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.