at Scorching Bay in Wellington. Still a cold wind, but a nice chill-out on the beach. Hard to imagine them not being here tomorrow. Sad, but I have a feeling they will be here again soon. I think New Zealand stole a little more of their hearts this time.


Sunrise photo (Dad took an hour long video!)

Bryce enjoying some of Mom and Dad's stories of sticking their tongues on cold poles in the middle of winter...


Scorching Bay

Mom and Dad, fully relaxed

More of our trip...

Carl and Bryce at Zippies; Mom and Dad at the Buried Village (which was buried in ash from the 1886 Mt. Tarawera eruption). And a nice pic of Mom and Dad.
I am no longer 30 (and therefore close to my 20's) as of 1 hour from now. Yikes.

Luging

The trip continues...

We are having a great time and definitely recharging. It is great to spend "down" time with Mom and Dad and to be able to actually have a vacation together. Lots of good food and swimming at beaches. We went to the Coromandel for a few days after Christmas which is a region of white sand beaches, with lots of islands of the coast and great waves. We got stuck in some heavy rain for the one day we were staying in Whangamata, but that didn't stop us from swimming. It DID stop us at first and we decided to go shopping in town as a means of using up the day. Bryce found a WASJIG puzzle and we did that for most of the afternoon before I got stir crazy and needed the beach! We all went swimming and boogie boarding in the waves and.....got wet. Good memories though. We got to catch up with Michelle and Nathan and play some intense cards with Kim and John, so we made it through the rains fine. The next day we drove up to Hahei and saw more beautiful scenery. We took Mom and Dad on a 45 minute hike through some bush to get to Cathedral Cove, where sandstone cliffs are eroding away and have left caves and pillars. It was seriously crowded but no less pretty. Next, we travelled to Hot Water Beach where you can dig a hole in the sand and feel the water warmed by thermal vents from underneath the ground. Unfortunately, we were also surrounded by many other tourists checking out the same novelty and it was packed. We managed to find some solitude in one spot of the beach and Bryce and I played in the waves for a while again. We have some "cheap-as" Bob the Builder boogie boards. They ride the waves like champs though so we are very content!
Back in Rotorua the next day and we met up with Pam, Andrew, Sam, Quentin and Hugh (Andrew's Dad) for a gondola ride up Mt. Ngongotaha and some luging. Luges are little sleds that take you down concrete paths that are designed like race tracks and great fun. Mini-golf was the next activity, and resulted in Dad getting two under par and winning a free game.
NEw Year's night we went out for dinner at a restaurant that was on a street that was closed to traffic and had all the tables spread out patio-styles. We enjoyed the dinner and the people-watching, as well as listening to a Bagpipe band walk around the streets and belt out some tunes. Rotorua had a free concert in the park so the place was jammed and had a fun fair like atmosphere. We got home before midnight and had New Years back at the house, but the heavy rains started about 11:45pm, so we were dry but sure that there were hundreds of soaked Rotoruan kiwis who weren't so lucky.
Yesterday, Bryce and I went for a mountain bike ride in the Redwoods ("the disneyland of MTBiking") and then we all drove to Papamoa Beach in Tauranga to swim in the waves with Pam and family again. More intense waves at this place and a few of us got "tumble dryered" in the massive waves. I had at least 3 tbsp of sand come out of my bikini at the end of the day.
Not sure entirely what the rest of the trip entails; more riding, more relaxing and sleeping until you wake up, and more good food and time with Mom and Dad. Hope you are enjoying your holiday and that you have time to just chill like we are blessed enough to be enjoying at the moment! More to come....