Christmas Time

So we have been back in NZ for a week. We got our packages for christmas under the tree! We made Christmas cookies yesterday and decorated them with my mom and Cliff over skype. They were tons of fun to do. We also decorated gingerbread houses. They are in the picture.
We have been watching Christmas Vacation. It is a tradition to watch it :) So funny!
It is also summer time so we have been taking more walks along the beach. We went snorkeling around the back of our house. Next time we are going to look for scallops.
We are also getting some beans from our garden. I made some strawberry jelly, too. Very yummy!
We are excited for Christmas this week. People normally take a few weeks off of work at this time. Last Friday was the last day for a lot of people and they wont go back to work til mid January. Brandon is saving time up for the wedding though. We will keep you all posted on how the end of 2009 goes!

Australia: Day Three

So, once again we saw a trip in the tourist guide that sounded like a lot of fun, so we hit the road to drive along the great ocean road. It is a curvy road along the southern beaches of Australia. We passed through the surfing capital of the country where the waves were big and broke perfectly near the line of surf shops.The trees were in the rainforest that we went through. They had fern gullys that had made those huge trees be able to grow. The rock formations are from the 12 apostles. It is the site of many ship wrecks and there are 12 of those giant rocks. There is also a picture of the blowhole where water comes through a tunnel and is blown out of the cave. We have so many other good pictures, just not enough room:)

Australia: Day Two

Since we had a car, we decided to drive down to Phillips Island. They had four parks there that were a must see in all of the tourist magazines. So first we went to the Koala Conservatory. They have the Eucalyptus trees that koala's love and a board walk to just walk you through where they live. You have to try and spot them, but we had no trouble since there were so many. They mentioned in one of the signs that since Wallabies enjoy some of the same things as the koalas, they will hop the fence to get in the conservatory. We were walking along the trail below the boardwalk and saw one 15 feet away!! On our second walk through on the way back to our car we saw a baby koala (joey) eating some leaves while the oldest koala was right next to him just sleeping. They sleep 20 hours a day so is was neat to see one awake.







Next we went to eat at the Churchill homestead. They had a blacksmith, someone spinning wool, working sheep dogs did a demonstration of how they herd the sheep, and they had a petting area where we got to pet a sheep!! That is also when I got a phone call that Georgia Tech beat Clemson :)







So then we had some time to kill before the penguin parade. So, we went to the tip of the island to see the nobbies. It was a beach with rounded off black rocks instead of sand. We just stayed at the board walk above since the seagulls were nesting there. There were more seagulls than I have ever seen in one place before. There was also a blowhole which was really neat to watch as a big waves came in. Out 1.5 km from the shore (about a mile) was a rock with 20,000 seals on it. It is the largest colony of them in the world. It was so far out that all you could see was a ton of shiney backs, but it was neat to think of what an awesome sight it would be.







So then we went to see the penguins parade. It is when the sun sets, which was 8:52 pm that night, the penguins come out of the ocean and return to their burrow where there are little baby penguins sitting outside waiting for their parents. The board walk between the beach and the parking lot has lights that shine out and you can see the babys waiting. It was so incredable. And to top it off, there was a shooting star while we were checking out the babys. It was sooo fast, but really pretty as a short flash of red light went zipping by. No camaras were allowed since they would scare the penguins... but they were really cute little ones, and they waddeled up the beach and down the way till they got to their home :)

Australia: Day One

Hey everyone!! So Brandon had a last minute trip to Australia, and I joined him with the free flying dollars from quantas. We arrived early Saturday morning to Melbourne which is a 4 hour flight from Auckland and a 2 hour time change. Saturday we walked around the city to get used to it and ate in one of the alley cafes. The food was really good!! The city has very historical buildings next to very modern artistic designs, and there is no detail missed. It is very clean, and the people are really nice, too. The city is filled with shopping and rooftop bars. We went out to a brewery bar and listened to a local band play that night. Here are some pictures from Saturday...

