Cruise Ship

Amazing cruise? Check. Fun time with J’s dad and Granny? Check. Now we’re off to Kansas for more fun times with family and friends, and I thought I’d take a moment to share some pictures from our cruise.

This is our cruise ship. It was incredibly huge, although J said that many cruise ships are even bigger. I’m not sure I could have handled a bigger one, because this one was hard enough to navigate. But we enjoyed wandering around, and always found our way eventually.

This is the atrium, complete with glass elevators that take you up and down the eight stories that it covers.

We also played ping-pong, which I love and J doesn’t really appreciate. He very kindly played a few games with me, and it was quite fun.

Later, I played ping-pong with our friend Brent who we met on the cruise. We had very spirited and well-matched games, due to his impressive trick shots and my surprising ability to return them (most of the time). Anyway, we had a fun time, but our last game ended abruptly when Brent hit the only ball over the side of the ship. Oops. We’ve decided that we must finish the game someday, so Brent will have to fly to New Zealand. We had a lot of fun getting to know him, and it was great to have a new friend on the cruise, so we hope to see him again soon.

This is my delicious breakfast from the buffet. We had amazing food the whole time on the cruise, and never needed to buy food off the ship, which was great.

I saw my first live stand-up comedy show at “The Punchliner” on the cruise. They had two comics, both of whom were very funny. One of them swore too much, but I’m learning that that’s common among comics.

On the back of the ship was an area only for adults called Serenity, where you could sit in the hot tub and look out over the water. J liked to go after dark, and it was very nice.

I went out in the evening as well, and relaxed in the comfy loungers and watched the sun go down.

The views were amazing. I never get tired of the ocean, so I just watched it and watched it.

We met a lovely woman in the gym who is from Serbia, and her goal is to move to New Zealand some day. I brought my iPad and showed her lots of pictures of our Kiwi adventures, and it definitely reinforced her desire to move there. She was very nice, and I hope that she ends up in NZ some day.

The crew cleaned our room many times a day, which was crazy. At least once a day, they also left towel animals, which were always adorable. Our favourite was this darling frog.

Okay, that’s basically it for the cruise pictures, but tune in next time for pictures of our Bahamian adventures! (I’ll give you a hint: BEACHES!)

Bon Voyage To Us!

Well, the day has finally come. We're getting on a plane in just two hours to fly back to the States! We have 38 hours of travel time before arriving in Jacksonville, Florida, where we will rest up for a day before going on a 4 day cruise to the Bahamas. Yay! Abe gave us a certificate for this cruise for our wedding, and we're finally getting to use it, which will be awesome. Thanks, Abe!

After that, we'll be spending some time with J's family in Florida and Alabama, then flying to Manhattan for some time with friends and family there. Next, up to Iowa for the Denner side of the family, then back to Kansas City for the Renaissance Festival and time with Maria, then back to New Zealand. It is going to be a wonderful whirlwind of a trip.

Hopefully, we will get to see many of you at some point during our trip. For those of you who are in Manhattan, we will be there from the 28th of August to the 4th of September, and will be going to church on Sunday the 30th. It will be busy, but great.

I will probably share some pictures of our adventures while we're gone, but not too many, as none of them will be "Kiwi adventures."

Wish us luck and grant us the ability to sleep on the plane, please! Especially J, as he gets airsick and will be much happier if he can be unconscious as much of the time as possible.

Celebration of Holly

For the last few weeks, J and I have been grieving the loss of our amazing dog Holly. I feel, now, that I am ready to post this celebration of her life, so I am sharing some pictures of how wonderful she was, and how happy we were with her as a part of our little family.

I do not want to dwell on her death, but rather to be thankful for her life. We knew when we adopted her that she had a severe heart defect, and that her time with us was limited, so we tried to make it the best time we could. Holly poured more love and happiness into every moment of her life than most creatures ever come up with, so she had a wonderful life.

Holly and I loved reading together. Have you ever seen a happier face?

I loved it when she tucked her paws up like that. So adorable!!

