Family Pics

The next morning was Friday.  We went up to an area overlooking Taupo for family pictures.

The photographer was a lot of fun.

She did a great job of keeping the kids entertained and we did a pretty good job of keeping her entertained....LOL

She did have a fun group of people to work with though.

We haven't seen the finished pictures yet.  I'll add those later.

Once finished, we found a little scenic place where you could see through the trees and out to the lake.

I did zoom in and take a right and left half of that view.

After that, Amy and I had a date with a bungy cord!!!

Amy Arrives!

The evening of the day we arrived back in Taupo, Amy flew in from Auckland.

You will remember that Amy was the one that did the drawing on the "Favorite Son-In-Law" shirts.  She told us that we better have banners welcoming her at the airport.

Kerrie and Lily were put in charge of creating the banners.  Kerrie asked Lily what name she should be put on the banners.  Was it Princess Amy or Queen Amy?  Lily replied, "It's Queen Amy, because I'm Princess Lily!"

Queen Amy it is!!!!

We had the banners pressed up against the windows as the plane taxied into position.  Amy walked down the ladder and admired the artwork!

Next post, Family Pics!

Road Back to Taupo

This post is about the trip back to Taupo, but I have to go backwards a bit.  On the drive down to Wellington to see Annita's mother, it rained on us most of the way.

On the outside chance that we might bring this rain back to Kansas, Annita decided to take some pictures of what rain looks like.....

While taking Annita's mother around, we went to Waikanae and drove by where Annita's grandfather built his house.  We went to the beach there and took some pictures with Kapiti Island in the background.  This was supposed to be the picture that I sent to my co-workers of me, on a beach, in a thong.  But it was colder than shit that day, so I went ahead and wore blue jeans.

I did bite the bullet and do some driving this trip.  Some examples of the roads I drove follow.

We drove over Paekakariki Hill on the way back to Taupo.  Annita shortened it and her pronunciation sounded a lot like "pie-cock" hill.  Once at the top, the view was pretty amazing.

You do have to look at the road on the right side of the picture.  I was a little intimidated driving that.

One of the places we saw on the drive up (in the rain) was the Rangatira Golf Course.  We meant to stop by on the drive back to Taupo, and maybe play a little golf.  Unfortunately, it was raining on the drive back also.

We took a couple pictures of the course.

On the drive out, I stopped and looked at the tee box for hole 7.

Here's the actual tee box.

I walked forward a bit and took this one.

I think it would take driver twice to get TO the fairway!!!

We made it to Desert Road and found some interesting signs.

I'm pretty sure that's the name of Bon Jovi's next album, a follow up to "Slippery When Wet!"

We also stopped and took a picture of Mt. Ruapehu.  It was cloudy and rainy, so the picture pretty much sucks.

It finally stopped raining about the time we arrived back at Lake Taupo.  We pulled over and took some pictures of the lake.

Just to show you what we arrived back to, I took a shot from the deck of Robert and Viv's house, overlooking the lake at dusk.

Once again, not a tumbleweed in sight.  Who could look at that?

Next post, Amy Arrives!

Taupo

The following day we got up fairly early and took Lily and Lucas to the swimming (hot) pool.  

They also had a rock climbing wall.

Notice the box in the top middle of the picture?  Let me zoom in on that for you.

After that, Viv, Roberto, Annita and I played a round of golf, which I played even worse than usual.  Worse than my golf game was the fact that I didn't wear a hat or sunscreen.  You might notice that I have a bit more "color" than usual in these later pictures, but that's only because I was successfully working on my sunburn.

We made an early night of it and were up early the next morning.  My plan was to bow out of the second day of golf to tour downtown Taupo to look for Evolve charms for the bracelet Amy and I purchased for Annita for Christmas.  I had offered to not play and allow Annita to go play with Ian and Roberto.  Unfortunately, (or, perhaps, fortunately) Annita decided that it was a family vacation and if I wasn't going to play, neither was she.  In the back of my mind, I was a bit relieved.  I would hate to pick out some charms that she hated!!  On the other hand, if she helped me pick it out, that kind of blows the whole "surprise" thing.

She did love the charms, but they didn't fit on the Pandora bracelet we bought.  That meant we had to buy a new bracelet....LOL

The lady at the jewelry store was absolutely lovely and we will continue to order our charms from that store.  Annita has a catalog and will circle the charms she likes so that I can purchase them as needed for special occasions; Valentines, birthdays, the start of National Potato Week, or "James Has Screwed Up and Needs to Buy His Wife a Gift Day" (which could happen 7 days a week).

