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The past couple of days have been rather eventful! We had the best car trip yet I think. . . In any case, we drove to Waitomo to check out the glow worm caves! I thought Patrick got a picture, but I can’t find it . . . some of his pictures have been a little blurry of late.

This is the least blurry photograph of the Maori totem that stands by the Waitomo caves entrance.

This is us after the glow worm boat ride. The kids were spectacularly silent during the ride. I, on the other hand, was giggling and snorting like crazy . . . not enough to get into trouble, but there are drips in the caves, and spiders . . .

On Wednesday, we stayed home, did about ten loads of laundry, hung out, I did a cross stitch of Nemo :P and then we went out, bought some canvas, acrylic paints and brushes – oh, and a pencil. I had everyone do a rough sketch on paper of what they wanted to paint. We have absolutely nothing on our walls here in our new home, so I wanted some decoration. I’m keeping the paintings. I will bring them back and Rose can have hers when we move back to Canada.
Mine.

Brennen’s.

Daniel’s.

Rose’s.

Patrick’s super beautiful yet revolting fish. I’m going to buy me some more canvas so I can force Patrick to do more paintings. He’s pretty damned skilled and it’s a waste that he doesn’t do them more often.

On Thursday we planned on driving to Rotorua. We stopped in Hamilton and had a super fun picnic lunch at the Hamilton Gardens. We were a tad plagued by ducks . . . but it was gorgeous! The kids are getting too used to the heat. It was only twenty two degrees on Thursday, and they were ‘cold’. We trekked on to Tirau and stopped at a super cool sweet shop. Tirau has all of the corrugated iron signs. Brennen wanted a picture by the sheep and dog.

On to Rotorua! No – wait – we ended up FINALLY checking out the Zorb. Patrick and I had seen it on the television show “The Amazing Race” and have always wanted to see it. It’s a lot smaller than we thought, but still, pretty cool. It’s thirty to fifty dollars a ride . . . so we only put the kids on it. Patrick’s a little jealous. They had a blast! Lucky buggars. They also got a RIDE in the JEEP up the HILL :P

Hello Rotorua! Hello super stinky smell P.U.!!!!!!!!! I think they really enjoyed it though, and were pleasantly surprised that it wasn’t just the museum of Maori Art.

We couldn’t tear them away from the boiling mud and Prince of Wales geyser.

They usually only do their ceremonial dance at noon – and with all of our stops, we’d missed it by a couple of hours, but we were lucky enough to catch a show that is specifically for people who spend hundreds of dollars to participate in a ‘hangi’ which is a Maori feast.

Today I’m making the kids write essays. Muhahaha! Evil? Maybe. . . but I’ll help them out a little bit with my poor grammar and spelling hints. I figure if I can write these journal pages up, they can do the same. Right? They originally wanted to do essays on their favorite animals at the zoo. I figure they can get more mileage out of the entire NZ trip . . .

Ta, much love,
April

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