Hey Utah, its not snowing in Auckland and the water is warm enough for a quick 2km swim after walking Isaac to the bus stop. Jenn and Nikolas are on a school field trip to Goat Island for snorkeling. The curriculum here just rocks. And even better, the principal sent home a letter discussing the pros and cons of homework and said it is not compulsory, especially if it results in kid / family stress that is counterproductive to learning. Meanwhile Nik's peers at Edith Bowen Lab School are learning about Father Escalante and Utah history...and he's off blowing bubbles and looking at fish :)

P.S. Nik does read about 50 pages of Harry Potter / night, composes stories, and plays math games. I'm OK with schoolwork staying at school.

Pete, Rachel, and Amelia

Oh we are having the best time now that Pete, Rachel and their beautiful 16 month old daughter Amelia are here. Life is good, especially to see them. We've been friends with Pete and Rachel for years (decades in Pete's case), and we immediately fell in love with their beautiful daughter. Oh it couldn't be helped. She's got the cutest little smile and dimple... and she's so bright.. and a great dancer too! (I might be showing my biases at this point). Watching the three kids do a haka last night was hilarious. I'll have to get a copy of it from Rachel's camera.


Here are just a few of the pictures...



Hiking over to Oneroa, with Isaac pushing the stroller (and Uncle Pete helping up the hill)...

















Oneroa beach at low tide, on our way to Little Oneroa beach.....
















Pete making flying the stunt kite look so easy....














Sleeping babies are especially cute.




















Having fun on the slide at Little Oneroa Beach...

Ouch!

Last Thursday I managed to high center our car... on a guard rail that was supposed to keep me from dropping off a cliff! Well, I didn't drop off entirely, so I guess it did its job. It still took a long time to extricate the car from that spot, though. I was over at a friend's house, picking up a stroller, and he had a driveway that I really shouldn't have attempted to drive down. To get back out, I was supposed to back up a very steep and very, very, very narrow driveway, all in reverse, high speed, blind corner, and onto a highway. That's the way the residents do it. I didn't know that, though, and I thought I would try to do 126-point turn around at the bottom and go out front wards. I couldn't see the front left wheel, so I asked Isaac to get out of the car and watch it for me. Well... I didn't make it. In hind sight I should have assumed that Rudy, because he lived there, would be able to get my car out of their driveway, and just asked him to drive it for me. As it was, my engine block was stuck on a guard rail, one wheel on the driveway, two wheels on a landing below, and one wheel free, ready to have its tire changed if I wanted. Oh, and the driveway was blocked. Oh well. Nobody got hurt, and the car is even all right, so all's well that ends well.


Then Friday, Dave broke his foot windsurfing. Ouch! His feet were in the foot straps, he jumped, and took a hard landing, where the board (and his left foot) stopped suddenly and the rest of Dave's body didn't. Imagine taking your toes and the ball of your foot, and bending it back yards.














Oh, and a word on Kiwi customer service. I love it... It's phenomenal, very friendly and sincere.. That is... when you can get it at all. Unfortunately, my car was in a pickle Thursday evening at about 5:45 pm. The phone number for the towing truck company was out of service, I tried three different numbers for AA (the NZ version of AAA), and not only was there no answer, but not even an answering machine. I did manage to get hold of a mechanic at home, who paged his towing truck person, but they never got back to me. After several hours of waiting, and realizing that there was no towing truck coming that night, I put the hazard lights on and got a ride home with Rudy. Dave biked over the next morning (about 8:30) and it took until about noon to get the car out. Then Dave's foot. I first took him over to the local hospital, where we found out that the foot was probably broken, but there wasn't an X-ray machine on the island that day to assess the real damage. (Apparently, there is only an X-ray machine every other weekday). So to get an X-ray, which the local doctor recommended, he needed to take the next ferry over to Auckland and then take a cab to the hospital. They put him in a temporary cast, gave him some crutches, and I drove him home so he could shower and rinse the salt water off before the ferry. I insisted that he get to the ferry pretty early (like 7 whole minutes!), even though Dave hates showing up early and is even known to jump on the ferry while it was pulling away. (I begged him not to try it with crutches though). So anyway, the good news is, that after 20 hours since breaking his foot, we learned that his foot is merely broken, but it doesn't require any surgery. Yay!

Ah well. It sure looked like he was having fun before the accident. Check out the video! It was a fast day at Surfdale.

Whanganui

Kayaking the Whanganui was incredible! Of course, I love these friends, so just hanging out would have been a blast, but add adrenaline rush rapids (ok, it doesn't take much white water to get my heart rate up, but this was great!) and then! when the water was placid, to look up and realize that you were in one of the most beautiful places in the world. Wow. Well, it was amazing. Fantastic weekend.