Caves & Beaches

Today we headed out to find the Mangaone Cave! You had to hike about 30 minutes to get to it. The beginning of the hike was super steep! I felt like I was rock climbing, but only using my feet. You had to find little grooves in the hill to put your feet in to push off. We were all winded by the time we reached the top of the hill. After that we walked on a flatter terrain until we reached the cave. Once we got to the bottom of the stairs I was a little disappointed to find that you could only go about another 50 feet. There were also 2 ladders that you could climb up and go into a different tunnel, but Lane checked it out and said there was no way the kids could do it. Oh well. It was still really cool.

 Before you get to the stairs of the cave you have to walk down this really muddy hill. With the weight of the backpack and Davis, Lane slid right down! Not on purpose.

These pictures are of the hike to the cave.

From the cave we headed to Waipatiki Beach. I really love this beach because it’s nestled between to cliffs, so it’s smaller. I love looking at the rocks. It’s so pretty. The sand is really good too. And with the exception of 1 other family, we had it all to ourselves. The weather was perfect. Warmer than usual. The kids enjoyed running to the water’s edge and waiting for the tide to come in and then running. They also had fun playing in the sand.

My Birthdays

It’s not every day a girl gets 2 birthdays. And I’m not talking about celebrating it for 2 days. I mean really 2 birthdays. Since we’re in New Zealand and are a day ahead of the US, my birthday came twice this year :) To celebrate my NZ birthday, we went to the farmers market in town. It’s only on Saturdays & luckily it just happened to fall on Nov 2. Ideally, I would love to just walk around & make a purchase at every stand. But I had to hold back. Plus, we didn’t have that much space in our refrigerator & I don’t want food to go bad. We did end up buying some apples, asparagus & mushrooms. So glad we did because asparagus in the stores costs around $6-9! Here it was only $3.50. Much more reasonable. So glad we started the day off here. I think Lane may work every other Saturday or we’ll be taking little day trips, so we probably won’t make it back here.

 I really wanted to buy one of these chocolate bars, but they were $7! They had some really cool flavors though like white chocolate lemon poppy seed.

After that we went home, ate lunch & put the kids down for naps. Then we waited & waited for them to wake up. It’s not normal that I want my kids to take short naps. I usually pray for long ones! But we were ready to go! Next we went to Tongoio National Park to hike to Tongoio Falls & Te Ana Falls. These were shorter hikes compared to Shine Falls. And it was a good thing because Davis is totally over hiking. Once again Lane carried him on his shoulders. Everyone else did great. The falls were beautiful! I could hike to waterfalls all day. Elliot & I decided to call ourselves the Waterfall Hunters :)

Te Ana Falls

 Tongoio Falls

After we got back to our car, it was already 6pm. We were hoping to squeeze in a quick trip to the beach, but we knew we’d be pushing it since it was getting late & the kids hadn’t eaten. I chose to pick up a pizza from Pizza Hut for my birthday dinner. Yes, nothing fancy. I just wanted to be completely satisfied & as I was looking at menus around town, nothing really sounded that great to me. It was all contemporary food that I probably wouldn’t like & super expensive. So we paid $8 instead & got an XL pepperoni pizza. And I was happy. I also sent Lane to get me 2 desserts at 2 different places. Yes 2! I figured I was going to have to share them with everyone so I needed more than 1. When he got back, one was right & the other was not. I’ll admit I was a little peeved. But only because it was the super chocolatey one & I was SO looking forward to it. But I forgave him. We are going to get it tonight :) So instead, I ate the one chocolate cheesecake all by myself & let them have the other one. It worked out. After the kids were in bed, Lane & I got to watch a movie. We had rented 2 earlier. The Hobbit because it’s filmed here & we are actually going to go on a Hobbit Tour, so we wanted to see it again. And we also rented Gatsby because I still haven’t seen it. That was the one we sat down to watch until we realized that it was a Blue-ray & our dvd player is not. Fail. So we settled on The Hobbit.

For my US birthday we actually didn’t do too much. We went to church. Lane got asked to speak next Sunday-blah. Later that night we went to have dinner at one of Lane’s colleague’s house. They cooked a wonderful lamb dinner with homemade bread & baked vegetables(New Zealand yams, raw okra (I normally eat fried), carrots & something else). And for dessert she made strawberry rhubarb with oats. Normally I would turn up my nose to everything there except for the bread, but it was all really good. I’ve never had lamb before & it tasted like a really moist roast. And the best thing about it was I made a friend! I know that sounds lame, but the wife, Dawn, is really nice. She’s older, probably I don’t know 40s. She has 2 girls ages 11 & 9. Anyway, I think we’ll probably get together some time so that will be nice to have adult conversation.

So there you have it. The year I turned 31, I had 2 birthdays.  Oh ya, and Elliot gave me her space monkey to sleep with as my gift. But she made sure I knew it was only for 1 night. It was very sweet of her.

 

Bontanic Gardens

We checked out the local botanical gardens & they are beautiful. They’re located on top of this huge bluff and extend down into a valley if that makes sense. Lots of steep hills. It was so lush and made me think of the Garden of Eden. These pictures really don’t show the true beauty of it. 

The Year Halloween Did Not Come

Sadly we did not celebrate Halloween this year. Not by choice. Here in New Zealand Halloween is no big deal and no one does anything for it. Believe me, we asked around. One person even told us it was in November, so you know they have no idea it’s anything special. I was going to get some Halloween treats for the kids since we weren’t trick-or-treating, but they didn’t have any of those either. Guess I should have figured. Instead we got our “fix” by looking at my Halloween board on Pinterest. LOL! We also looked at pictures of our cousins in their costumes. And that was about it. Oh well. On the plus side, I didn’t have to spend a small fortune on Halloween costumes. Here’s a picture of our Halloween decorations I threw up by the front door before we left. I thought we could at least enjoy them for 2 weeks.