 |
| The eleven girls that made up the awesome weekend! We are on a random hill near Huka Falls! |
 |
| The car singing to Free! |
Thursday:
I went over to Caitlin's house in the afternoon to cook Thanksgiving dinner. I got there a little late and her friend, Annie who was visiting from Chico, California, had already started. They had figured out how to make the turkey, taking out the guts and stuffing it and all. They had also made homemade apple and pumpkin pies, yum! Actually only the pie crust on the pumpkin pie was homemade because Caitlin's mom sent her a can of pumpkin, knowing you can't get that in New Zealand. Gendie kept asking for a picture of the pumpkin can to show previous nannies who had to make the pie from-- get this--a REAL pumpkin! Sadly, in a rush to delete pictures this weekend in order to make room on my memory card, I accidently deleted the evidence, forgetting that picture hadn't been loaded on my computer! Maybe someone else took one? I took the challenge of making a pumpkin pie out of real pumpkin for Christmas!
After my arrival and seeing their progress, I got straight to work making spinach dip (soup mix sent from the states), twice baked potatoes, arizona salad and green bean casserole! Catilin and Annie kept making their list of items, they made the cranberrys, stuffing, a salad and quiches! Once dinner was ready, the eight kids ate their meals while the gravy was cooking. When all the adults sat down, we all said what we were thankful for because we can't forget that American tradition! Then we all dug in but not before Tim almost burnt the house down! He somehow set the bowl of towel covered bread rolls down next the the decorative candles, luckily it didn't burn down and our meal was delicious, it tasted like Thanksgiving! I'm glad I got my Thanksgiving meal even if it meant cooking all day and partying before leaving bright and early for an awesome weekend!
 |
| I love how we decorated the table but maybe we shouldn't have lit the candles? |
Friday:
I woke up at 5:30 am! Got ready to go, made sure I wished my family a Happy Thanksgiving via e-mail then drove away to pick up the girls for the weekend trip! We made it to Waitomo with plenty of time before our 12:00 pm glowworm cave tour. The cave tour was awesome! We got on our wetsuits and hoped on the bus. Our silly tour guides talked about the small town on our way out there. Then we picked out tubes, making sure they fit our butt! Then practiced our waterfall jumps outside of the cave, man the water was cold! After all the prep, we finally headed into the cave. We had to climb underground into the cave. We let our eyes adjust then we walked along the cave until we got to the first waterfall where we jumped down backwards, landing onto our tubes with a splash. Then we floated down and stopped. Here we turned off our headlamps and they told us about the glowworms which we found out are really maggots with shinny shit but that wouldn't be a good name for them on the marketing standpoint. We spent some time looking at shinny-shit-maggots, then floated off again and then stopped to see some sunlight sixty meters above our heads, jumped down another waterfall and floated some more. It felt like we were on the Disney ride It's a Small World at this point because we were just floating down looking up at the millions of green dots on the cave ceiling! We were just missing the music! The end of the tour we played the "find your way out of the cave in the dark" game, we all made it safe and sound and enjoyed our complimentary bagel (with no cream cheese) at the end!
 |
| The group half way through the tour 65 meters underground! |
 |
| Ready to start the adventures! I love our enthusiasm! |
 |
| Do the tubes fit our butts? |
After the cave tour we drove to Taupo. All drives in New Zealand are awesome! They don't have many big motorways (or freeways as you would call them). Their motorways are more like numbered country road with picturesque views at almost every point in time that are impossible to capture on camera through a car window, especially when you are the driver! You just have to be there to appreciate the beautiful scenery on the drives!
We got to Taupo and stopped at Huka falls to see more beauty! I love the color of the water! The waterfall wasn't as big as I expected but it was still beautiful! Of course we took a million pictures here! And stopped at a look out point to take more pictures!
 |
| Huka Falls! |
Next we all journeyed to our three different hostels, a group of eleven could not all be at the same one because of the huge cycle race that weekend! Thousands of people were planning on riding around the huge Lake Taupo on Saturday morning! Lake Taupo is 160 km around! Sofia and I had a room with a guy who was riding with the elites and he told us his goal was to do it in four hours and that's with the elite group! It was cool to be there during the cycle race even if it did mean we all slept in separate places!
Saturday:
Named best day in NZ thus far!