This was one of the first times I took her to the beach. She chased the foam on top of the waves and ate it, making herself quite sick. It took a few experiences of that before she decided to stop, but she did get there.

One the way home from the beach after running around with Dad. Tired and happy.

Because of her heart condition, Holly couldn't be spayed, and so she went into heat and had to wear a diaper/nappy so she wouldn't get blood on the carpet. It was hilariously cute.

Look how adorable she was all curled up!

Bike trailer rides to the beach were her favourite thing (along with every other thing that ever happened to her). She squealed and whined with excitement the whole way there!

Holly was the master of cuddles. She is the only dog I've ever met who actually wrapped her paws around you to give you a cuddle.

Also, she took fetch very seriously.

Waiting for me to throw her the ball was also her favourite thing.

More reading together. Also her favourite thing.

Look how beautiful she was! That is the face of pure, unlimited love.

She was so patient with us. I believe this look translates to, "I have never wanted anything ever as badly as I want to eat these treats, but I love you so much that I'm waiting. Can I eat them now?"

Still don't understand why this happened, but this is Holly using a carved stone bowl (with rather sharp sides, to be clear) as a pillow. She was a nut!

Happy cuddles!!!

J sent me this picture when I was away for a week with Kirsten. I think maybe Holly missed me.

This is Holly gazing adoringly at the reflection from my coaster on the ceiling. Shadows and flashes of light occupied many hours of her life.

Patty took this picture of Holly having a rest at the beach. She was always happiest there, I think.

I wish that all of you could have known Holly. She was a constant positive presence in J's and my life, and gave us so many happy memories. She was the incarnation of love and happiness, and it is a pretty special thing to have that in your life. We are so thankful.

Hot Water Beach with Mom

While we were in the Coromandel, Mom and I went to Hot Water Beach, which is one of the biggest tourist attractions there, due to it being the coolest thing ever. 

We went on the same day as Cathedral Cove, which if you remember back to my post about it, was an amazingly summer-y day for the middle of winter. This means that we were incredibly lucky, because we had beautiful weather, but not the huge crowds of summer. Yay for us! I didn't take very many pictures, because I was not wanting to worry about my camera getting wet or sandy, so I mostly had it packed away.

This is the view from our spot on the beach. Beautiful, but not shockingly different from other beaches. Well, just wait.

Turns out, on this particular beach, hot water pours out from under a huge rock a little way up the beach, and flows through the sand down towards the ocean. This means that you can actually dig yourself a hot tub on the beach! Amazing!

Well, it turns out that it is slightly more complicated than we were anticipating, but also that the complicatedness is half the fun. 

Here's how it went. We got there, and saw this awesome little sand-village going on, with people digging holes and re-directing channels and generally having a great time. But we couldn't find a good place to dig, because everywhere that wasn't taken didn't have enough hot water. Then I saw this empty space right near the middle of everything, and thought I'd won the jackpot. I should have know that there was a reason no one was there, but I didn't think of it, and jumped right in. I have never reversed directions so fast in my life! No one was in that space because the water in it was approximately a million degrees! I'm lucky I still have skin on my feet!

Anyway, this lovely group of woman saw us looking and said, "We're just leaving, have our pool!" Kiwis are so nice! So we settled into a nice, warm pool... for about three minutes, at which point it got cold. Our helpful neighbours explained that that happens sometimes, as the hot water shifts as the tide moves in/out. Oh well.

We looked around a bit, and found another good place where we dug our own hole and did some nice relaxing. It was pretty darn exciting to have dug our own hot tub, but the downside was that because the hot water was constantly flowing through, and bringing sand with it, you couldn't actually dig it very deep. But that didn't bother us too much, and digging in the sand is fun, so that's a plus. (I'm noticing now that this picture shows a particularly shallow stage of our hot tub. We never got it as deep as we would have liked, but we did get it deeper than this).

After a few minutes, our pool actually got too hot, and we were wondering what to do about that when this couple in the pool next to ours said, "Ours is actually getting too cold. What if we break down the wall in between and see if we could even it out and share a big pool?" Great idea! So we did, and we ended up with quite a nice big pool, and also some lovely pool-mates to chat with, which we did for quite a while.

