North Island - New Zealand

Our trip to New Zealand started out with a very long plane ride. Total travel time was about 20 hours. Thank goodness the plane had personal entertainment devices in each seat with movies, TV shows, and games. This helped keep me entertained when I wasn’t trying to get some sleep. We arrived in Auckland at 5:45am and our two week tour of the country started at 9:00am at Auckland Harbor. We got off the plane and hit the ground running. It was tons of fun meeting up with Mariah and Nick and seeing them again. Listed below are some of the highlights from the North Island.
One day we were able to visit White Island which is home to an active Volcano. To get to the island we had to travel 31 miles by boat.


The Bill Beesley Family! (We were short Mike and we missed him a lot, however, we were glad to have Mandy, Zane's girlfriend, on the trip with us.)
L-R Top: Rebecca, Me, Dad (Bill), Heather, Will, Zane, Mandy. Bottom: Nick, Mariah.


Mariah and I. While on the island we sported these dashing yellow hats (for safety's sake.)

It was cool to walk around the island and learn about the island's history and the volcano. The last major eruption was in 2001. Since New Zealand is in the Ring of Fire and we were on an island with an active volcano, I was ready to make a mad dash to the sea, but lucky we were safe and we just enjoyed our time on there.

One of my favorite activities on the North Island was staying in the River Valley and river rafting on Rangitikei River. The river rafting was a lot of fun. Mariah, Nick, Rebecca and I all went in a raft together. About five minutes into rafting while going down our first rapid, I fell in. :-) It was a great way to start the trip. After that I had lots of fun trying to push everyone in and getting the other rafts wet.



Are we having fun yet!?!














Some of the other adventures we experienced on the North Island were: sailing on the Waitemata Harbor, going off roading in 4 x 4 vehicles in the New Zealand bush, experiencing a traditional Maori celebration with food, dance and storytelling, stopping at Thermal Valley and seeing mud pools, mineral terraces and steaming lakes and visiting Kapiti Island where we hiked around trying to spot endangered New Zealand birds.

















Taking it easy!

Paint Job

So if you’re wondering where I've been for the past couple of weeks the answer is, in the basement painting. When a contractor tells you painting is a job you can do, but shouldn't, cause it is such a major pain, he isn’t kidding and you should listen to him. The sheetrock and trim work were finished so all we had left before the carpet was paint. I got a couple of quotes but afterwards thought to myself, how hard can it be? I can bang this job out in a couple of days. Wrong, it ended up taking a couple of weeks. It looks good now that it’s done, but painting is one DIY project I will be crossing off my list of things I can do around the house.

Web Feeds

Since it’s been a while since I last posted and I really don’t have anything new to write, I thought I would share some neat-o information about web feeds. (I know, sounds really boring, but it’s so helpful when you want to find out if a site has been recently updated or not.) I’m sure most of you Internet savvy people already know about web feeds, but for the rest of us stuck in 2005 (or whenever they first came up with feeds) this will save you lots of time. A friend told me about it, so I am passing on the knowledge. Here is how it works. At the top right corner of your browser you should see a little orange icon that looks like this,



When you go to a site you can subscribe to it and the feed icon will turn orange, it's usually gray. For example: If you want to subscribe to my blog, simply click on the icon and click on 'subscribe to this feed'. The feeds are then added to your favorites center, which is on the left hand side of your screen. You can have tons of feeds! When one is in bold it means there is new content. So, you just check your feeds everyday and see who's posted and what’s new on your favorite websites! :-)

New Zealand - South Island

My trip to New Zealand was most Excellent! I went with my family and since there were nine of us, we decided to book a tour so we could see New Zealand in style. The tour company we went with was Adventure South and was very good. We did some really cool activities and stayed in some neat places. We started our tour on the North Island and met up with Nick and Mariah in Auckland. We stayed on the North Island for a week and then traveled to the South Island, by inter-island ferry, and stayed there for another week. The tour was very active so we were able to do a lot and see a lot. My most favorite activities of the tour were the ones we did on the South Island. Our first two nights on the South Island, we stayed at Endeavour Inlet. To get to our accommodations, we had to take an hour boat ride. We had our own private cabins right on the ocean. It was so peacefully and beautiful. New Zealand has a network of walkways throughout the country and people come from all over the world to walk them. We were able to do a section of the Queen Charlotte Track, nine and a half miles to be exact and I loved it. I loved being out in the New Zealand “bush” and taking it all in. At the end of the hike we arrived at the ocean and had a picnic.


We made it, Yahoo!

My favorite activity of the whole trip was tubing in the glow worm caves. There is no way to describe how cool it was when you first saw the glow worms. You’re floating down the river in the cave and it is pitch black and then all the sudden you come upon the glow worms and it is like seeing thousands and thousands of stars, but way cooler. Our guide taught us this song, “I wish I were a glow worm, a glow worm nevers glum, cause how can you be unhappy, when the sun shines out your bum.” Before the glow worms we went spelunking and after we were able to tube down the river, which was very enjoyable.

My dad, me and Rebecca in the cave.

Tubing down the river.

We were able to visit Fox, which is where my sister and brother-in-law lived and worked for the past four months. Fox is famous for Fox Glacier. Mariah and Nick worked for a helicopter company that gave tours of the glacier. There were able to get my dad on a helicopter ride while the rest of us went on a glacier hike. The glacier hike was cool. It took us about an hour and a half to hike to it and then we were able to spend an hour on it. Fox glacier is one of the few glaciers in the world that is growing. Being able to walk around on the glacier was cool. The blue color of the ice is so vivid.

Mariah and I on Fox Glacier.


Another favorite activity and one I would defiantly recommend was Bungee Jumping. I had the hardest time deciding whether I should go or not because I wasn’t sure I would really jump once I got to the site and saw how far down I had to fall, however I am so glad I went, I had a blast. The feeling of falling was like nothing I have ever felt before and it is hard to describe how it feels. All I can say is that it was AWESOME. The jump is called the Nevis and is 440 feet off the ground. It is the third highest bungee jump in the world. Zane, Mandy (Zane’s girlfriend) Rebecca and I all jumped.

No turning back now. Bombs away! (Oooh, nice buns!)

The daring foursome. Rebecca, me, Mandy, Zane.

Some of the other activities we did on the South Island were, jet boating (the jet boat was invented in New Zealand) and sea kayaking where I was able to hold a jelly fish, very slimy creatures, they slip right through your fingers and a star fish. We also did some more hikes around the island and enjoyed shopping in Queenstown.

I thought this picture was super funny. It is dedicated to all the sheep dogs in New Zealand!

New Zealand

In October, my sister and her husband moved to New Zealand. Today I am leaving on a two week trip to visit them. I'll post all about it when I get back.

The Éclair Test

Mike loves éclair’s, and as everybody knows the perfect place to eat lots of éclairs is a wedding reception. Whenever we go to a wedding reception Mike judges the success of it by the quality of the éclairs (he likes the kind with the non-waxy chocolate) and how many he can eat (if he eats more than five, the reception is a success.) Who cares about the bride and groom, it's all about the dessert selection. :-)

Birthday Wishes

I think I threw a few people off with my Super Birthday post. My birthday isn't until June and I have already received two birthday cards and one bag of birthday cookies. :-) I didn't mean to start my super birthday so soon, but now that it's started, I kind of like it. I think I will do something like Disney does and instead of a year of a million dreams, I will have the year of twenty-nine birthday wishes. So, I was going to hold off until June, but this is the official kick off of The Year of Twenty-nine Birthday Wishes.