I woke up bright and early feeling like a badass because I was about to jump out of plane! When we arrived at the location of the jump, I talked myself into buying pictures and a dvd of myself skydiving. I figured I would never be brave enough to do it again, I have to remember it! Of the eleven on the trip, nine girls jumped, three brave girls went in the first plane load! The other six of us waited for them to fall from the sky and see that they lived before we went up!
 |
| A product of the second plane's waiting-for-friends-to-live-photo-shoot! |
The plane ride up was a little scary but I just keep smiling and telling myself how cool it will be. It's all in your head anyway. Once we reached our height of 12,000 feet it all went so fast! I was the first one out of the plane and did not expect it to be my turn for a while! Then all of a sudden Ronny--my tandem jump guy--started moving me toward the edge of the plane! I closed my eyes and let myself fall! When I finally realized I was falling I opened my eyes and realized HOW COOL it was! I was falling so fast from the plane and could see the coolest view! I couldn't stop smiling! It was weird how it didn't feel so much like I was falling. You know like the dreams you have of falling, it was more just lots of wind. Then all of a sudden I get jerked into a vertical position because Ronny had opened the parachute!
The parachute ride was what I was most excited for! I couldn't wait to check out the view! We were over Lake Taupo and it was awesome! I could see the whole lake, the mountains surrounding it and the land too! It was so pretty! Ronny spun me around a couple times to see the 360 degree view! That was so fun, suprisingly that spin was the only time the whole skydive that my stomach dropped! Weird right?
 |
| SKYDIVING! I loved the view, isn't it awesome? That's Lake Taupo behind me! |
Once I landed I couldn't stop saying, "That was so cool" and "I'm so glad I did that"! I was going to be a self-proclaimed sissy and watch my friends from the ground. Just a few days before we left for the planned trip I decided I need to skydive on this trip! I knew I would regret it if I didn't. I mean when else can you jump out of a plane with a huge group of fun girls, over a beautiful huge lake in New Zealand? I am happy to say that I am super glad I changed my mind! After the sky dive we were all reviewing the videos and pictures and the tech guy said he never had a group so big!
Skydiving was a great experience. I will keep saying I'm so glad I did it and telling people who think they will never skydive that if I can do it, anyone can! It really wasn't as scary as I thought! So go, jump out of a perfectly good aircraft people! :-)
The day is not over yet, that was just the morning...
After the skydive we walked to a cute cafe to grab lunch before driving to white water rafting! The food was so good and someone drew a fern leaf in the foam of my double shot flat white coffee (For those who don't know a flat white is the famous coffee drink in NZ, it's basically just a small latte)! I had a double shot because I thought I would be driving the forty-five minutes to white water rafting. After I drank it, we decided to cram the eight white water rafters in Jer's seven seater Mercedes station wagon and just leave my car in Taupo. Needless to say I quite energetic on the drive down, probably bothering the three sleepy girls I was sitting next to. I wanted to scream out the window at the thousands of cyclists finishing their long race! It was really interesting to see the race and luckily we were going the in opposite direction of them so they didn't make us late for our rafting trip!
 |
| This picture is put here to show, 1) cyclists 2) beauty seen on drives in New Zealand 3) the picture quality through a car window 4) the "motorway"=two lane road |
White Water rafting was awesome! I really enjoyed it. The Tongariro river is beautiful. I kept saying it was beautiful and our tour guide kept saying thank you. I think he thought I was talking about him. Our group split into two raft groups and conquered the white waters. It was so fun to go over the rapids. Our raft kept getting stuck on rocks and we thought it was funny. We saw some cave relating to Lord of the Rings. I shamefully admit I have never seen those movies so I do not remember who's cave, it looked neat-o though! We stopped part of the way down to jump off cliffs into the river. I jumped off the low one and wasn't feeling like I needed any more adrenaline so skipped the high jump! Then we paddled some more. I was in the front of the raft so I got a lot of the splashes which was nice because it was a hot day and the water was cold. We also were able to drink the water, it was crystal clear and came straight from the mountain peaks! I again felt like a badass but this time a badass wilderness girl who drinks river water with her hand!
 |
| Need I say more than "SO MUCH FUN"? |
 |
| My boat white water rafting-I think we were stuck on rock here? Not sure but it happened so many times it's quite likely! |
After white water rafting we enjoyed a complimentary make-your-own-sandwich then drove off to jump off more cliffs! The raft guides told us about this place called Bully Point that is unmarked and you can only find it you are told about it! We just had to drive and park near the first 25 km/hr sign we came to and walk across a little path to find the place to jump! Yeah I didn't jump there either but I enjoyed watching the other girls and the view was beautiful there! Since I felt like a sissy for skipping two jumps, I decided to swim in the lake later that evening! The water looked so inviting and was warm enough even though it was dusk! Jer came in with me and we have some fun pictures!