We went back to Robert and Viv's for the small birthday party for Annita's father.  The big surprise about that was the fact that I drove home from downtown Taupo.  Annita and Kerrie suggested that I walk the four or so blocks back to get the car while they waited at the pie shop.  That was an interesting drive back to them by myself.  Then, they didn't let me park the car, they just piled in when I arrived and gave me directions.  I did make it back without hitting any vehicles, or pedestrians!!  There were a couple of Robert and Viv's friends that came by that night, but most were coming by on Saturday for the lake cruise.  We ate supper and had drinks until LATE into the night.  

We spent a couple of days in Wellington, including a great supper with family and friends on Wednesday night.  Unfortunately, we didn't take the camera so the night can't be displayed here!!!

The next post will show some of the sights of the drive back to Taupo.

The Favorite Son in Law!!!

For those unaware, Ian and I have a bit of a competition about who the "favorite son in law" is.  I had a brilliant idea on the way to the airport and picked up a couple of shirts and some highlighter pens.  Amy colored the shirts and I stuffed them into my carry on bag.  It was extremely difficult to not say anything the first two days here, but we arrived in Taupo and Ian was saying how he was #1.

I went down and grabbed the two small Christmas gift bags and Annita and I herded everyone into the living room.  I made a bit of a presentation out of it, of course.  I said, "Viv, you had left these presents with us in Kansas and I brought them over here for you.  I haven't even looked in the presents so I have no idea what's in them.". I'm pretty sure no one believed me.

We had Ian open his first.  Oddly enough, his was in pink.

Mine looked much better in blue!!

We retired to the deck and drinks, followed later by a round of Texas Hold 'Em, which I dominated!!!

Next post, Taupo!

It Was Close.....

I'm blamimg my coworkers for the horrible start to our vacation.  They kept telling me it was going to storm the day we leave and we'd end up snowed in.  It did start snowing before we left and it delayed us leaving Garden City by an hour.  That shortened our hour and a half layover in Dallas by an hour.  We almost had our tickets sold to standby passengers while we were trying to get to the right concourse!!!

We did finally make it, but it was close.

The rest of the trip was pretty uneventful.  We arrived in Auckland and took the bus down to the wharf so we could take the ferry to Waiheke island.

This is the ferry that took us over.  Not the big cruise ship looking thing, the one I took the picture from.

Waiheke is a lot like the rest of New Zealand.  Desolate and extremely un-scenic.  For example, take a look at this hideous view Lee and Ian have to look at EVERY SINGLE DAY!!!

Can you believe that?  You can't even see a SINGLE tumbleweed in that view!!!  How boring is that?

This was taken halfway down to the beach.  Notice the Crawford Cove sign in the background?  Pretty cool, huh?

Next post, The Favorite Son-In-Law

Catching Up 3

Part 3 of the Catching Up series......

I thought that my wife was very open minded when we started going to New Zealand.  She would allow me to do pretty much anything I wanted.  I thought that was pretty awesome until she started commenting to her family that "the life insurance is paid up."  I'm beginning to think she has a death wish.....FOR ME!!!!

On our honeymoon, I did my first bungy.  This was at Gravity Canyon and is a 280 foot bungy.

At this point, I had the "adrenaline bug."

We went to Taupo where her dad and step-mother live and we rode on the Huka Falls Jet Boat.  This video isn't us, but it gives you an idea of what it's like.

We went back several years later and I did the bungy there in Taupo.  This one was only about 150 feet.  You can hear the guys talking to me at the beginning of the video.  They asked me if it's OK if I "touch" the water.  I tell them that's fine and then they reassure me by saying that it's a new rope and it might "stretch a bit."

As you might have noticed, I went in to the water up to my nipples.

Annita, Roberto (her brother) and I made a trip to Rotorua and raced down the three luge tracks.  We didn't video tape our exploits, but I did find some people that did, so you can see what it was like.  This is the Advanced track, the hardest of the three, but you can see where you actually "get air" on the way down.  It's a blast!!!

Here's the *big* bungy that I want to do.  It's called the "Nevi Bungy" and it's a 450 foot bungy.  That's 8.5 seconds of screaming your lungs out free-fall.  What sucks about that is that Amy will get to do this before me!!!!  LOL

Here's what it looks like.