Thanksgiving & Decorating for Christmas

Hey everyone. Well, the first thanksgiving in NZ is over and was really successful. I am adding some photos from that day and of our decorating for Christmas. We have our little tree set up and used our USA lights plugged into a power converter. We had a couple people from Brandon's work come over and they had their first Thanksgiving ( they dont celebrate it here)... so we said what we were thankful for, ate a ton of food, and everything tasted great. I made turkey, green bean casserole, candied yams, cranberry sauce, rolls, mashed potatoes, corn, ice cream peanut butter pie, and a cheesecake.
We have been playing latter golf in our back yard since the weather has been nice. Our neighbor and her kids saw us playing and joined us the other night. They are really sweet, and helped us out while we were without furniture.
We received a gift refund to fly on the airline that we had a bad flight on after Brandon complained once a week to customer services. We dont want to fly to the states with them again, but we may use it for one of our small trips around here.

Sky Tower

No pictures of this one, but definitely the thing to do in Auckland. We went to lunch at the sky tower, and it is a rotating restaurant in the center of the city. It is really cool! It takes an hour to go one rotation. Very neat, good food, and awesome views :)
Brandon is in his third week of movember. The mustache is getting pretty long now. He has raised more than anyone else on his team... great cause, too. Thanks to everyone for helping him do that!
The santa downtown was reviled yesterday. They created a giant santa and reindeer downtown. They had made him and supposedly his face was too creepy, so they remade him and now he is back to his jolly old self.
This week we are having some people over for thanksgiving. We had to find the ingredients for the basics. The hardest to find was the marshmallows for the candied yams (we bought kumara for the yams). I am also frying the onions for the green bean casserole myself. I will try and get pictures of the food! Wish me luck.. first time cooking thanksgiving dinner!!!

Neighborhood and Guy Fawkes

Just a walk around our neighborhood! There are so many pretty views :) Recently NZ celebrated Guy Fawkes day and there were fireworks all over these bays. It is a holiday on November 5th that is celebrated in remembrance of the Gunpowder Plot discovery and Fawkes involvement... I don't know enough about the history yet to say more than that.
I am still in the search for a job. Not an easy task in this country! Still trying though!
Getting very settled into our little town... miss you guys though!

NZ weekend

These pictures are from Shakespeare park and the Bay of Islands. We decided to see some of the beauty of NZ this past weekend.
Shakespeare park is a forest and farmland walking trail at the end of the hibiscus coast. The farm area had cows and sheep with a wool house. The beach their was very beautiful too. The pictures from there are the curved beach, the fern curled up, and the waterfall.
The bay of islands is a 4 hour drive north of Auckland. It is a ton of islands that are topped with tropical forest. We went out on a sailing catamaran for 6 hours on Sunday. It was great! We went kayaking once we anchored to the nearest beach, and then went snorkeling. The water was pretty cold still, but it was worth it... it is starting to look like summer :)
This week we also went to the best chip shop in New Zealand... it is at a fish store (since fish and chips are so popular it makes sense it would be their)... called Oceanz. And the chips were really good!
I have been cooking up a storm lately. I have been learning how to make things from scratch since the canned and packaged just add water cooking is not really available here. I love it though... and I know Brandon does, too!
I know I have been a little behind on blogging... I am trying :)
Miss you guys!

Pictures

Today is labor day in New Zealand. Brandon has the NZ holidays off and was able to choose one US holiday to add to their long list. He chose the 4th of July. We figured we can have Thanksgiving in the evening. We have gone to the Warehouse to pick up some house hold items and there was Halloween things out. They also sell signs that say "no trick or treating" for those people who do not like the Americanized version of Halloween.
Anyway, this is a short one with lots of pictures :) Enjoy!!

