Birthday Bouquet

Awwww... Dave and the boys went on a walk and gathered a beautiful bouquet of flowers for my birthday yesterday. Gorgeous! Thank you guys!

Christmas Visitors

We were lucky and had great visitors this month. Ian is a friend of a friend who needed a place to stay, but after a couple of days he quickly became family. Dave's brother Bob also came to visit, and here's a picture of him and Nikolas enjoying some Christmas oatmeal chocolate chip cookies. Yumm!!!!

The kids were delighted to find out that even though you don't hear too much of Santa Clause down here, he still showed up! He dropped off some scooters and even wrote them each a note. Nikolas said that, not to hurt my feelings or anything, but he usually likes the gifts that Santa gives them better than the ones I give him. Well, I have to admit, the scooters were a great hit (video attached).

And another visitor: Here is a picture of the pohutukawa (the New Zealand Christmas tree), so named because the tree comes into bloom right around Christmas time. What a treat!

The Britts and the Bees

Ah, the price of going barefoot. Nikolas stepped on a bee on the 23rd and Isaac stepped on a bee on the 27th. Here they are, trying to cool down their swollen (and dirty) feet. Can you tell which foot is which?

Merry Christmas week

Happy holidays everybody!

It's strange to make Christmas cookies with warm sea breezes and bright summer beach days, but we'll get used to it. :-) When I was commenting that it just doesn't feel like Christmas, Amy pointed out "Think of it as a great way to kick start the summer!" Great! So, this year, I picture Santa with a little singlet, shorts, and surfboard. :-) Happy holidays to everybody back in the US too.

Attack of the mozzies!

Oh, I felt so bad a couple of days ago. The kids wanted to sleep outside in the tent, and the mozzies were out and ferocious! I slathered some Bullfrog on Isaac and me, while we were setting up the tent, but it didn't seem to do any good against them. The next morning, I realized that the Bullfrog was actually sunscreen and not mosquito repellent!! WHOOPS! They just devoured us, especially Isaac.

In honor of that, the kids made up a song, sung to Michael Jackson's Thriller tune.

Sun-screeeeeeeeeen!
In the night!
Not for the mooooon-light

Sun-screeeeeeeeeen!
In the night!
Doesn't do much good 'gainst the mozzie bites!

Now have fun humming ("They're out to ge-e-e-t you!") and the rest of the Thriller song, but maybe you can imagine being chased by blood-thirsty mozzies!

Family Catamaran Outing

After some fun surfing on the antique windsurf board at Oneroa yesterday evening we went out for our first family sail on the Hobie 16. We are borrowing the boat from a neighbor (and making some upgrades in exchange for use). The kids were a bit grumpy to leave the house, but were quickly engaged once we raised the sails. Nikolas tried out the harness and spent most of his time hanging out on the trapeze. Isaac also hung on without use of a harness. We need to find some kid sized harnesses for the next outing. Wind was variable and we maxed out at 9 knots (according to our GPS). The highlight was "jumping" over the wake of the Fullers car transport ferry! Next goal: pack the camping gear and sail to a remote shore of our island or one of the neighboring islands.

Bucket-loads of rain

While I was back in Utah for Thanksgiving week, Jenn and the boys endured some torrential rain. In a 24 hr period Jenn put a bucket out on the deck to find it full in the morning. We also topped off the cistern again, so we are doing better than Utah, which is already 30% "behind" on precipitation entering into Winter.

Milford Sound

What a treat! Not only do you get to spend 3 days hiking into some of the most amazing areas in the world, you get to end it with a boat ride on the Milford Sound! Some incredible views of rock jutting out of the water. I get it! I know why they call this the Fjordland National Park! The Maori legend has it that the demigod who carved the shape of the South Island finally perfected his skill by the time he got to Fjordland.

Milford Track, Day 4

11 1/2 miles to go and 7 hours to do it! And we better hurry because there's a boat to catch at the end of it, and we can't be late! (We were not going to hike back to the cabin that night if we missed it). Not so much time for pictures, but the weather was great and the trail was easy, so even though it was tough, we still made it.

I love the little "hobbit holes" that you find in all of the trees here.

















And here we did appreciate the McLeigh Falls on the way out. The story was that McLeigh and Sutherland flipped a coin to see who would get to name the falls. Sutherland lost and had to settle for naming the next waterfall the two of them found (which happened to be the 580 m waterfall we saw the day before).












Beautiful red beech trees along the way. Mom's become a wood "connoisseur" these days, so she always takes time to admire the wood that we pass.

















Here's an interesting graffiti that we saw on the way too. Apparently, a prison work group dug out the rock from the trail, and some of them marked it. Well, graffiti is always cool when it's more than century old.









And here are at the end! We made it! We made it! It was really tough to walk down stairs the next few days, but we made it!

Milford Track, Day 3

This was the day of VISTAS. We made it to the top of the McKinnon Pass after a lot of steep climbing. We really lucked out with the weather. It was cold, with snow on the ferns and wild flowers, but no rain or snow for us that day. Good thing! Because it was really tough getting down from the top of McKinnon Pass, where we were actually hiking down a few water falls at times. Very steep, where you had to sit on your butt in many places to get down to the next step.















Incredible views too! Near the top of McKinnon Pass, his friends built him a memorial. What a cairn!

















The third day also included some beautiful waterfalls on the trip down and a side trip to Sutherland Falls, the tallest water fall in NZ, and the fourth tallest in the world, at 580 m.

Milford Track, Day 2

The second day was also awesome, and a lot more challenging. We were there on the very first day the track was opened for the year. Very exciting, but not all of the bridges were in place. See, it was too dangerous for the DOC to install the bridges. And it would have been too dangerous for us to go over that bit of track the day before. But they deemed it would be all right as long as we didn't dawdle! Right! No dawdling in the avalanche area. Except! We had to dawdle! There were no bridges, for crying out loud! You can't cross a river with no bridges without dawdling! Still we did our best.

It was also a very rainy day. We were soaked through and very glad that we had all those dry and warm clothes in our packs. It was impressive to show up at the cabin and see all of those ponchos hanging out on the porch.

You know, we worked so hard to keep our socks dry. On the second to last crossing, though, I jumped to a rock that rolled, and fell into the river. Once my socks were finally wet, I realized hey, that's not so bad after all! I should have got them wet early on, then those river crossings would have gone a lot faster!

Oh yes, and there were some incredible waterfalls along the way too. I couldn't get over how green everything was. We had it all. Views of rocks, waterfalls, and plant life.