After the swim we drove to Rotorua! On the drive we saw an awesome sunset over the beautiful nature of New Zealand! I loved this day! It was an adventure-filled day with great friends!
 |
| The random cliff jump spot, see I still had my togs and towel I had good intentions... |
 |
| I just love this picture, yoga poses at sunset, in the lake, with the snow tops mountains in the background! |
Sunday:
Most of us slept in the same hostel the night before, only different rooms! Once we left the cool hostel and we stopped at Pak-N-Save. After this our two cars got separated because my three passengers went into Pak'n'Save and disapeared! It's a mini-Costco so you can guess why! Jer's car went on a volcanic walk and my car went on a volcanic walk, only somewhere else! Despite the group separation, it was an awesome day! The volcanic walk was super neat and it was again a beautiful day! We kept trying to capture the beauty on our cameras! It's quite hard to take a picture of steam coming from boiling water! The walk was four kilometers through the Waimangu Volcanic Valley. We saw six craters, some connected by boiling streams and a big pretty lake at the end. In between craters was forest with beautiful flowers! I loved it! It was quite hot though! I wished I could jump in the water to cool off but it was boiling hot and probably really just contributing to my heat!
 |
| Can you see the steam? |
 |
| The lake at the end of our walk, so beautiful! |
 |
| One of the craters, I love the color of the water! Apparently it's not always this color, we were lucky! |
The group met one last time for ice cream. I wish I had a picture of our table eating the ice cream. We were practically falling asleep right there after the fun weekend! We didn't even want to walk a few hundred feet to see Lake Rotorua before we drove home after the extremely fun, adventurous, tiring weekend!
Such a fun weekend! :-)
Monday:
I'm going to add Monday here too because I took Sam to the Auckland museum because he didn't have to go to kindy! I love that museum! There is so much to read and learn about New Zealand and science and life! I want to go back when I am not chasing a four year old around and actually read it all! Not that it's not fun to take him! I got to read what I could and teach him about it!
...Now I am going to add tid-bits from the rest of the days it took me to post this just as a punishment for going to sleep early every night since Monday to try to get rid of my cold!...
Tuesday:
Oli wrote me a letter, it made my day. It was so cute. It was written all five-year-old-like and out of order but here's the order he read it to me in:
"To Jenny From Oliver Morris. I love you are cool and so osim (awesome) Jenny. Your dinr (dinner) is so good but my fafrit (favorite) is thing is raps (wraps)."
It made me smile and you can bet I made raps for dinr that night! And I love how he used the you twice. The teacher in me also appreciates his sounded out spelling. It's so cute!
Wednesday:
The first of December means Christmas music time (although I did hear some on Thanksgiving)! I discovered that New Zealand has mostly the same music as America. I was disappointed I wanted sunny Christmas music. I suppose if sunny Christmas music was out there in the world, California would have found it! I did find an awesome Kiwi Jingle Bells song by the Polkadots. I will add the link. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F4unzHxZKzk&feature=related
The Polkadots are so much fun. One day, weeks ago, the kids and I were hanging out at Caitlin's house and the girl she watches, Ella, wanted to watch the Polkadots. Caitlin turned it on and I thought it would be some cheesy kid's show then I started to enjoy it and it's cheesiness! The Polkadots sing fun songs and have simple dance moves. I decided to work out by copying their moves. It was the funniest work out I've ever had and part of the workout was my laughter! And that random story is the reason why I love their Jingle Bells song and I love the great references to Kiwi culture in it too!
Thursday:
Oli has caught the chicken pox! He stayed home from school today! It was his first day with the itchy bug so we had a fun day! He kept saying he likes having the chicken pox! I kept thinking "aww poor boy, you just wait". Maybe/hopefully he won't get it as bad as I remember having it! Either way, today we had fun. We played a lot of games. Oli is really good at Scrabble, he almost beat me and he did beat me at kid's Monopoly!
This concludes the summary of my week of fun!
In case you were wondering throughout this entire long blog entry about the happiest place in America here's the evidence!
http://news.yahoo.com/s/yblog_weekend/20
Go SLO! I miss you! Keep in mind this is only one guys opinion but it does have some valid points! SLO is un-American in that it doesn't allow drive throughs, and Wal-Marts! Hopefully this happiest place in America thing doesn't make everyone want to move there because it's good with the population size it has now!Adios amigos!