Market Shopping

So today is Sunday... market day :P
This is our third week going shopping at the market in orewa. We first hit the veggies, fruit, and bread at the farmers market. There is a guy who sells these amazing roma tomatoes that are acid free and organically grown... I am new to liking tomatoes so at first I didn't want any, but he gave us a free try. He told us to take one and bite into it... gross for any normal tomato, but we did and it was soooo good. We have gotten them 3 times now, and plan to get them as long as he is selling them. We also get avocados, mandarin oranges, ciabatta bread, and whatever veggies we need for the week. The picture includes lemons, pepper, tomatoes, and oranges from the farmer's market, but the strawberries are from our garden.
Our next stop is the "mad butcher". This is the largest butcher chain in New Zealand, but it still seems pretty small town-ish. We get our chicken there... they said we can special order a turkey for thanksgiving, but it costs about $17/ pound. There is no limit on them if you hunt them though, and there are several areas to do that... Brandon might be embarking on a turkey hunt come November.
Our last stop is the New World market... a mad dash through aisles dodging carts and finding things to make meals of our veggies and chicken. The people are very friendly at these stores, and are quick to make conversation. We have been asked why we are getting certain thing, what we are making, where are we from, and told that you can find the items we are buy elsewhere for cheaper (this by the check out girl!)
Soon we will be eating out of our own back yard! We have already started eating the strawberries, and our bean plants are very healthy. Our tomato plants are getting tall, and our onions have made lots of greenery. The peppers are the only questionable thing, but we are waiting and seeing if they get bigger. You all know that we have been really excited about our lemon tree, so the progress is that it is in bloom. But, the same time it was blooming a tree in our back yard had started blooming as well... it is very similar, but not identical. We think it is another type of lemon or maybe an orange tree. Then I remembered other trees were blooming in our yard a couple of weeks back. So, I checked it and there were fuzzy things growing on it... like peach fuzz. I googled peach trees and it is a dead on match... of course that is to my untrained eye... but how exciting just to find it. We have not one, but three of those trees!! I hope we have peaches!! Some on another tree have started turning peach coloured. (NZ spelling on that one) We also had another blooming tree before that now has little green fruits on it... so we cut it open... googled the tree look and leaves... and, we think it is a granny smith apple tree. It was the only one that the blossom matched and the little green fruits matched... plus the leaves are the same. We can now only wait and see, but I am hoping for lots of pie making this summer :)
I will add pictures so you guys can tell me what you think tomorrow. It is too dark out now.
Love you all!

Back from Trip

So we are back from the states! It was a great visit, too. The wedding we went to was beautiful, and it was so great to meet up with friends and family again. We had to readjust to driving on the other side of the road again since we had gotten so used to the NZ side, but it was a pretty quick change. We went out for a really short visit to the outer banks to visit Brandon's mom, but we are glad we made it out. Hopefully our next trip will allow us to go visit our dads.
We registered when we were back in Charlotte. I will say the scan gun was a ton of fun.
Brandon went off-roading with the guys on Wednesday while I went to stock up on US priced clothes and makeup with mom. It was great :)
Flying back was where the real drama started. Up until we got to LAX it was great, but we were then put on our flight to NZ. After boarding late, we sat down and the in-flight tv was broken. Both of ours were not working, and mine was hanging out of the seat in front of me by a wire, just dangling, until it was taped into place half way through the trip. The pilot announced halfway through that the toilets were not emptied in LA so they were not going to serve anymore food or drinks for the remaining 7 hours in the flight unless it was for medical reasons. The only toilets of the 14 on the plane that were working were the 3 in the back ( right by our seats) so when this was said everyone lined up to use them. So 13 hours of flying later and unable to stop to fix the situation... we landed and waited for our bags. We just kept waiting too until a man announced all the bags were off the airplane, and we had to fill out missing bags reports. So lost luggage, too!
Our bags arrived last night and were delivered to our house. I just will be flying with Air NZ like we normally have instead of trying Quantus again.
That is all for today! I will write about our farmers market day tomorrow :)
Love you all!

Packing & Storms

So we are now half packed for our trip back to the states. We leave tomorrow evening and land the same day in the morning. That is right... we are traveling back in time. Since we cross the date line we are going to leave before we take off according to the time stamp. But, we have all of our laundry done up, and we have taken a few orders from people who want some jeans from America. Since a pair of Levi jeans cost $150-$250 here, several people want us to bring back some at the lower price tags. We are going to do some shopping ourselves and stock up on all of the summer things going on sale since we are going into summer now in the southern hemisphere.
I am sure many of you have heard about the tsunami and earthquake in the the south pacific. This affected the area of Samoa, which is about a 6 hour flight from where we are. It is a big tragedy for many New Zealanders with family there, but we only had mild waves of 46cm over what is normal. There were some tornado warnings as well, but we just had some rain and lightening. About a month ago when we were staying in Wellington we did feel an earthquake at 2 am. It was our first and very scary, but according to the lady from the front desk they have about 20 a year and never worse than the one we felt.. so not too bad. Up in Auckland there are very few ever recorded. Just one of the joys of living on a fault line!
Back to more pleasent news... we are watching top gear and looking forward to our flight :) Love you guys so much and miss you more each day!

