Happy day!

I'm not giving up on blogging about our trip (I know I can blog, I know I can!) but I just wanted to share some photos with those of you who did not have the pleasure of being here:




It was such a lovely day with such a lovely bride, and a pretty good-looking groom too :)

Congrats Michelle and Mark! Thanks for letting us be part of your day.

New Zealand

Day 1: Fly to Phoenix, sit awhile, fly to LA, get lost trying to find the correct International Terminal, find it, sit for another while, then finally board the plane.


Day 2: Fly for 12 hours. Not as bad as I thought it would be. Since we left so late (midnight) I actually slept on and off for 8 hours. Plus add personal TVs and we were good to go.
Finally we arrived. Here's Royce on our walk to Customs (so festive)!

Here I am on the bus going into Auckland. So early!


After settling into our hotel, we resisted the urge to sleep and instead headed to the main attraction of downtown Auckland: Sky City Tower.

The view of Auckland was beautiful. Royce and I really liked Auckland. It's the perfect size for a city. Not too big, surrounded by water, lot's of green.

Don't worry, it's perfectly safe up there. We opted for the indoor only observation deck. We could have done a sky walk, which involves walking around the outside of the building, protected from the 750 feet drop only by a harness, but . . . we're wimps. And cheap. (No way I'm paying extra to panic.)

Pretty view, isn't it.After getting acquainted with the city from up high, we wandered the city: gelato on the harbor, Fish 'n Chips in the restaurant district, cultural museums, etc. And then we crashed (at around 8:00 pm, if memory serves correctly).

Day 3: We decided to head out of Auckland and go across the harbor to Devonport.



Where we were able to get a pretty good view of the city.


Our tour guide has lived in Devonport all his life and all but convinced us to move there. No graffiti, free extracurricular activities for schoolchildren such as sailing, and close enough to the city to enjoy it, but far enough away to be able to live a quieter life.


Here we are on top of an old volcano in Devonport.


After our relaxing afternoon, we needed something to do. We didn't feel like looking at art, we weren't interested in the maritime museum, and we weren't in the mood for the zoo, so instead we went to the Aquarium.


So the aquarium itself wasn't all that exciting (it was surprisingly tiny), but we did get to go on an excursion through the penguin encounter (pictures in a later post) and ride this awesome shuttle bus to and from the aquarium. Jealous yet?

Day 4: Wherein we rent a car and drive on the wrong side of the road.




First we drove to One Tree Hill in Auckland. It's, you guessed it, an old volcano. However, there is no longer a tree there. Just this monument to the Maori.

After enjoying the sheep and view on One Tree Hill, we headed Southeast. Our destination: Hobbiton. Yes, like hobits, from the Lord of the Rings. It's the only place in New Zealand that still has the partial set from the filming. And we got to tour it. And we can't post any pictures, but we can show them to you if you come to our house. It was actually more fun than I thought it would be. And it was beautiful, beautiful land. So hilly and green.


After that, we drove a couple more hours and arrived in Rotorua.


Day 5: Rotorua and the surrounding areas are very similar to Yellowstone. The whole area, city and all, is full of thermal activity. The city park has fenced off hot pools and steam holes. If you ever go, I suggest going in winter because it's awesome to see steam rising everywhere (if it's hot you won't see the steam). However, it has a downside from Yellowstone in that everything is privately owned. Meaning, to see one or two geysers and some hot pools costs $20-30 a person. So unless you have a lot of money to burn, you really have to choose just one thermal park and hope it's the best one. I don't know that ours was the best, as none of the geysers went off while we were there, but it sure was pretty.

On the drive home, I saw a sign for Huka Falls, so we decided to check it out. It was so much bigger than I expected (I couldn't get all the falls in the shot).


Back in Rotorua we checked out the government house gardens. I thought it was kind of a cool building so we took a picture, even though I know nothing about the building.


That night we were picked up at our hotel for a Maori cultural evening. We were taken to another thermal village and treated to a Maori presentation and dinner. Royce was chosen as our chief to greet the Maori warriors, but unfortunately I couldn't get any good pictures of it. Oh well. Here are some pictures of us dancing.

Day 6: We left early in the morning so we could see the coast and Bridal Veil Falls (see previous post). Then we headed to Waitomo to see the famous glow-worm caves. We went on a Spellbound tour, rather than going to the big touristy cave where you only get a 15 minute tour. Our guide dropped us off on the middle of the farm and we walked down a beautiful trail to the cave entrance. Before heading into the cave, he started feeding the "pet" eels.

