Happy New Year!

Hello all, I hope you had a great Christmas.  We had our Charlie Brown tree set up, no lights though as it's always so bright you couldn't see them anyways.  Christmas morning was fast and pleasant, everyone enjoyed their gifts and the excitement was high.  Connor got his own digital camera and Aidan got a DSI.  We were planning on going to the beach Christmas day after going for brunch at a co-worker of Victoria's, but the afternoon turned out rainy.

There was a trip to the petting zoo at McClaren falls, Connor's first outing with his new camera. So these are pictures Connor took.

On the 30th we dumped the kids at the neighbours and headed back to Wiatomo to do some black water rafting....basically tubing through a cave.  Oddly enough we met another Canadian tour guide on our adventure.  It seems that the tour guides in this country are heavy on the Canadian content. Here we are before the trip feeling a little sausage-like!   The water in the cave was cold, not sure how cold but outside the cave it's 11C.  We had a good time leaping backwards from waterfalls with a tube stuck on our butts, clambering along the rocks over some rough areas, and floating to the exit in the dark.  Shirley took the Glow worm walking tour and enjoyed herself as well.

New Year's eve was a fireworks spectacular, it took us over an hour to let off our large box, it was a lot of fun and we had the best display in the neighbourhood! Prior to the xplosives we had dinner in Chris's new wood oven in the back yard.  Lots of yummy lamb and veggies.
New Year's day was a beach day, it was Packed!! I have never seen that many people on the beach.  Christmas is the start of the summer holidays for everyone, with The kids done school until Feb 2nd.  I imagine that if you saw the beach from the air, it would be a solid strip of people from Papamoa to Mount Maunganui... a distance of 12KM!  It was interesting to see the "tents" on the beach, coleman makes a beach shelter?  There were some pretty elaborate setups.

On the 3rd we headed up to Auckland to show Lloyd and Shirley the zoo and the skytower.

We stayed in Auckland overnight and came back on the 4th, as soon as we got home Lloyd and I headed out fishing with Chris in the harbour.  We say the 2 cruise ships from Auckland anchored in the Tauranga harbour and watched them leave as the sun was setting. We did end up catching some fish, but Chris was the master, catching the majority of them.

This weekend we hope to head out to the Hobbiton movie set, as they are building it up again for the upcoming movie.  Only 3 more weeks and the kids are back in school, so stay tuned for some more adventures.