TV and Maromite

So today was a slow day. The weather was acting up so we are staying in tonight. There is a show here that explains what is in your food and compares brands. This is really good when you are still getting used to what to buy. We have made some of our regular dishes like lasagna and red beans with rice, but shopping for ingredients is tough. Tonight on the show they are comparing spreads like Nutella and Maromite. Maromite is a kiwi thing... it is a yeast spread and tastes like liquid bread with too much yeast :) But it is what makes kiwis kiwis! We are trying to aquire the taste for it so we fit in a bit more.

Lemon tree and Kiwi Hot

Hi guys! It has been awhile, but I am proud to say that we have been enjoying New Zealand and have "heaps" to talk about. We went out last weekend and walked the entire length from the beach in the bay from the back of the house the the one in the front. It took 2 hours because of all of the rocks, but it was so pretty. People were fishing and diving right from the rock edges. We found out that Orca's make frequent appearances in Stanmore Bay (the one in the front of the house). We saw an article about 12 of them at once just this past year. I don't know if I would want to be in the water with a killer whale though. But maybe when it is summer we wont see them and we can go fishing.
We have gotten used to our house here. There is still no furniture.... but it is in Auckland now! It will take about 2 weeks to get to the house since the stuff has to go through customs still. That works out just fine for us since we are taking our trip back to the states this week. We leave on Thursday and arrive in charlotte late Thursday. With the crossing of the date line we gain a day, but the trip will take about 30 hours start to finish with layovers in Atlanta and LAX. In house news, our beans were growing great. I saw "were" because something ate them. I think it is the neighbors cat since I have caught it eating out of the compost pile already. But we replanted seeds in little pots and but them on the porch since it gets full light, but the cat is too scared to come up there. We also riged up a little protection for the beans out there with a 2 liter of soda bottle that we cut up. It is pretty ingenious if I do say so myself. The strawberries are doing amazing though. We love them, and the lemon tree, too. We just got a bigger pot for that and I painted it. I did a little picture of our back yard with the water, palm tree, Brandon, me, lenox being a bear, lily watching him, and the ridge. It is very cute!
Speaking of the puppies... I miss them soooo much. I am really excited to see them this trip. We have found a company to transport them here and a place for them to stay during their quarintine time. They will be very well treated and we can visit them during thier month long stay.
We also found a take out place that we have been to once a week since we got here. They have excellent pad thai and we are already regulars. The man who takes are order saw brandon last time and said... oh 2 pad thai with chicken, and American hot. That is how we put it the first time we went. When you say you want something hot, they normally ask you if you want that "kiwi hot" or "thai hot". Kiwi hot I must say is very mild. I would not classify it as hot on any scale. So we said in between since thai is way too hot... so, American hot :)
I want to thank all you guys back at home for keeping up with us! It has been really comforting to know that we have so many great friends and family members. I just caught up with mom on skype, and really enjoyed seeing her and cliff. We are looking forward to getting there this week.
Well, it is nearing 2 in the morning so I should be off to bed! Since I am on Brandon's computer I don't have pictures, but I hope to figure it out soon. Love you all too much and miss you tons!