Royce tried to feed the eel too, but he chickened out on holding it.
Then we walked into the cave, where we saw thousands of glowworms. I couldn't get a good picture so you'll just have to take my word that it was awesome. We took a boat into the cave, and once everyone turned their headlamps out it looked like you were surrounded by stars. So, so cool.

We also walked through a dry cave after. It was really beautiful.
Here's the exit of the dry cave.
On our drive back to the Auckland airport, we decided to stop in Hamilton to see the Hamilton temple. Did you know it was the second temple built outside the US? Pretty amazing, eh?


Next: A break in the day to day reporting to show you all the cool animals we saw in both NZ and Australia.

In no particular order

Finally, some time to sit and blog about our amazing trip to New Zealand and Australia. First of all, let me just say that if you ever get the chance to go to New Zealand and Australia you should go! If you have to choose between the two, well then, you're left with a tough break, but without hesitation I would tell you to go to New Zealand. Here are some pictures to whet your appetite (and keep in mind, it's winter there so just imagine what it looks like in summer).

Drive by camera shot of countryside. It really was "that green" (greener actually).

Bridal Veil Falls. We pulled off the side of the road a couple times to see waterfalls. All of them were stunning. This one was awesome because we had it all to ourselves as we got there at around 7:30 in the morning.

This unfortunately is not the greatest shot, but I had to include it because we saw so many rainbows in New Zealand. Pretty much daily.

New Zealand is known for having millions of sheep. But did you know that they are an introduced species? In fact, the only mammal native to New Zealand is the bat. Bet you didn't know that.

New Zealand is awesome because you can drive from coast to coast in like 4-5 hours. This is the west coast of the North Island. It was about an hour and a half out of our way, but we really wanted to see the coast.

This tree is famous, but legally I'm not allowed to tell you why.

Part of a farm where the glowworm caves are located.

The New Zealand Christmas tree. My new favorite tree. Especially from far away, these are so ramrod straight they look fake. Apparently in December they blossom with stunning red flowers.

Next, a brief day-by-day of what we did and saw in New Zealand.

New Zealand and Australia...A "Taste" of things to come

What's been going on?

In this post I mentioned I'd share some more about what's been going on in 2010 (since we are practically half way through it already, and you haven't seen any real pictures from it or anything yet).

Well here goes.

These cute kids and their parents were visiting us at the beginning of they year (If you don't remember that, you didn't read the other post I wrote from the link above).

You may recall that the olympics were held in SLC in 2002. Well I had never been to the olympic park and so we decided to check it out in mid-January.

Also in January Heather took me on a super cool Amazing Race themed date, complete with Fast Forwards, Roadblocks, and Detours.


It ended with a fun game of bowling.


We always seem to go to Las Vegas during or in between Martin Luther King Day and Presidents Day. This year was no exception.

Here's Heather with one of the MGM lions.


Amy had a resolution this year to play the slots. She's lived in Vegas all this time and had never gambled before. What a good person she is! Well we're all a good influence on her to make this resolution aren't we? (Sorry Amy I didn't get your permission 1st before sharing these!)

Well she really took to it.

She was gambling all weekend


Not really, but I made it seem that way right? And she actually came out somewhat ahead after like 3 slot pulls, on of which I did (hey it wasn't my dollar right?)!



Anyway, after we pealed Amy's body from the slots we decided to go put our money into machines that don't give you back money (but it was still a lot of fun).


These were taken at the Pinball Hall of Fame. You should go check it out next time you are in Vegas. They had a pretty fun Russia vs. USA game. It was a lot of fun, but I think I lost.



Well after all that gambling Amy felt like she needed to repent and go to the temple so on Sunday we checked out the Las Vegas temple which I had never seen before and I thought it was pretty darn cool. Although they really should have fountains there.


On Valentine's Day instead of giving Heather a real gift I finally finished the puzzle we had started during Christmas (my family is big on puzzles during the holidays). Heather always gets mad at me for not wanting to work on puzzles, when I start them, because I get lazy/bored about them during the time it takes to finish them.
This puzzle is called "State Birds and Flowers" its in a box in our game closet, so we always tease that we want to play the game "State Birds and Flowers" when its really a puzzle.


A few weeks later we finally decided to take the puzzle down.

Maybe more of 2010 next month?