So... the complicatedness helped us make some friends, and it was also neat to see other people interacting. People were tapping strangers on the shoulder and saying, "Do you think we could make a small offshoot from your stream of hot water so we could be warmer?" or "Let's build this wall up together to keep the waves out." (Oh, did I mention that the waves were coming right up the the edge of the wall behind my head and every so often sweeping in and totally chilling our warm water? Well, they were. That was quite a surprise the first time). 

These varying levels of cooperation and experimentation reminded me strongly of water play in the sandpit at kindergarten, and how great it is for social skills and problem solving. The kindness and openness I saw reinforced my strong belief that grown-ups should spent more time playing in the sand (or playing at all).

Before we left, we figured we'd better get a few pictures of us and our awesome towels and spades, generously loaned to us by our hotel.

We are very successful sand diggers.

Speaking of our lovely hotel, look at our pretty, private courtyard! The ground that looks like sand is actually made entirely of shells, which I love. 

J and I are totally going to go back and stay at this hotel again, because it was amazing. Plus, he clearly needs a Coromandel experience, because it was a stunningly beautiful and absolutely fascinating place to be.

Mount Paku and Puka Park Resort with Mom

To start my post, as usual, with excuse-related comments, I will share that Mom has flown back to Oklahoma, so visitor-related excuses are finished for now, but I will now move straight into visiting-related excuses. J and I are getting ready to fly back to the States in just two weeks (YAHOO), and I have done almost no preparation, due to my focus being entirely on Mom's visit. Fortunately, the big stuff is all organized already, but that doesn't mean that I don't have lots of small-but-important things to do. 

So... YAY for exciting trips in both directions across the world, and sorry for their interference with prompt posting.

While in Tairua, Mom and I climbed up Mount Paku, which gave us amazing views of Tairua (on the right), Pauanui (on the left), of the ocean (behind me in this picture), and of Tairua Harbour.

Look at the lovely colour variations in the water, and at the graceful curve of the line of anchored sailboats!

On the hike up to the top (which was not long, as you can drive most of the way up), there were flocks of fantails putting on amazing shows for us. They are so beautiful, I really wanted to get a picture of one, but they are so fast and their flight paths so erratic, it was a challenge. I managed to get this picture; this is a cropped version, as I couldn't be that close and still catch one in the frame. They come up really close to you, but zoom away very quickly afterwards. 

Anyway, awesome picture of their amazing displays of their fanning tails!

I got a picture of one on the ground, too.

Remember how Aunt Susan fell in love with fantails when she was here? Well, I'm so glad she did, because now I love them more because of her excitement, and am always extra glad to see them.

 I tried out my panorama capabilities here, too. What an amazing view!

When Mom first said she wanted to go to the Coromandel, I went on GrabOne and found a deal to go to Grand Mercure Puka Park Resort, which is in Pauanui. (Have I mentioned that I love GrabOne? You get to find awesome discounts online, which is both a great way to save money and a great way to find new and exciting things you might want to try!)

We had lunch inside, as it was bucketing down rain. (Mom informed me that "bucketing" must be a Kiwi-ism, as she'd never heard it before. I must be too localized already, because I would have said I always used that phrase.) It cleared up a bit as we were eating, but was still windy and felt stormy.

We got to sit by a nice little fire in a lovely restaurant with amazing food!

By the time we were finished eating and got changed for the spa, it was sunny and warm! Amazing! We moved between this pool, which was freezing, and the hot tub and sauna, which were toasty warm. We could only stand to dive into the deep end of the pool and swim as fast as we could to the steps at the shallow end before climbing out and dashing back to one of our warm options, but it was very fun!

We also relaxed and read our books in these lovely wooden chairs, looking out over the pool. It was pretty perfect, especially for two book-lovers like us!

Mom also worked out in the gym, because she is much better at actually putting effort into staying in shape than I am. I did not work out.

So... we have two weeks before we head to the States, and I promise to post more pictures of Mom's trip during that time. I haven't decided what my blogging plan will be for the time I'm away, but we'll see.