TheKnot

TheKnot

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Garden and Getting Settled

We have now moved into our new home. Of course within days we both had a cold. We did get a surprisingly large amount done despite this. We planted the beautiful (yet just starting) garden you see here, and found the basics we needed to start living in the house. The garden had tomatoes, beans, and strawberries in the main area, and the small one contains hot peppers. And of course we cannot forget our new favorite part of the house... our lemon tree. It will probably take awhile to actually produce lemons, but we love it all the same.
The house is recently renovated so the carpets, tile, bathrooms, and kitchen are all new. It has a bit of a beach house feel to it. (Probably because of its location between two beaches) It was missing a few things that seemed necessary for us to live here comfortably... A fridge, clothes washer, microwave, and a bed. These are the things we set out for the first weekend here. We found a ton of stores for appliances, or white wear, so we started bargaining with one of the places to get a refrigerator, washer, dryer, and TV. TV's from the states DO NOT work in the NZ (pronounsed N Zed). The frequency is different, so we had to sell all of our tv's in the states. The good news is that they have really good free channels here, so we are able to get them through a digital anntena. Back to our bargaining... we were able to not only get them to knock off a third of the overall price, but when we mentioned we would like to ask about what they could take off a price of a phone the salesman just said he would give us the phone if we left. We felt very proud of ourselves.
To address the bed problem we ran into the only store open after 6pm.. the warehouse. It is litterally that too, shelves of just stuff... no fancy displays.. no fancy packaging... just lots of stuff for not a lot of money. We found a very nice air matress there, a microwave, sheets, pillows, extension cords... everything you need. We however throught our sheets and one blanket would be enough for the heat problem. We were very wrong! We had to unpack our clothes and pile them on the bed to stay warm that night. So we got a huge wool cover for the next night... still cold. So we got a space heater, and we slept very warm until its timer would run out that we set (safety first).. but still a good option except for the fact that we were sick. So finally we got the greatest thing of all... an electric blanket! Now, we are very cozy.
I will leave the washer story for tomorrow:)
Thanks for being patient while we waited for our internet to arrive. Love you all and miss you like crazy!

Town Names

We have been here for a little while now, and I have been struggling with one thing more than anything else.... how to pronounce names of towns. The towns are often named by the native Maori people which leaves the NZ newcomer confused. The town we are moving to is in a district called Whangaparaoa. The town Brandon has been working on is Aotea and Porirua. On our drive to Auckland we passed Paekakariki, Pouwhakaura, and Waiouru. Brandon has to be able to refrence these towns in his job and is constantly corrected. I was trying to pronounce different places that we were looking for houses, and Brandon just looked at me and said "ok Nell"... haha! There is also the record for one of the longest city name in the world that is held by NZ. It is... "Taumatawhakatangihangakoauauotamateaturipukakapikimaungahoronukupokaiwhenuakitanatahu", which translates roughly as The summit where Tamatea, the man with the big knees, the climber of mountains, the land-swallower who travelled about, played his nose flute to his loved one. It is 85 letters long!! So needless to say, we are working on that!
There are more signs for road safety here than in the states. There are campagnes to slow down, be safe in intersections, and be cautious when passing. The speed limit never goes above 100 km/hr, which is roughly 65 mph. There are also electronic ticketing systems that take the license plate number and send you a ticket for speeding. The picture I posted is of the intersection safety ad. It has a wheel on it with "near miss", "miricle", and "death" writen on it and the sign says spin. don't spin. The tv version is the scary part though. There is a creepy looking guy that waits for someone to pull out in an intersection while a car is coming, then spins the wheel. There are several versions, but they show someone getting hit then the wheel stopping at death... it does make you think twice before pulling out though.

The spelling has also been an issue. There is different spellings for a ton of stuff. Tires = Tyres, Center = Centre, Color = Colour, and Curb = Kurb. And yes they do pronounce the "h" in herb. It makes me think of the tomato/potato song.

That is all for today! We are moving into our new place tomorrow, so I will have to wait to get internet hooked up there before the next posting...
Love you guys!

House & Jeep

So we went to find a car and house up in Auckland, and we did! The car is a white jeep wrangler. I love driving it :) It is a manual so I am shifting with my left hand. Definitely a change, but so much fun. The picture was taken at the beach that is close to the house we are going to rent. There are two beaches in walking distance. One on each side. Views of both of them from the house too. It has a yard for the puppies and a place to garden. It is beautiful. Some interesting things about the house is that it is 3 bedroom and 1.5 baths. It is an older home that was renovated. It has a tank for water that is collected rain. The entire house uses it... showers, drinking, toilet, and laundry. Many places in NZ are like that. But, check it out in the pictures. The first is of the back of the house. The next is of the view from the back yard. Then the front house is in the third, and the last is of the view from the front. We should be able to move in this weekend or next.

We were also able to catch a movie this last weekend. They are slightly cheaper to go to and the snacks are not marked up like they are in the states. The most interesting thing was that the seats were assigned. You go to a stand that you reserve your ticket and then choose your seat like on an air plane. You can upgrade your seat to a gold seat which is a lazy boy recliner and you get served drinks or dinner from waiters. Maybe we will try that sometime. That is it for today :) Missing everyone...Love you guys!