Christmas Trip to Wanganui

As expected, we had a beautiful and enjoyable trip to Wanganui for Christmas. It was a great mixture of exciting and relaxing, with lots of quality time with people we love. Who could ask for more?

We spent Christmas with this awesome group: Jonny's dad Ernie, his mum Marie, his sister Kirsty, and Jonny, of course. We ate lots of amazing food, did some beautiful colouring (courtesy of our Christmas gift from Mom) and played some games. Lovely.

We spent Christmas evening and night with Jan and Brian. I forgot to take a picture of the four of us, but did not forget to take a picture of the amazing trifle Jan made. Odd choice, but it happened. That evening, we played word games and Texas Hold 'Em, and then had a lovely breakfast in the sun the next morning.

J spent Boxing Day with his friend Gary in town, while Kirsten and I headed to Kai Iwi beach for a beautiful walk. We all had dinner together that night, which was nice.

Since last time I'd been there, huge chunks of clay had fallen off the cliff wall. They are now very slowly dissolving into the ocean, creating cool colours in the water and giving the sand a lovely, slippery consistency.

We had a lovely evening at the mansion with Kirsten playing Sing Star (kind of like karaoke), a glorious night's sleep in our beautiful mansion bedroom and then a relaxing morning.

That afternoon, before heading back to Wellington, we got to go waterskiing with Kirsten's friend Simon again! It was my third time, but I realize that I didn't actually share the videos from my second time, so I thought I'd do that before I tell you about this time.

Simon decided that I had enough control to try the half course, where you go back and forth and try to go around buouys. I thought it would be too hard, but I gave it a try, and I did it! Yay! Click here for the video.

Also, I did have one rather nice crash, which you can see here.

Okay, that was from last time, just a couple weeks ago. Now, onto the videos from this time.

This is J's very first time ever waterskiing, and you'll notice that he's very talented! At one point (near the end) you'll notice that he has to go over the huge bumps created by a crazy speed boat that was on the lake. He manages to get across them, which is very impressive. Then he falls, and so Simon stops the boat. I was so focused on recording, I did not think about this, and you'll see the video go crazy at the end - that's because I fell over backwards. Oops. Anyway, watch J's impressive first attempt here.

This time, Simon said I needed to transition to one ski. I thought that this sounded much harder, and then was shocked to find that you actually start on two skis and then drop one while you're skiing! What? I fell the first time or two, but then I got it, and it was so exciting! You can see the video here. 

After that, I actually got my balance under control, and was able to zig-zag through the waves on one ski like I had been on two, but I didn't get a video of that. Simon says that next time I can try the buouys course on one ski, which will be fun!