Home Again...

Just wanted to let you all know that we made it home to Los Angeles safely. It was a long trip and we are a bit tired, but very glad to be in our little home again. It was great catching up with a lot of the NZ family and friends, and we look forward to seeing our other friends tomorrow...

Christchurch at night...

Experimenting

Overlooking Christchurch

Stephen and Debbie (Nicki's cousins)

Down South...

Lake Tekapo

Mount Cook

Snowboarding...

This morning, Sam and I drove up to Mount Hutt. Sam was able to do some snowboarding, while I relaxed in the car. It was a gorgeous day after all the rain...

Flooding...

After arriving in the South Island, we found that they were experiencing another large rain storm. The ground is so saturated that it has been flooding like crazy. There were lots of slips, and washouts, and floods along the way. Every bridge we drove over crossed a river that was from bank to bank. But we made it through to Hamner Springs with only a little difficulty...

The Interislander...

On Monday morning, we were up bright and early to catch the ferry. This was a new experience for Sam as he hasnt been on many boats, and a nostalgic trip for me. The weather looked awful as we left...lots of cloud and fog.... but we had a fairly smooth trip. When we arrived in Picton, our destination, it was a bit drizzly...

Rivendell...

After leaving Hastings, we made our way down to Wellington to catch a ferry. Along the way, our mapbook indicated where a few of the Lord of the Rings film locations were. Since Sam is a big LOTR fan, we detoured to try and find some of these sites. We were mostly unsuccessful as the spots no longer look the same. But we did find where Rivendell was filmed and a beautiful river location...

Hastings...

Hastings is the town that I grew up in. It was fun to show Sam around, and to let him into my world. There are so many memories in this place, and so many people that I wanted him to meet. On Friday night, we had a get-together at the Bensons house so that all my family friends could meet him. It was a late night catching up with people, and re-acquainting with their kids. The pictures below are of the square in the center of town...

And the journeys continue....

Here are the highlights from the last few days...and to let everyone know, we did get our bag last monday. The airport man was very happy to delivery it to our door :-).

We made it...

We finally arrived in Auckland yesterday at 4pmnz. We were weary after all that travelling and made it quickly through customs to retreive our bags only to find that my bag didnt make the flight with us. After filling out a lost bag report, we picked up the rental van and made our way up to my Aunts place. We spent the night with my Auntie Lyn and Uncle John, and will head out from here once my bag arrives. In the mean time, we went for a walk this morning, exploring the town in between rain storms. Below are some pictures that chronicle our trip so far ...

In Sydney waiting for our next flight...

Enjoying a rest on our walk...

Coming to you live from Sydney Australia....

No you did not read that wrong.  I know that we were going to New Zealand for this vacation, but we are in Sydney instead.  Hopefully not for too long. How did that happen you ask?  Let me explain....

It all started on Thursday afternoon...
I got  a call from my Dad who wanted to give me some last words of caution before we took off.  He had been looking at the NZ weather forecast, and seen that New Zealand was in for a storm.  There were warning about gale force winds, and snow dotewn to 500ft.  Well, he just wanted to make sure we were going to be warm enough.  That was the leteast of my worries until we got to the airport.  While we were waiting in line, I was searching the departure board for our flight only to notice that it was delayed.  I immediately thought, "Oh well it means a little longer in the airport!?! Right?"
Wrong.  The flight that we were supposed to be catching in three hours had not even left NZ yet.  Twelve hours away!  Realising that it was their responsibility to take care of us, the airline started handing out letters telling us that they were doing their best to get us on another flight, or they would put us up in a hotel till the morning when our ftelight would leave at 9:30am.  True to their word they found us another flight.  First to Sydney, Australia, and then on to Auckland.  And after flying 19 hours, we would arrive in Auckland only 8 hours later.

So while this what not exactly what we wanted, they had already booked the flights for us, so we went to catch the other flight.  It was a nice flight...there was a little bit of turbulance, but in all the flight went pretty fast and we arrived in Sydney.
Now we have found out that our flight arrived late because of the heavy winds that caused the turbulance. We were not able to make our connecting flight because our bags would not be unloaded in time to be loaded on the next flight.  So I am writing this post to you from one of the free internet computers in the Sydney airport where we have five hours to kill till we can leave. And we cant even leave the airport, cause they dont have our boarding passes yet.  Oh what an adventure this has been...

NZ...Here we come...

Tonight, Sam and I fly to New Zealand. I am so excited to be taking him to my home country. There is so much to see, but so little time. We will be there for two weeks. So we are going to cram as much as possible in the short time that we have.

Camp Video...

This is the Camp Review movie that shows a little of the fun time that we had at Glorieta, NM.

Thanks to Adam Hildebrand who came to camp just to shot all the footage, and then worked tirelessly to edit it so that everyone could see it before we went home from Camp.

Nicki's small group...

Amanda, Beth, Chaye, Dara, Katrina, Allie, Ashleigh, Jasmine, Rachel, Nicki